Archive for the ‘music’ Category
Monday, October 26th, 2009
When I first heard about Children of the Sun, I assumed the title was taken from the classic sixties psyche single of the same name by The Misunderstood, but anyone who reads the book can see that it actually invokes Savitri Devi, a particularly bonkers and unpleasant exponent of post-war Nazi occultism, and one of the founding members of the World Union of National Socialists. That said, the focus of this ‘novel’ is very much on English neo-Nazi scum of the Thatcher era; although Devi does appear in extended fictional form, partly on account of the fact that she died in England on the same day that the moronic bonehead band Skrewdriver played their comeback gig in London.
The book intercuts two narratives, which are joined at the end. One is about a lumpen south London secretly gay Nazi skinhead called Tony; and the other concerns the middle-class liberal James, whose family is financially supporting his research into the far-Right, so that he can write a TV script about British Movement activist and amateur porn star Nicky Crane. Schaefer uses the first narrative to undermine reader expectations, his main character Tony is complete low-life, and in every fight sequence I was rooting for him to be annihilated; so it was a major disappointment that this piece of trash survives right the way through to the end of the book.
Although Tony is a member of the British Movement, his depiction often led me to think of a Strasserite plonker on the ‘far left’ of a 1980s photo of Ian Anderson ‘manning the deliberately provocative National Front stall in the Asian area of Brick Lane, East London’, which is available from photographersdirect.com (search for “Ian Anderson Brick Lane”). In the ‘Tony’ parts of Schaefer’s book we encounter fictional depictions of figures such as Nicky Crane, Ian Stuart (of Skrewdriver), Savitri Devi and even Nick Griffin (now the BNP’s leading Nazi twat, but back then in his national ‘revolutionary’ phase an associate of a motley crew of Italian fascists with a string of criminal convictions implicating them in more than one mass murder, as well as a huge fan of Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi).
Children of the Sun not only takes the reader through a very lightly fictionalised version of key incidents in the development of British neo-Nazism, it is peppered with genuine historical documents relating to these events. What will most immediately grab many people’s attention is documentation relating to Nick Griffin’s unbelievably unsavoury past. However, of more interest to me was the resurfacing of two press clippings I’d appraised some time ago – an October 1986 news item from Searchlight linking Tony Wakeford’s National Front band Above The Ruins (the name was subsequently changed to Sol Invictus) to Nazi bonehead Nicky Crane as well as Michael Walker of The Scorpion, plus a 1986 review from the fascist zine English Rose that suggests top Nazi prick Patrick Harrington was a member of Wakeford’s group during its early days. Above The Ruins are mentioned more than once in the ‘fictional’ sections of the text, and these invocations prove extremely suggestive. For example:
“I was reading the Scorpion, this would-be intellectual journal put out by Michael Walker, who used to run a tour company with Nick Griffin and Roberto Fiore. So in summer ’93, just before Nicky died, Walker published an article by Stephen Cox, who ran something called the Jarls of Baelder, which as far as I can tell was a sort of occult, quasi-nazi homoerotic naturist group. Baelder had, or has, a secret inner order called the Fraternitas Loki, devoted to ‘covert aeonic action’: aeonics is a key Nine Angles term, and in Norse mythology Loki was the father of Fenrir, the wolf, right? The Above The Ruins album was Songs of the Wolf, and Fenrir was the in-house journal of the ONA… Anyway, Cox’s piece is this barking analysis of European history that says we need to reappraise the Third Reich and seek our destiny among the stars. And it’s illustrated with diagrams that say, at the bottom: copyright Order of Nine Angles. So this is explicit Nine Angles material appearing in the major British journal of the new right. They’re all over each other…” (pages 252-253).
There are, of course, other ways of linking Wakeford to David Myatt and the Order of Nine Angles, and Children of the Sun provides more than enough information to encourage readers to do just that and much else besides. Therefore, I’m not sure I’d describe this book a novel, it seems to me to be closer to what the Wu Ming collective call an ‘unidentified narrative object’; in fact, it reads a lot like recent work by Iain Sinclair crossed with gay porn for Nazi fetishists. The tome is incredibly well researched, and is guaranteed to stir up a lot of debate about links between the music scene and neo-Nazi politics (especially as, yet again, it blows away the threadbare argument a number of fascist musicians and their apologists have used for years in order to attain a fig-leaf of respectability; viz, they couldn’t possibly be Nazis because either they or some of their associates are gay). Likewise, although this is by no means the last word on why some extremely sad non-fascist gay men are turned on by Nazi uniforms and related trash (like Nicky Crane), it explores the area much more effectively than say Bruce La Bruce’s ill-conceived film Skin Gang/Skin Flick (1999).
Children of the Sun is at times an extremely unpleasant read, but it will nonetheless prove an eye-opener to those who run the literary world (anti-fascist activists will already be familiar with much of this material). I’m very much looking forward to some of the debates this book is likely to spark when it is published early next year. A couple of the ‘fictional’ Nazi scum turn out to be copper’s narks, and this might well lead to heated arguments about whether or not they are based on certain real-life characters. Schaefer has written an arresting debut that makes me extremely curious not only about what he will be doing next, but also what will happen to the huge amount of as yet unused research he’s done into the Nazi music scene and its fellow travellers.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1980s, Above The Ruins, Brick Lane, British Movement, British National Party, Bruce La Bruce, Children of the Sun, Colonel Gaddafi), David Myatt, English Rose, Fraternitas Loki, Iain Sinclair, Ian Anderson, Ian Stuart, Jarls of Baelder, Libya, London, Max Schaefer, Michael Walker, National Front, Nick Griffin, Nicky Crane, ONA, Order Of Nine Angles, Patrick Harrington, Photographers Direct, Roberto Fiore, Savitri Devi., Searchlight, Skin Flick., Skin Gang, Skrewdriver, Songs of the Wolf, Stephen Cox, The Misunderstood, The Scorpion, Third Reich, tony Wakeford, World Union of National Socialists, Wu Ming
Posted in books, music, politics | Comments Off
Saturday, October 10th, 2009
24 Hour Party People (2002) kept coming up in conversations I was having as I wandered around the UK, and so I have finally checked it out, although I am no fan of director Michael Winterbottom. This particular film with its super self-conscious po-mo ersatz drug patter is more like his A Cock & Bull Story(2005) than Wonderland (1999) – and let’s not even get into the puke-inducing television journalist-centred Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), or the pathetic ‘pop cultural’ 9 Songs (2004). Winterbottom’s 2002 effort focuses on Tony Wilson – a Manchester based television journalist, unsuccessful businessman and would-be hipster. It goes without saying that no matter how Wilson’s PR minions attempted to gloss his life story, it always ended up looking really boring to me.
What 24 Hour Party People rams home is how Tony Wilson suffered from terrible musical taste; and it is unfortunate that via Factory Records he was mildly successful at hyping some piss-poor tunes into the British pop charts. Aside from a clip of The Stranglers early on and Blackfoot Sue’s Standing In The Road playing in the background during one scene (Wilson had nothing to do with either act), all the music on the soundtrack is truly awful. From Joy Division via A Certain Ratio and New Order to The Happy Mondays, the ‘sounds’ Wilson promoted were uniformly dire (and let’s not waste time looking at Factory’s much-vaunted ‘design’, which was in reality a shower of shite, although it worked as pseudo-corporate branding).
Manchester produced its fair share of decent bands in the late-seventies – Slaughter and the Dogs, The Drones, V2 – but there isn’t any mention of them here (despite the involvement of Wilson’s business partner Rob Gretton with Slaughter); instead, when it comes to non-Wilson controlled musicians, we get the likes of Mark E. Smith of The Fall and Howard Devoto of The Buzzcocks and later Magazine. So if we’re not being subjected to unbelievably dull super-commercial crud by The Mondays, we get the relatively well-known end of the crap that would appeal to a pretentious ex-Cambridge University student like Wilson, rather than Manicured Noise or The Passage (who were just as bad but not half as ‘famous’).
Factory Records had about as much to do with rock and roll as Stalin did with human liberation. The exception proving this rule was their release of a record by New York’s incredible ESG – but there is no sign of them on the 24 Hour Party People soundtrack. But then I’d imagine that ESG, like the more interesting elements of The Hacienda that had been copied from New York clubs, reflect Rob Gretton’s tastes rather than Wilson’s. Likewise, the fact that there is no sign of The Royal Family and the Poor (supposedly the ‘weirdest’ act’ on Factory Records) in 24 Hour Party People, is illustrative of the way the movie is pitched firmly at the mainstream and will only appeal to those who dig Hollywood crapola (and simultaneously accounts for the one-line put-down of John The Postman, who may not have been a great singer but was a curious phenomena).
Anyway, rather than wasting your time on 24 Hour Party People (assuming you’re lucky enough not to have seen it), you’d do better Watching Paint Dry. But moving on, seeing the film reminded me of one of Wilson’s little scams pulled against yours truly. Tony Wilson was an impresario, and I found myself doing a panel talk with him, Mark E. Smith, and John King from the Gang of 4, at The Hacienda in 1996. When I arrived in Manchester I was shown a local newspaper by some of Wilson’s PR people, who were very pleased to have found a tame journalist who’d been fed made-up quotes falsely attributed to me in which I was erroneously reported slagging off their boss (I really wouldn’t have bothered while he was still half-alive, he enjoyed this sort of thing too much). It seemed to give Wilson a real kick to be the subject of fake vitriol attributed to me by the Manchester press.
Needless to say the panel talk I did with Wilson was a real bore, and I’m not sure the transcriptions of it now circulating on the internet are entirely accurate. Never mind, as 24 Hour Party People makes blatantly clear, Wilson preferred legends to factually accurate history…. let the dead bury their dead (Wilson died in 2007), we will blaze a trail to new modes of being… And if Wilson thought that what went on around him was a party, he’d have no doubt considered his own funeral a real ball had he been ‘conscious’ enough to enjoy it…
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 24 Hour Party People, 9 Songs, A Certain Ratio, A Cock & Bull Story, Blackfoot Sue, Cambridge University, ESG, Factory Records, Gang of 4, Happy Mondays, Howard Devoto, John King, Joseph Stalin, Joy Division, Magazine, Manicured Noise, Mark E. Smith, Michael Winterbottom, New Order, Slaughter and the Dogs, Standing In The Road, The Buzzcocks, The Drones, The Fall, The Hacienda, The Passage, The Stranglers, Tony Wilson, V2, Welcome to Sarajevo, Wonderland
Posted in film, music | 20 Comments »
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
I was hanging with a mate the other day who’d just acquired a pile of vinyl from a friend who was emigrating to the US. You could tell by the content of this record collection that the former owner had been born in the 1950s. I’d never heard Procol Harum Live with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and by listening to it I discovered I hadn’t missed anything at all. I had heard Mountain at some point in the seventies and one track of their generic blues rock was enough to remind me of why it was instantly forgettable. Moving on, when I was about twelve me and my mates at secondary school used to wind up older kids from a nearby grammar school by telling them that bands like Gentle Giant and Pink Floyd were commercial cop-outs, and if they were hip they’d have been groovin’ to Greenslade. Actually we preferred old soul records but one kid in my class shared a bedroom with an older brother who listened to both northern soul and Greenslade, so we not only knew about this latter act, we’d even heard their records.
One prog band whose name eluded me until later in the seventies was Gryphon, and then I only came across them because I knew they had an association with ‘new wave’ act The Banned. Viz, The Banned emerged from a combo called Precious Little which featured two ex-Gryphon members Graeme Taylor and Malcolm Bennett, while another Gryphon member Richard Harvey got Banned drummer Paul Aitken work doing jingles, which led to Gryphon’s last label Harvest (they were on Transatlantic Records for most of their career) signing this musician as a ‘new wave group’. The Banned turned out to be a one-hit wonder with their cover of Syndicate of Sound’s mid-sixties single Little Girl (the recording features Gryphon members Richard Harvey and Jonathan Davie). That release wasn’t bad, although it wasn’t nearly as good as The Dead Boys simultaneous cover of the tune. When Cherry Red released a Banned retrospective CD five or so years ago, it revealed just how shit The Banned really were, due to the fact that any attempt to ditch their prog roots was purely cosmetic – an ‘image’ far more than a ‘musical’ make-over!
The Banned Little Girl CD in Cherry Red’s Best In New Wave series actually kicks off with four Precious Little tracks, the first being a prog style cover of The Olympics Good Lovin’, a tune that is unfortunately better known in the form of an inferior cover by The Young Rascals. With a constantly changing line-up, The Banned even managed to incorporate the two ex-Gryphon members who’d been in Precious Little before they finally broke up, which makes you wonder why Cherry Red didn’t promote their Little Girl CD as a Best In Prog Rock effort. Beyond the cover of Little Girl there is nothing on the CD to appeal to anyone with a taste for power pop, let alone punk rock. Which isn’t to say that all prog musicians proved incapable of making decent records in the late-seventies; personally I’m rather fond of the smutty pop issued by The Pork Dukes, with a line-up featuring two former members of Gnidrolog.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, a few days ago I finally got to hear Gryphon’s eponymous first album from 1973, well not all of it, since two tracks of their pseudo-medieval folk crap was more than enough for me! I absolutely hated it! On their later recordings I understand there is more electric instrumentation and so these are less folk and more prog sounding. That said, if The Banned CD is anything to judge by, I will be happy if I never hear anything else by Gryphon. I guess The Banned’s cover of Little Girl is the exception that proves the rule, and the rule is: ex-Royal College of Music students can’t rock! Gryphon even wrote and recorded the music for a 1974 Sir Peter Hall National Theatre production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and it would seem lacking any kind of pop sensibility would be a prerequisite for being entrusted with this sort of task….
And to kick away the cobwebs after listening to Procol Harum, Mountain and Gryphon, we put on Slade Alive! That was from my mate’s own collection, not the one he’d inherited from the older emigrating friend… The first side of Slade Alive! is what 1970s rock and roll oughta sound like!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Cherry Red Records, Gentle Giant, Gnidrolog, Good Lovin', Graeme Taylor, Greenslade, Gryphon, Harvest Recods, Jonathan Davie, Little Girl, Malcolm Bennett, National Theatre, Paul Aitkin, Pink Floyd, Pork Dukes, Procol Harum, Procol Harum Live with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Richard Harvey, Sir Peter Hall, Slade, Slade Alive!, Syndicate of Sound, The Banned, The Dead Boys, The Olympics, The Tempest, Transatlantic Records, William Shakespeare, Young Rascals
Posted in music | 19 Comments »
Monday, August 10th, 2009
Since Herman Brood came up on a blog I posted a few days ago, I’ve been thinking about why I like his tune Rock & Roll Junkie. There are elements within it that on their own I would normally hate. Somehow the super-dumb boogie-woogie keyboards manage to become a non-irritating element in the overall racket. Brood’s voice is acceptable but nothing special, with his cracked English lyrics and pronunciation being a definite plus element. I guess most listeners will connect the lyrical content to Brood’s own life, since he is Holland’s most famous rock and roll junkie. That said, the words relate most immediately to music and only secondly to drugs:
“Rock & roll addiction is a festerin’ habit
you gotta keep on playin’ like a paranoid rabbit
you can hook me on your tail, penetrate my soul
make me feel the sting of rock & roll
I’m a heart & soul, rock & roll, heart & soul rock & roll junkie”
This came out as a single in 1977 and then appeared on the 1978 album Shpritsz. It sounds more blow wave than new wave to me, and since Brood began his music career in 1960s beat groups, it isn’t really surprising that he’s more interested in good time rock and roll than the punk ‘revolution’. But that didn’t stop assorted record companies promoting Brood and this tune as ‘punk’ back in the 1970s. In reality Brood strays dangerously close to Bachman-Turner Overdrive territory, but what saves Rock and Roll Junkie is the overall mix of elements – and in particular the restrained sax and female backing vocals. The guitar solo is horrible but in a so bad it is good way.
And in retrospect we know that Brood really did ‘meant it man’. He jumped to his death from the roof of the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel in 2001, lending extra poignancy to the otherwise risible couplet : “but when I do my suicide for you, I hope you miss me too.” I really shouldn’t like this tune but I do. And it reminds me of a couple of other songs that groove me – Savage by The Fun Things and Rock N Roll Resurrection by Wayne County. The Fun Things were a bunch of Brisbane teens when they released Savage in 1980, and the lyrics are about on a par with Brood:
“I’m a rock and roll kamikaze and you know that I die for you
when you’re paying your bills to see me, I gotta do what you want me to
well the drums are like twin machine guns and the voice is a full throated roar
and the guitars are coming on like a buzz-saw, I can’t wait till I get some more
last of the leather age, put me on the stage and I’ll be your savage
last of the leather age, put me on the stage and I’m a savage for you…”
Brood, of course, is far more professional in terms of recording technique and production than The Fun Things, who seem to have gone into the studio and turned everything up to the max. But variety is the spice of life, and I like both approaches (although my guess is Savage could have been even better with a little studio savvy). And while Wayne County first recorded Rock N Roll Resurrection before her sex change, she made it the title track of a fabulous live album issued after she’d re-emerged as Jayne County. All of which just about proves that great rock and roll is always transsexual.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (n0) sense!
Tags: 1970s, 70s, Amsterdam, Amsterdam Hilton Hotel, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Fun Things, Herman Brood, Jayne County, Rock & Roll Junkie, Rock N Roll Resurrection, Savage, seventies, Shpritsz, Wayne County
Posted in music | 17 Comments »
Saturday, August 8th, 2009
Here’s a strange one pop-pickers, I was on the prowl for Viola Wills’ cover of If You Could Read My Mind when I stumbled across a bargain bin copy of the New World album Believe In Music, which features a different version of the tune I was looking for. The band name rang a vague bell, and so I turned the platter over and immediately noticed the Gordon Lightfoot song in the track listing. The album is a 1973 RAK release, and the Mickie Most connection (RAK was his label) brought back vague memories of early seventies singles by New World that were more familiar to me as tunes done by other acts: Rose Garden covered by Lynne Anderson and Tom Tom Turn Around, which had also been waxed by The Sweet. It turns out that New World had other UK hits with Kara, Kara and Sister Jane. They’d even recorded the first version of Living Next Door To Alice, which flopped for them and then went stellar for Smokie.
Anyway, since the bargain bin copy of the New World album I’d come across was in mint condition and had been signed by all three members of the band, I thought it was worth taking a punt on for a quid. I knew several of the tunes on the album, although not these versions – and I also consider Mickie Most to be an interesting producer, since he’s worked with everyone from Donovan via Lulu to The Vibrators. New World I subsequently discovered were an Australian band brought to Europe by the songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman.
The opening track Roof Top Singing was New World’s last and most minor UK hit, spending one week at number 50 in the British charts in May 1973, so although I probably heard it once or twice at the time, it isn’t surprising I don’t remember it. It’s a Chinn/Chapman composition and while perfectly pleasant, hardly on a par with the material they wrote for The Sweet. It has a slightly nostalgic 1940s vibe with violins and other orchestral instruments quite high in the mix, and an almost doo wop feel to the vocals. The next song Green Rocky Road is a ‘traditional’ tune arranged by Mickie Most, it hints at reggae off-beats and while mildly toe-tapping never strays far enough from ‘grown-up’ pop to become interesting. Track 3 is a cover of Killing Me Softly with nice vocals and an easy listening arrangement; convincing as crafted pop but it was never gonna compete with Roberta Flack! Track 4 is If You Could Read My Mind, and it comes off as too smoothed out when compared to the Gorden Lightfoot original, and anyway I prefer the disco stomp of the later Viola Wills version. Closing the first side of the LP is a cover of Donovan’s Only The Blues, and this is weak.
Side 2 opens with another mistake, Jolson, which appears to be about the well-known American entertainer. It is vaguely nostalgic and features a second-rate sing-a-along chorus and some really terrible piano playing. I don’t know the song and assume it was written for the band since RAK are the publishers. Next up is the most laid-back cover I’ve ever heard of Bobby Freeman’s Do You Wanna Dance, and it almost amusing enough in itself to justify the round pound I spent on this platter. It is followed by Sally’s A Lady, which features some well-crafted vocal harmonies and cod-sophisticated guitar work that are nothing to get excited about. Again, I assume this was written for New World since it is published by RAK. The penultimate song is a cover of Morning Has Broken that closely follows the Cat Stevens’ arrangement. Once again this is pleasant enough, but you might as well be listening to the Cat Stevens and I’m no fan of him either! The album closes with the title track, I Do Believe In Music, a fey waste-of-time with over-prominent violin parts and a leaden rhythm. It should go without saying the song was probably written for the group, since it is published by RAK.
In the early seventies New World were regular guests on the BBC TV show The Two Ronnies, and it is clear they were being pitched at more than just teeny-boppers. Sophisticated pop is an oxymoron, but Mickie Most is shameless enough to try his hand at anything – never forget he bought out the Heavy Metal Kids contract from Atlantic Records. Now that is a seriously bad musical decision! Note to record collector scum: Believe In Music by New World didn’t make the UK charts and is thus relatively rare, but I am open to reasonable offers (which means something over thirty knicker).
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Atlantic Records, BBC, Believe In Music, Bobby Freeman, Cat Stevens, Chinn-Chapman, Do You Wanna Dance, Donovan, Gordon Lightfoot, Green Rocky Road, Heavy Metal Kids, I Do Believe In Music, If You Could Read My Mind, Jolson, Kara Kara, Killing Me Softly, Living Next Door To Alice, Lulu, Lynn Anderson, Mickie Most, Mike Chapman, Morning Has Broken, New World, Nicky Chinn, Only The Blues, RAK, Roberta Flack, Roof Top Singing, Rose Garden, Sally's A Lady, Sister Jane, Smokie, The Sweet, The Two Ronnies, Tom Tom Turn Around, Vibrators, Viola Wills
Posted in music | 18 Comments »
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
I’ve liked Eddie Holman’s A Night To Remember for a long time, and I guess it’s familiar to me because it was one of the late Salsoul singles that contributed to a revival of interest in him. So when I spotted an original vinyl copy of the album that takes its title from this single in a bargain bin last week, I grabbed it with both hands. The tune A Night To Remember alone is worth a round pound of my money, or anyone else’s for that matter! And a quid was all I had to pay for a 12 inch 8 track vinyl trip right back to my last year at school. When Eddie Holman’s album was issued in 1977, I was 15 years-old and the more interesting girls in my class all had 17 or 18 year-old boyfriends, coz they wouldn’t consider dating a bloke who didn’t have a car. And while northern soul was the preferred musical subculture of male hipsters at my school, those older boys my female classmates were dating listened to more ‘sophisticated’ and contemporary grooves like this Eddie Holman album. So spinning this primo example of Salsoul heaven took me right back to Greater London Council (GLC) overspill estates, Ford Cortinas with furry dice hanging from the rear-view mirror, and dazzling white clothes lovingly washed by working-class mothers.
Every note of Eddie Holman’s album is unadulterated sonic pleasure, but nothing else on it matches the musical heights of the title track. As this smooth groove kicks in, the horns and bass line kinda remind me of Tears Of A Clown, and the repeated string hook later on is some distant and totally mellowed out relative of Bok to Bach by Father’s Angels, but when the divine vocal hits you, it’s immediately apparent you couldn’t possibly be listening to anyone but Eddie Holman: “I wanna feel your body pressed up close to mine… oooooooooohhhhhhhhhh I got a feeling, this’ll be a night to remember.” Definitely an all time love classic!
The album contains another 1977 single in the form of the opening track You Make My Life Complete, and that’s all that was familiar to me. But the other six tracks are just as good as the opener! Side 1: You Make My Life Complete; Time Will Tell; Immune To Love; This Will Be A Night To Remember. Side 2: I’ve Been Singing Love Songs; (Where Have You Been) All My Life; Somehow You Make Me Feel; It’s Over. Sadly Holman’s only 70s UK hit was with (Hey There) Lonely Girl, and while that is fabulous, the mellow groove on A Night To Remember makes this later outing even better! As The Cortinas sang on their single of that time Defiant Pose: “1977′s got a hold on me!” But it’s the Salsoul urban groove that’s taking me there, not punk rock!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: (Where Have You Been) All My Life, A Night To Remember, Bok To Bach, Cortinas, Defiant Pose, Eddie Holman, Father's Angels, Ford Cortina, I've Been Singing Love Songs, Immune To Love, It's Over, Salsoul, Somehow You Make Me Feel, Tears Of A Clown, This Will Be A Night To Remember, Time Will Tell, You Make My Life Complete
Posted in music | 15 Comments »
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
Merseymania by Billy Pepper and the Pepperpots is an album I rescued from a bargain bin on the strength of the cover and the sleeve notes. It is also rumoured to be a Lou Reed and John Cale effort from their days producing crud budget music for Pickwick during the earlier part of the sixties. Can anyone substantiate this rumour? Cale and Reed worked at Pickwick, but I’ve never seen any documentary evidence that convinced me they are actually responsible for this particular abomination. The black and white cover photo of screaming Beatles fans is an absolute classic, with some lovely period lettering above it. The sleeve notes are equally cool:
“It burst on to the British music scene unannounced one day in October 1962. ‘It’, of course, refers to ‘Mersey Mania’, an expression that has been coined to describe the new form of music that has injected an air of freshness into our hit parade at a time when it was looking decidedly jaded. What is ‘Mersey Mania’ ? This is a question that although frequently asked is very difficult to define. Whatever one’s own definition is, there can be no getting away from the fact that this new form of music has livened up our pop music scene considerably and has brought forth an era of excitement and enthusiasm that has been acclaimed by young and old alike…”
To me it looks like Roger Easterby was half-asleep when he wrote these notes. The fourth sentence quoted here would have read better if he’d ended it with the word ‘answer’. Oh well, since the session musicians on this release sound like they were on auto-pilot when they recorded it, the notes on the sleeve and those in the grooves match! And don’t believe the hype when the copywriter tells us:
“In this album you will hear all aspects of the ‘Mersey Mania’ from the out and out rhythm and blues number to the more sedate ballad, and whichever particular number takes your fancy, be it one of the well-known songs or one of the seven original numbers, you will agree that the latest Liverpool find – Billy Pepper and The Pepperpots – certainly do justice to the Beat City on this really sensational album. I specially recommend that you take a listen to the boys’ brilliant revival of Jericho, for this Spiritual, given the Mersey treatment, just about sums up what this music is all about. Finally, if you are ever asked by your friends, ‘what is the Mersey Sound?”, lend them this album… for THIS IS THE MERSEY MANIA !”
And if you believe that then you might also believe The Pleasers should have been bigger than the Beatles. See my blog of a few days ago – and in particular some of the comments – for more on The Pleasers. Aside from the alleged Velvet Underground connection, Merseymania is also a historical curiosity because some of those who believe the rumours about Paul McCartney dying back in the sixties also contend that since then Billy Pepper has stood in as his double! And if you are of the opinion that ‘Paul is dead’ then it probably won’t be hard to convince you that JFK was my father (possibly true) and Britney Spears is my ‘secret’ daughter (unlikely).
To sum up, Mersymania by Billy Pepper and the Pepperpots sucks, but it was worth 80p of my money for the front cover and sleeve notes. Record collector scum please note: if you’re a Lou Reed or John Cale fanatic, I’m open to offers of three figures and more for my copy of this platter. The tracks on this release run as follow:
Side 1
1. I Want To Hold Your Hand.
2. This Is What I Mean.
3. Tell Me I’m The One.
4. Jericho.
5. Maybe I Will
Side 2
1. I Saw Her Standing There.
2. Seems To Me.
3. I’ll Have To Get Another Girl.
4. Your Kind Of Love.
5. There I Go.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Billy Pepper, Billy Pepper and the Pepperpots, Britney Spears, I Saw Her Standing There, I Want To Hold Your Hand, I'll Have To Get Another Girl, Jericho, JFK, John Cale, Lou Reed, Mabye I Will, Mersey Mania, Merseymania, Paul McCartney, Pickwick, Roger Eastby, Seems To Me, Tell Me I'm The One, The Pleasers, There I Go, This Is What I Mean, Velvet Underground, Your Kind Of Love
Posted in music | 17 Comments »
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
Here’s a find of mine from the bottom of a pile of charity shop records – the album Whispering Winds by Steve Burns. When I came across this platter it meant nothing to me. I didn’t recognise the record label either; BGS of Lethame Road, Strathhaven, Scotland. It was the sleeve notes that convinced me I should part with 50p for this particular 12 inches of vinyl pleasure:
“As a disc jockey, I have to listen to a lot of alleged singers, which is, I suppose, as good a way as any of getting your ears pierced in an era when the average pop singer sounds like a Rice Crispy calling to its mate, and a pop song seems to be anything that isn’t worth saying made into a song. How we’ve allowed ourselves to be conned in paying ridiculous sums to senile young men who look like armpits with eyes and whose sole contribution to the arts is to scratch themselves in public is a question for the psychiatrists. But the inevitable effect on the adult recorder presenter, weary of performers with all the charm of a temporary filling and the entertainment value of one wrestler, is that he ends up depressingly conscious that trying to find real talent these days is like looking for eggs in a cuckoo clock. Yet it does still exist, which is why I heartily welcome Steve Burn’s first LP, not just because it makes a very pleasant change from music that sounds like labour pains with a beat, but because Steve made it the hard way in to-day’s show business – he’s got talent. Frank Skerret.”
As you’d expect after such a build up, the music is cheesy easy listening. The backing musicians are the Bill Garden Orchestra & Chorus, and that ensemble’s band leader also provides the musical arrangements. The highlight is a very limp cover of Blueberry Hill, while the cod Celtic romanticism of Isle of Innisfree and Mary Of Argyle are almost as much of a thrill. Obviously, cult records are valued as much – if not more – for their obscurity as the quality of their grooves, and Steve Burns is definitely a complete unknown. The day I got my copy of Whispering Winds I did a web search for it, and found nothing at all about the release. Since you can now get information about almost any drongo punk release online, something that comes up blank has got to be better! To fill me with even greater joy, my copy is signed by both Steve Burns and the man who wrote the sleeve notes ‘the legendary’ Frank Skerret!
Of course, I’ve rather blown the credibility of this obscurity by blogging about it, but it grooves me to bring 1977 independent unknowns to the attention of record collector scum! You can forget Son Of Sam by Chain Gang, or anything issued by The Motors (especially Airport but even You Beat The Hell Outta Me), Steve Burns is the authentic sound of the punk era! “1977′s got a hold on me!” Full track listing for Whispering Winds:
A-side
1. Whispering Winds.
2. Ramblin’ Rose.
3. I Think Of You.
4. Brush The Tears From My Eyes.
5. Carolina Moon.
6. Isle Of Innisfree.
B-side (baby)
7. Beautiful Lies.
8. I Really Don’t Want To Know.
9. Before I Met You.
10. Why Did You Make Me Care.
11. Blueberry Hill.
12. Mary Of Argyle.
13. Little Man You’ve Had A Busy Day.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Airport, Beautiful Lies, Before I Met You, BGS, Bill Garden, Bill Garden Orchestra, Bluebury Hiill, Brush The Tears From My Eyes, Carolina Moon, Chain Gang, Frank Skerret, I Really Don't Want To Know, I Think Of You, Isle of Innisfree, Lethame Road, Mary Of Argyle, Ramblin Rose, Scotland, Son of Sam, Steve Burns, Strathhaven, The Motors, Whispering Winds, Why Did You Make Me Care, You Beat The Hell Outta Me
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Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Back in the late-seventies I really liked multi-band concert bills, especially the Sunday night punk cabarets that started at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm and then switched to The Lyceum in The Strand. I don’t remember exactly when and where, but I also took a punt on the 5 Live Stiffs tour featuring Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric and Larry Wallis, that hit the UK for a month in the autumn of 1977. Back then punk and new wave acts did proper tours, heading as far north as Aberdeen or Inverness and doing around 30 dates in as many days. Since I was going to shows in and around London, that generally meant I saw touring bands as they were warming up or else worn out at the end of a month long trek around the British Isles. I don’t know whether I caught 5 Live Stiffs at the beginning or end of the tour, but it was a long way from being the greatest show on earth
My understanding is that on the 5 Live Stiffs tour the order of the acts was rotated, and the night I went Larry Wallis was on first. There wasn’t much atmosphere because most the the audience hadn’t arrived but the ex-Pink Fairy knew how to rock and tunes like Police Car came across as full-on body-odour boogie. Nick Lowe was a lot better and only partly because there was more of a crowd for him. Lowe wrote songs that were so catchy they should have been infections diseases, and I’ll take a a great pop tune over boogie every time! If I recall correctly, the Lowe highlights were Heart Of The City and I Knew The Bride, but I may be imagining that. And surely Dave Edmunds, who was playing in the band, sang lead on the latter. Since Heart Of The City is my favourite example of Nick Lowe-style stomp, I hope he played it – but 32 years on I’m not sure I can remember the set perfectly! My memory also tells me that Lowe and Edmunds were part of the Larry Wallis backing band, and that Wallis played with them too. Wreckless Eric was up next, and while it was fun to see him doing Whole Wide World, his act came across as nothing special after Lowe’s perfect pop. Ian Dury was a real trooper, and he had some rockin’ tunes like Blockheads, but his slower material didn’t work so well despite his flair for showmanship. As for Elvis Costello, I’ve never really liked his whining voice. His first album had two really classy tracks in the form of Mystery Dance and Waiting For The End Of The World, but it was all downhill from there. Live Costello just bored me.
The first Stiff live package was a mixed bag, but that didn’t stop me checking out the next one. The Be-Stiff tour hit the road in the autumn of 1978. It featured Wreckless Eric again, Lene Lovich, Jona Lewie, Mickey Jupp and Rachel Sweet. Wreckless Eric came across as a 1977 re-run, acceptable but not worth seeing twice. Mickey Jupp was better, enjoyable pub rock but more than one rung down from The Feelgoods and The Hot Rods. You know someone isn’t a first division rocker when the most interesting thing about them is the fact that Bill Legend – the drummer from their old band Legend – went on to join T. Rex Moving on, I’m a huge fan of novelty pop but Jona Lewie and Lene Lovich are acts that give this genre a bad name. Lovich’s mannered stage movements and vocal warblings proved particularly irritating. But this crap didn’t matter, the real reason I caught the Be-Stiff tour was to see Rachel Sweet.
“The Forgotten Lady of Stiff” didn’t have much of a stage act but she had a great repertoire! Her material was an amazing mix of pop, rock, country and soul; her best tunes being Pin A Medal On Mary and Truckstop Queen, but everything on her first album Fool Around is a total groove. This really was ‘pure pop for now people’! Rachel Sweet was like a cross between Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Chris Clark and Sylvie Vartan, for the blank generation! If you didn’t like Rachel Sweet you didn’t like pop music, and were probably either a headbanger or so far up your own arsehole that you got your kicks contemplating Greenslade or some other prog slop! Listening to Rachel Sweet’s voice on that Stiff tour, it was mind blowing to think she was the same age as me, sweet sixteen in 1978! She may have looked like the teenager she undoubtedly was, but she sounded much more seasoned. Sweet is probably the most underrated female artist to emerge from the new wave, and shits all over Goth bores like Siouxsie Sioux (who grabbed loadsa attention despite a complete lack of talent and a penchant for wearing swastikas). Truckstop Queen, which was on the Akron compilation album, remains one of my all time favourite tunes to this day. Sweet ‘retired’ from the record industry in 1982 after making just 4 albums, although she subsequently did some TV work and recorded the odd song.
As far as I was concerned, Stiff might as well have not bothered with a package tour in 1978, they could have sent Rachel Sweet out alone and I’d have been happy. There wasn’t a Stiff tour in 1979 and when they got around to doing another one in 1980, I couldn’t be arsed with it. The 1980 Son Of Stiff tour featured Ten Pole Tudor, Any Trouble, Dirty Looks, The Equators and Joe “King” Carrasco. Thirty years on I’m still convinced I made the right decision when I decided to give it a miss.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 5 Live Stiffs, Aberdeen, Any Trouble, Be-Stiff, Bill Legend, Blockheads, Camden, Chris Clark, Dave Edmunds, Dirty Looks, Dr Feelgood, Dusty Springfield, Eddie & The Hot Rods, Elvis Costello, Greenslade, Heart Of The City, I Knew The Bride, Ian Dury, Inverness, Joe "King" Carrasco, Jona Lewie, Larry Wallis, Legend, Lene Lovich, London, Lulu, Mickey Jupp, Mystery Dance, Nick Lowe, Pin A Medal On Mary, Pink Fairies, Police Car, Rachel Sweet, Siouxsie Sioux, Son Of Stiff, Sylvie Vartan, T. Rex, Ten Pole Tudor, The Equators, The Lyceum, The Roundhouse, The Strand, Truckstop Queen, Waiting For The End Of The World, Whole Wide World, Wreckless Eric
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Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Despite the recently fashionable status of the Bethnal Green area in east London, this has to date failed to lead to a revival of interest in the 1970s band who named themselves after the hood. Bethnal were formed in Bethnal Green in 1972, and sounded like a cut-price Who minus the vocal skill of Roger Daltrey and the songwriting talent of Pete Townshend. I saw Bethnal at The Marquee in Wardour Street on Thursday 24 August 1978 and had a good night out. Bethnal had plenty of energy but beyond their deployment of a violin, there was nothing very memorable about them. They simply weren’t as good as the other bands I saw at The Marquee that month: The Vibrators on Monday 14 August 1978 and Ultravox! (when John Foxx was still the vocalist) on Tuesday 22 August 1978. I caught plenty of other bands that August too, at venues all around London… Bethnal were simply another night out on the town.
At some point after that Marquee gig, I pulled Bethnal’s first album Dangerous Times out of a bargain bin. It’s bog standard seventies Brit rock. The opener Out In The Street (not the tune of the same name from the first Who album) sounds like a second-rate Pete Townshend song covered by a boogie band, but it’s still enjoyable. The best tracks are covers of We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place and Barba O’Reilly, but while acceptable they’re not as good as the originals… And other tracks like Who We Gonna Blame are seriously let down by the vocals. Bethnal’s second and final album Crash Landing was not at all to my taste, since it veers much more in the direction of stadium rock and prog, so even when I came across bargain bin copies of this swansong recording, I left them lying where I found them.
One reason for mentioning Bethnal is because I’ve been enjoying John Eden’s series of blogs at Uncarved about uncool gigs he attended as a teenager. The ninth and most recent in the series is about him going to see The Mission in 1987. Eden appears to have ticket stubs and other memorabilia to jog his memory, whereas I’m relying on internet research to date the gigs I went to 30 and more years ago. I’m a bit older than Eden and I seem to have been more hardcore about my gig going from an earlier age. I liked a lot of seventies new wave and punk acts and among my early live experiences can list The Stranglers, The Damned and The Clash. I hate to admit it but the first band I ever saw was The Jam, and that was sometime before they had a record contract. For me, more interesting than these ‘name’ acts are those who never made it. One of the best bands in this latter category is Burlesque, a jazz rock combo with new wave trimmings, who like Bethnal managed to release a brace of albums that have yet to be reissued on CD.
According to the Billy Jenkins Webzine Burlesque were: “Selected as the ‘Band Most Likely To Succeed’ in both the tabloid Sun and Melody Maker at the end of ’76, it took a flying visit from America by music business legend Clive Davis to sign the band to Arista Records.” I don’t like the construction of that sentence, but I presume an article hosted on a former Burlesque band member’s website will be factually accurate. All I can say is he and his band-mates in Burlesque cracked me up with songs like Steel Appeal (about being sexually turned on by people in wheelchairs). Better yet, Burlesque saxophonist Ian Trimmer wore a tatty army jacket with ‘Bird Lives’ sprayed punk-style across the back; even at the age of 15 I knew that ‘Bird’ was jazz legend Charlie Parker. Making things even more surreal, the one time I saw Burlesque Paul Weller of The Jam was in the sparse audience. That said, Weller was obviously present to check out support act The Pleasers, who were Merseybeat revivalists replete with collarless Beatles’ jackets. The Pleasers even had their own one band musical movement – Thamesbeat!
I caught Burlesque and The Pleasers at some college (can’t recall which one) at some point in 1977, and it is curious to recall some of the acts I saw in the late-seventies that no one I know talks about any more. For instance, I subjected myself to Nina Hagen at The Lyceum, but I’m not sure if this was in 1978 or a bit later. I guess people still rave about Hagen in Germany, but she hasn’t been of much interest to UK based hipsters for the past 30 years. She made her initial international impact with a German language cover of the new wavish Tubes’ song White Punks On Dope, done with re-written lyrics as TV-Glotzer. In the early/mid-eighties Hagen made tunes like New York with disco legend Giorgio Moroder acting as producer, and for me that collaboration is the most notable thing about her.
I don’t like Hagen’s voice, so I’ve no idea why I went to see her circa 1978 – I can only assume there was some other act on the bill that I wanted to catch. I can’t remember where I saw Hagen’s one-time boyfriend, the Dutch rocker Herman Brood, but it may have been on a multi-act bill with his consort of that era. Brood is Holland’s most famous rock ‘n’ roll junkie, but I haven’t heard mention of him in London for years, despite his 2001 jump from the roof of the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel leading to saturation media coverage of his suicide and subsequent funeral in The Netherlands.
Back in the late-seventies I used to see a lot of bands and my tastes were very varied. I would catch Sham 69 one night and Wire the next; groove to The Vapors on Saturday then freak-out with Gloria Mundi or The Virgin Prunes on Sunday… I even saw Motorhead, but I much preferred The Pirates! Having started out as Johnny Kidd’s backing band, The Pirates had been around since the late-fifties. On record they weren’t bad, although I didn’t really bother with their vinyl, I just liked them live… and in 1978 you’d have been just as likely to find me at a Pirates or Wilko Johnson gig as at a punky-reggae party. I was also going to see British reggae bands like Steel Pulse, Aswad, Misty In Roots and Matumbi. Since I much preferred small clubs to concert halls, I didn’t bother with visiting Jamaican acts although I liked their sounds. The Lyceum Ballroom in The Strand was the biggest place I went to with any regularity. I only ever went to The Hammersmith Odeon once, to see Lou Reed in 1979, and I considered the experience shitty.
Out of the stew of music I caught live 30 and more years ago, it is curious to see what’s disappeared. Amazingly, bands like The Pleasers made it onto CD in the late-nineties, whereas as far as I know the output of Burlesque and Bethnal has never been reissued on that format…
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1977, 1978, Amsterdam Hilton Hotel, Arista Records, Aswad, Barba O'Reilly, Bethnal, Bethnal Green, Billy Jenkins, Bird, burlesque, central London, Charlie Parker, Clive Davis, Crash Landing, east London, Giorgio Moroder, Gloria Mundi, Hammersmith Odeon, Herman Brood, Ian Trimmer, John Eden, Johnny Kidd, Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, Lou Reed, Lyceum Ballroom, Matumbi, Melody Maker, Misty In Roots, Motorhead, New York, Nina Hagen, Paul Weller, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Sham 69, Soho, Steel Appeal, Steel Pulse, The Beatles, The Jam, The Marquee, The Mission, The Pirates, The Pleasers, The Strand, The Sun, The Vapors, The Vibrators, The Virgin Prunes, The Who, Ultravox!, Uncarved, Wardour Street, We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place, Who We Gonna Blame, Wilko Johnson, Wire
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