WOEBOT

I've had a burgeoning fascination with a certain nook of British music at the very tail-end of the 1960s. This must have something to do with having recently read four books which leave perpendicular tracks across the territory. Joe Boyd's recently published "White Bicycles", Ian Macdonald's "Revolution in the head", George Melly's under-rated "Revolt into Style: The Pop Arts in Britain" and Nik Cohn's unimpeachable "AwopBopaLooBopALopBamBoom".

Julie Driscoll, Brian Augur and The Trinity: Streetnoise (1969)

Cohn remarks right at the tail-end of his classic book (tellingly on page 228 of 229):

"During the same period there also emerged Julie Driscoll and Joe Cocker and The Incredible String Band. Julie Driscoll is a skinny girl from east London and she toured the circuits for years without getting anywhere in particular, until autumn 1967, she suddenly got herself a Jimi Hendrix hairstyle and called herself Jools and was launched as a new ultimate in London dollydoom, deadpan and strange and very freaked.....Joe Cocker was a fat ex-plumber from Sheffield and I liked him very much......Finally purely in my role as a chronicler, I should note the existence of the Incredible String Band, a folk duo whom several English critics described as the best songwriters since The Beatles. This mention made I will make no further comment."

There's a great sense with these paragraphs of the book's author standing at the very precipice of the 1960s, and without the benefit of hindsight, trying to offer up a definitive view of the decade. These acts merit inclusion on the same criteria that much of the rest of its contents do, that they were the manifestation of the buzz on the ground, but Cohn hasn't had a chance to digest them.

Melly's take on precisely this same era is also caught up in rabidly trying to codify an era which has yet to be inscribed in history. He surveys a broader view of the scene from the "extreme avant-garde fringe" (The* Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine) to the "Rabble Rousers of Quality" (The Cream and Jimi Hendrix). Melly also includes Driscoll and The Incredible String Band:

"But I could never see the point of the other great Underground rave of the period - Brian Augur and the Trinity with Julie Driscoll ('Jools' to the vast army of the uninitiated). She looked fey and sexy in the proscribed outer-space manner and swore a great deal if the dots in the interviews she gave were anything to go by, but she sang in such a cool little voice that I suspected it was to hide a total lack of any feeling at all.....There were other tendencies sheltering under the Underground's umbrella. The folk-poetic strain held its own headed by the Incredible String Band."

The Incredible String Band: The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1968)

I think Melly too, good critic that he is, is reacting to the groundswell of hype pumping these artists. There is a sense of a vacuum opening up in the music scene, one being created at once by the death of the counter-culture and the inexorable demise of The Beatles. Paul McCartney made "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" his favorite record of 1968 and also arranged a "a session" with Brian Augur that same year. You get the sense that Paul felt these artists were snapping at his heels. But with hindsight who for a second would put ISB and the Oblivion Express on the same pedestal as The Beatles?

AMM: The Crypt (1968)

After "Revolution 9" and the rest of The Beatles experimental output British musicians must have felt there was suddenly a proper audience for the outre. "Czechoslovakia" from Streetnoise for instance has a widly avant-garde "free" section, no doubt intended to depict the chaos as Soviet tanks entered Prague. Julie Driscoll took the these tendencies further, married Keith Tippett and released the Prog-Jazz LP "1969".

McCartney had connections to another "free music" project. He'd tapped a coin against a radiator at an AMM get-together and even before "Revolution 9" with the unreleased "Carnival of Light" The Beatles had attempted a free music of their own. Ian Macdonald complains:

"The major discovery of his interaction with the mid-sixties classical and Jazz Avant-Garde was 'random' - the realisation that chance elements, with which The Beatles had already casually toyed, could produce striking results when actively sought after. The difference was that AMM - following the contemporary ideal of transcending the ego specialised in a sensitive form of collective improvisation in which players not only listened intently to each-other but interacted spontaneously with everything around them, including their audiences. In "Carnival Of Light", The Beatles merely bashed about at the same time, overdubbing without much thought, and relying on the Instant Art techniques of tape echo to produce something suitably far-out."

White Noise: An Electric Storm (1969)

The search for a "far-out" music which was "workable", in the way that the uncompromising AMM and Tippets projects could never hope to be, also made the scene ripe for another record which aimed to tap the freak market. The £3000 that Chris Blackwell gave to David Vorhaus, Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson to concoct the White Noise LP was just such a probing bit of music industry research and development. The agent of change here was, not a revision of Folk, the aleatory, or Jazz but electronics and studio manipulation.**

Although it may seem wrong-headed and cruel, and please bear with me, it'd be tempting to view each and every one of these records as a failure. Not only did none of them sell many copies, they seemed to have no immediate cultural impact. The ISB's glorious "Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" might be the exception, reaching number 5 in the charts, but what followed it was some kind of disaster as Joe Boyd explains:

"(after the band refused to take the stage in the rain) We knew we had blown it; the extent of the error became clear in the months to come as the Woodstock film reached every small town in America and the double album soared to the top of the charts. Had they played in the rain that night, would they have made the cut in the film and on the record? I had nightmares about the might-have-beens: the ISB gloriously recapturing the acoustic spontaneity of their early years, their songs and voices perfect for the magical first night, their careers transformed by the exposure."

Boyd also discusses their later doomed trajectory, the blame of which he partly lays at the feet of L.Ron Hubbard:

"Scientology is not designed to engineer timidity....The group refused to contemplate the notion of failure and "U" (their stage musical) went ahead full-speed. The fact that it was a disaster artistically, critically and financially failed to dent their confidence, but it hastened my search for new challenges."

Brian Augur also seemed unable to capitalise on the momentum he had attained with Julie Driscoll. The Oblivion Express records of the 1970s are solid enough, loyal organ-led amplified Jazz, but they're nothing whatsoever on the glittering trans-generic triumph of "Streetnoise".

King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)

In his wrap-up Melly touches on another band who for me embody the very whiff of this era, the early King Crimson:

"Mainstream Underground music is for the most part the tough prolonged blues-inflected style with its roots in the Britsh Blues revival on the one hand and American acid/rock on the other, It's been comparatively static now for the last eighteen month - only the heroes change..... Currently (August 1969) they include Jethro Tull, the Family and this month's big deal, King Crimson; but in six months?"

It's surely King Crimson who provided the signpost to an ambitious music with a broad appeal. It was Prog's re-tooling of Classical music which provided the route forward to those "grown-up" music fans. I spent a lot of time last year praising Prog, and that probably disguised just how horrific I still find the music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Genesis and Jethro Tull. Perhaps it *was* the wrong path? Notwithstanding that I find it strange how accurate a picture of the entire music-scape of 2007 just these five records present. Listened together furthermore, they present a fantastic aural hallucination of what life must have been like in England, London even, at the cusp of the 1970s.

* The definite article is charmingly anachronistic doncha think.
** Not forgetting McCartney's trips to see Derbyshire at the BBC.....

Posted by WOEBOT at 04:03 PM | Permalink

It's been with not inconsiderable relish that I've been listening to Funky House recently. It does amuse me that nearly everything that's used to describe it pejoratively is used as a compliment when used to refer to other genres. Martin Clark for instance has made great play of it being geographically rootless, and this has been widely picked up by just about every other commentator. But hang on a minute, we're supposed to applaud Dubstep when it hails from Canada or New Zealand or somewhere else notionally "Global", but that very same quality in Funky House makes it despicable? Come on! They're both equally "underground" a phenomenon, though don't think for a second I'm making a case for any music on the strength of that, though I suppose Dubstep might sell marginally less.

Does anyone remember the heyday of early Acid and chart-busting Pop-Rave, when Belgian proto-Gabba jostled in the mix with Italian Piano House, London art-squat-wannabe-house and Chicago hip-house? Back then the music's origin was generally seen to be totally irrelevent. So why is it so important today? The audience for House has dwindled to such a degree that, like in 1989-90 the same wildly divergent strands aren't once again forced to share the same stage. Some would argue that the proliferation and endless multiplication of dance music genres has reached a point where the sense in the generic distinctions has actually started to break down. This probably happened five years ago in truth, but nowadays, really. Funky House is interesting in this context because it's quite self-consciously an umbrella term to draw together a mongrel coalition of Electro-Techno-Disco-House whose sole shared agenda which is to drive the dance-floor. That motorising ambition isn't to be sniffed at in an era when it seems nobody is dancing. Back in the day people really danced. Hence the "Funky" appendage I guess, inspiring folk to frug off their inertia, cynicism and self-conciousness.

I couldn't argue an aesthetic case for 90% of Funky House, but even that faintly crap 90% (consisting as it does of fifth generation Strictly Rhythm off-cuts) is about, ooh, lets say 1000 times more interesting than most Dubstep just by merit of having a pulse, by aiming to be entertaining. Most current dance music has died a death of good taste and assumed sophistication. The Kompakt thing for instance, Jesus that sleek Mittel-European noodling is boring, you can't imagine people losing control or getting sweaty can you, they might spill their Martinis, get a cocktail stick in their eyeball. They're all too busy networking and taking photos of one another. No wonder most kids want to listen to guitar music!

The best Funky House is mucky stuff like Dirty Old Ann's "Turn Me On" (Phunkk Mob Remix), a hoarse knackered old diva (I think it may be a remix of the Three Degrees) over a colonically challenging electro bass-line. The tune rolls at, I dunno I guess about 140 bpm, a totally no-nonsense butt-shaking kind of tempo. Production has got so large on these records that the bass has real girth and it needs that kind of low-level velocity just to fit on the groove. And there's none of that twatting around with the lower frequencies either, that woah check out that bass-line geezer rubbish, the bass rolls at an ultra-satisfying pitch where it's crisply audible, its edges are punchy and focussed. Something like Leonid Rudenko's "Summerfish" (Scandall Sunset on Ibiza Mix) is another fantastic example, it's a completely addictive euphoric groove.

The bass-line on another of my favorite tunes Robot Needs Oil's "Volta" is another lesson is the joy of bass as lead instrument. I can't help but admit that the reason this rocks my soul is that it uses exactly the same kind of divinely instantaneous riff that lit up the great old Acid House tracks. The early A Guy Called Gerald tunes spring to mind immediately, especially as the way the hook is passed back and forth across various palettes. Remember those old intensifying climaxes that used to get so boring in dance music? Well Funky House has ripped up the rule book and nowadays these interludes are scripted with delicious inventiveness, spiraling into billowing gaseous clouds, tunes turning inside out, divas bursting out of imploding stars. Wilder & Clarke's "Stand Up" (featuring Katherine Ellis) on which the absurdly fruity choir of multi-tracked gospel delirium sits atop an insanely rough electro bass-line, undercutting all one's textural expectations, is practically a dictionary of these effects. Funky House at its best makes a complete mockery of the portentous riddimic theorising of Dubstep or Micro-House by actually out-stepping it in practice without resorting to drawing the listener into a state of emotional torpor. Tocadisco's splendid "I like it Loud" with it's idiot James Brown vocal hook, is infinitely more engrossing than almost all Techno made of the same base material.

It seems like last year was some kind of watershed. Primarily owing to the entropic subsidence of the initial energy flash of dance music. The end of the dance music continuum as a history which had internal consistency happened with Bruza's "Get Me" (2005) which surely must mark the apogee, and thus conclusion of Grime's aesthetic evolution. Grime being the final chapter in Acid House. What this also signaled was the end of one's ability to use the critical narrative around Acid House to generate useful meanings or allow one to make aesthetic predictions or judgments.

The generational loyalty to Dubstep (or Micro-House) is akin to clinging onto the Raft of the Medusa, even as planks are breaking away from the wreckage. The amusingly tipped Blog House phenomenon is just another example of how historiography in the form of crash-course histories of House has artificially created a new generation of aimless fans. To stretch my nautical analogy further, this is like charting a schooner to drop you off on the Raft of the Medusa. It's tempting to include here The Wire magazine's endorsement of Dubstep into the litany of crimes committed in the name of specious, bourgeois, pseudo-historical engineering**. Funky House, this utterly a-historical, response-centered music might be the antidote to the tedious over-inscription that has stripped everything from dance music which once made it innovative, interesting and fun, a chastening return to the fundamental pleasure principles.

* Something like the Burial LP for instance is a purely retrograde move.
** Dry-docking the raft of the Medusa and treating its timbers.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:37 PM | Permalink

This set contains an unfailingly excellent selection of music, however it's a more muddled proposition as far as provenance is concerned. Ibrahima Sylla, the man behind the collections, is one of the giant behind-the-scenes figures of African music. He was supremo of the legendary Syliphone Conakry label of Guinea, one of the peerless labels on any continent. The original Editions Syliphone sell for huge quantities nowadays. The quite superb second volume of this collection, with its frequently politically-inflammatory, heavy, almost "garage-band-like" recordings, is drawn from his extensive back catalogue.

I think it's quite appropriate that the discs covering Senegal and Mali are presented alongside this material. For one thing the same ethnic groups co-inhabit these three closely-grouped countries. National boundaries are but lines drawn on the map in comparison to the strength of the tribal affiliations of the Bambara, Peulhs, Dogon, Manding etc. There's a distinct continuity of sound between the three sets as well. The Afro-Cuban influence tends to be heard most strongly in the Sengalese music, residing as that country does at the Westernmost point of the continent. The same kinky horn parts, when they wind up in Timbuktu, are distinctly weirder-sounding.

In contrast the music on the Malian disc sounds bizarrely more "American" (peculiar to ascribe regional ethnicity to that country). As is well known, the Mississippi Delta Blues has uncanny resonances with the music of the desert griots. If I might be permitted to digress briefly, I always remember with great satisfaction mis-hearing a dancehall track in on the radio in Dakar (the capital of Senegal) confusing it with an indigenous song merely on the strength of the familiarity of its tuning within its supplanted context, quite like passing through a mirror backwards. The 1970s-era, amplified desert rock of Mali often manages to resemble the electric blues juggernaut of The Grateful Dead or The Allman Brothers Band, guitar solos to boot, albeit in a fascinatingly bizarre fashion.

Sylla licensed the Malian material from their government in 1987. This amounted to to two volumes of five LPs which the Malian goverment curated for the "First Young People's Artistic and Cultural Biennale of 1970". Before you reach for your gun, it ought to be stressed that the Malian Government undertook a courageous experiment to record this music. Without their efforts there would be no Radio Mali and precious little music recorded at all. Mali's legendary Rail Band were the exception to the rule in that they weren't managed by the Ministry of Culture but by the Railway Board of Mali. The quality of the material on the Mali disc is fabulous though this will be the second time Sylla has released it. Previously it was to be found on the double CD collections "Banzoumana" and "Sira Mory".

The Senegalese discs showcase music influenced by the ideas of "Negritude". This movement, spearheaded by Leopold Senghor, sought to redefine a Modern African culture. As the 1970s progressed, Senegalese musicians sought to mute the influence of imported forms like Rumba and Salsa and to focus more on the music of their own heritage. It would be a simplification to say this was a drive towards "folkiness" in the traditional Western sense, as it went hand-in-hand with a self-consciously experimental attitude towards intra-african fusion (this is marked in the Malian recordings as well, on which young people from very different ethnic backgrounds sought to create a manageable fusion) as well as embracing modern recording techniques. A project like America's legendary cross-Latin fusion project Grupo Folklorico Y Experimental Nuevoyorquino would be a very good comparison.

The cuckoo here is the collection of Congolese recordings. Drawn from a much smaller pool of artist's recordings, miles away from the other three countries in the Central African belt. It's a quite charming collection, if consisting of a safer, distinctly Afro-Cuban vein of music. Regardless of this anamoly, I thoroughly recommend all four discs and they're available at Sterns.

Posted by WOEBOT at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I said I'd done loads of research on Glitter, but actually I just bought these CDs off Amazon. I wanted to check out Glam because scenius-wise it's up there with Ardkore and the best of them. It seems to make a lot more sense to reference Glam with regards to it than Nuggets-era proto-punk. It's hard to think of anything grubbier than Pop music which failed to be popular, another thing the arse-end of glitter shares with Ardkore, yet it's that alchemical mud-to-gold moment that fascinates, when the most unlikely of sonic circumstances fuse unexpectedly offering up sudden glimpses of the sublime. Granted, it doesn't happen terribly often. Wouldn't you say picking up bits and pieces of Glam from Oxfam seems about a thousand times more refreshing an activity than buying minimal-synth obscurities off eBay?

Velvet Tinmine (RPM, 2003)

The first of these compilations through the gate and the best. Something like Iron Virgin's "Rebels Rule" for instance is up there with the absolutely best of Glam Rock, namely Gary Glitter's "Hello! Hello! I'm Back Again", his "Rock and Roll Part Two", T.Rex pre-1973, Ziggy, and Slade's best (let's not forget Lester Bangs was a fan of Noddy's crew). Velvet Tinmine is also particularly good at taking on board the, shall we say, sexually complex. I'm in thrall of Shakane's "Love Machine" with it's wonderfully dejected chorus: "I am just your love machine, baby, you don't how hard it's been, you turn me on when you when you want me, when you don't I'm not your scene." Also oddities like "Morning Bird", with a drum machine that reminds me that it's the fuzzed-out bargain-basement glam-(gloom?)-stomp of some quarters of the forthcoming Focus Group LP that switched me on to this trip in the first case.

Glitter from the Litter Bin (Sanctuary 2003)

Like Velvet Tinmine, this involves St.Etienne's Bob Stanley again, though this is on the Sanctuary label, rather than RPM. RPM's Mark Stratford alluded to some friendly rivalry between the two in an email to me. Yes, ME. They talk, I listen. Unlike Velvet Tinmine which seems to have Stanley's quirky taste writ large all over it, this must have been a contract job for him. There are many good tracks, but it in general it's more straight-forwardly raunchy, notwithstanding Billy Hamon's hilariously camp "Butch Things". In his liner-notes Stanley amusingly thumbs Junk Shop Glam's defining moment: "Mud's performance of 'The Cat Crep In" from the film Never Too Young to Rock, in a transport cafe".

Glitterbest (RPM, 2004)

There's an amazing amount of music with pre-punk resonances being made under the auspices of Glam. It's where all the T.Rex-style talk of "Revolution" conjoins with Punk's barely less cosmetic revolt. A lot of it, like Trevor White's "Crazy Kids" off "Glitterbest" is all about, you know, brokking out in the playground. Dem grown-ups just don't unnerstan. The comic thing is that, lacking the venom of punk, this music sounds incredibly like Guitar-Indie circa 2007. The New York Dolls-ish swagger of it (Rolling Stones beaming back across the Atlantic) making the music sound even more like Razorlight. Quite a few transatlantic accents here as well. That's hardly a compliment is it? But it does give some historic perspective to current Indie Rock which sounds mostly like it was the virgin-birthed progeny of the marketing department. I suppose this kind of revisionism also serves to demolish any sort of idea of rupture in history at all. In some ways it'd be more fruitful to actually question what made something like Punk differ; though it's all quite fun in a sloppy, cheerfully crap sort of way, and the liner-notes are insanely thorough.

Boobs (RPM, 2005)

With all of RPM's comp's bleeding into each-other stylistically, the handclaps here must denote "disco", likewise there is an anthemic quality to the tracks selected for this particular CD (stand-up and stomp "Motor Boat" and "Natural Gas"), riffs strut. Occasionally it gets a little bit Freddie Mercury (those radio-frequency-compressed vocal harmonies on Angel's "Good Time Fanny") even a bit Rocky Horror Picture Show on Screemer's admittedly great "Interplanetary Twist". But there are maybe just enough touches of the improbable to compensate, like the insane, monocled, fox-hunting purr of the lead-vocalist of the Boston Boppers. You were conceived behind the speakers.

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:31 PM | Permalink

Will this be the third cover I've seen for this or just the second? Certainly the best so far, though the others were lovely as well... If you believe what the Ghost Box site says this will, AT LOOOONG LAAAST, be available on 21st March. It's turning into "Smile" or something this record I think. Someone should just break into Ghost Box HQ, beat them in, steal the reel-to-reel and put it out. All profits paid directly eBay, just cut out the middle-man, right? Seriously, they'd be doing a everyone a favour.

Posted by WOEBOT at 01:32 PM | Permalink

I'm a big fan of Edu Lobo's. He's one of the artists who I've suddenly discovered I have a lot of records by. He's sort of snuck up on me. There's a good bit about him at the always excellent Slipcue site. Chronologically then.

Edu Lobo/Tamba Trio "Arrastao/Reza" (Philips, 1965)

Sort of flies in one ear and out the other. Sophomore effort. My friend Flashos bought me this single.

Edu Lobo "Edu" (Philips, 1967)

This on the other hand is fucking fantastic. Edu really hits his stride. What I like about Edu is the tenor of voice. He's not wallowing in himself like Jobim. He shares the same sophisticate inclinations, not for nothing did I describe him once as "the Brazilian Bryan Ferry" (who incidentally has just released an LP called "Dylanesque"- what do you make of that Mark?). There's a very self-assured masculine gentility to his voice that I really respond to. Hell, I wish I was that person: cool, tough, sophisticated and kind all at once. Rather than being a slightly hysterical nut-case I guess! Still we've a way to go before his classic records.

Edu Lobo "Sergio Mendes Presents Edu Lobo" (A&M, 1970)

OK, a bit of a step backward. Sergio tries to sell him to Hollywood. I guess it only happened because Edu had so much talent. Sad when he starts to sing in English on "Crystal Illusions" and "To Say Goodbye". Still there are some lovely tunes here, some exquisitely shaded melodies and the playing is typically wonderful, breezy and light-of-touch. Perhaps unsurprisingly there are quite a few tracks here which are duplicated on the Brazilian records, but on the other hand there are touches of the experimentation that characterises his next three sublime classics.

Edu Lobo "Cantigua De Longe" (Elenco/Polygram, 1970)

Shivers. Lobo on the flight home sitting in Business Class with his shades on. This is his black and blue riposte to the barbecue and cocktail lilt of LA bullshit. It's back to basics baby, let's-get-down-with-the-fucking-programme time. Strictly speaking there's no such thing as a depressing Brazilian record, but this is as over-caste as it gets. Lobo as Dark Magus, it's even arguable that by getting fellow countrymen Hermeto and Airto on-board, fresh from Miles's "Live Evil" sessions, he's consciously reflecting back that spooked third-world voodoo.

Edu Lobo "Misse Breve" (EMI/Odeon, 1973)

You need this LP, the former and latter but "Misse Breva" is certainly my favorite. I hope I'm conveying the centrality and importance of Lobo's work. Occasionally I fret that people might think WOEBOT is deliberately obscurantist. Actually I have no truck whatsoever with that instinct. I see these mp3 blogs dedicated to chasing down these narrow blind alleys (deep into the recesses of that ruddy Nurse With Wound list) and I sigh. It's amazing how the obscurantists have managed to overtake the mainstream! Votel and Finders Keepers, the daring Mr Trunk, The Wire magazine, the Vinyl Vultures family- they all do amazing work, but sometimes I fear that the opposition has grown too strong, perhaps at the expense of a balanced perspective of the field of music.

With the slow discrediting of Post-Modernism we've lost one of the great qualities of music journalism, that (for instance) David Toop was able to close "Ocean of Sound" by discussing Kate Bush and the then commercially-orientated David Sylvian (scoffs). Part of the fun was rubbing the mass-market icons against the unknown soldiers, in highlighting their shared agendas.

Pop-ism makes a cruel joke of this in the manner of cultural studies, by decontextualising the popular and subjecting it to dissection against its will. I'm sure Marcello will forgive me for bringing up the, admittedly highly-amusing, incident of the aghast Girl's Aloud being read one of his reviews of them. Still it's robbery isn't it? I recall with genuine fondness a Wire magazine which would run, straight-faced, with Michael Jackson on the cover.

Here at WOEBOT I've always tried to look at what I thing is *significant* music. I'll grant that may be a huge flaw, for instance it can mean I slide into a barometer of "what's-hot", but I'd rather that than any other criteria. Anyway, Edu because he's an all-conquering genius. "Misse Breva" effortlessly manages that almost off-hand trick of the greatest Brazilian music, to be at once experimental and accessible. Perhaps experimental is the wrong word for the just plain inventive palates of elaborate orchestration. Never obtrusive, the meshes of baubled rhodes, berimbeau and arabesques of acoustic guitar often form improbable patterns even as they pulse forward. Perhaps most remarkable are the Catholic devotional tracks which have the splendid feel of horror film out-takes. Is it actually possibly to talk about Christ with any true sincerity in pop music? The best stuff, Al Green and Prince, always imparts a spectral, occasionally perverse tone to the standard message. However, you don't need to be a card-holding Current 93 fan to appreciate the bizarreness of the transubstantiation, especially within the Catholic context when, yes siree, that wine actually turns into blood.

Edu Lobo "Limite Des Aguas" (Continental, 1976)

I'd always wanted this but it was often very expensive but just recently picked it up at the Reckless records liquidation for half-price. I suppose it's the third-part of Edu's triumvirate of superb LPs. Don't let the disappointing cover put you off. Slightly fuller and more burnished than the last two, the eighties are coming, with a distinct Jazz-Funk inflection it's still chock full of undeniably catchy songs.

Edu Lobo "Tempo Presente" (Philips, 1980)

I always liked the cover to this, but it's a bit disappointing really. From here on in, and you can just tell by their sleeves, Edu's record's get slicker and emptier. Edu and Tom is supposed to be a return to form, but I wouldn't risk it myself.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:31 AM | Permalink

What is it with people and the archiving of these shows? Every other email I get is gently chiding me for not making them available. I fibbed recently when I said I was worried whether the bandwidth could support having them all available at the same time. It'd probably be OK, even though since January we've traded 1.5 terrabytes. The truth is I don't want everything laid out on a table. I don't want people to be able to own them just yet. I actually went the Flash route because I didn't want people downloading QuickTimes and storing them on their hard drive. Remember all those mp3s you downloaded which you said you'd get round to checking out one day?

Of course they could still be available to watch without them being downloadable, and here's my other reason for not having archives. If I ever do manage to get a TV channel interested in giving me a graveyard slot, like 2 am on BBC4, then the shows I've already made will be an asset. That is except if everyone in the universe who might be interested in them has already seen them. I know this might appear to be a insanely vain fantasy, but TV is what I do for a a living. And having a show like this is, well, it's been something like an ambition.

If I don't get anywhere at all with commissioning editors (surely the likely outcome?) then either I'll package up a cheap DVD of 10-12 episodes, a season, lol or I'll make sure everything is put up for people to see. If you're at all anxious at missing out an episode, simply subscribe to the mailing list.

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Original drawings.

I had the idea for the Methuselah show three years ago, it came as one of those appalling sitting bolt-upright, sweat-on-the-body, eyeballs-bulging out nightmares that one has from time-to-time. My fevered brain had them as a combination between Aum Shinrikyo (that Japanese Cult who released the Sarin nerve gas into the subway) and every band of shock-rockers you ever knew- Joy Division, Marilyn Manson, Throbbing Gristle and The Sex Pistols. In my dream they actually gigged on top of towerblocks, though this is one thing I left out of the animation. Just a little too tasteless I thought. The music was to be a totally crass irrelevance, my notes from the time say: "Rod Stewart, China Crisis, T.Rex and Mud's "Tiger Feet".

I did a load of research into Glam Rock and Glam-related-rock, the fruits of which will emerge here later. I checked out Slade, Mud, Gary Glitter, Sweet, Alvin Stardust, Mott the Hoople, Angel, Steve Harley, Cherry Vanilla, Wayne County, Girlschool, Hell, Iron Virgin, Kiss, Renato Zero, The Rubettes, The Runaways, Sailor, The Skyhooks, Smokie, Suzi Quatro, Sweet, Wizzard and Jobriath. So, amazingly cheesy stuff. I don't want to give too much away on my thoughts about Glam cos I'll definitely be coming back to this. For the film I decided this just wasn't right. Glam just has too much warmth. I really needed something bleaker, empty like a US suburban shopping mall, so I turned, not to Heavy Metal, but Hard Rock.

Simon, who has been firing on all cylinders in his pieces at Blissblog on Metal was suggesting we might perhaps be on the same page with regards to looking at Metal this February. I don't see Methuselah as being a Heavy Metal band actually. I see them as being the definitive *Hard Rock* band. What's the difference? I'd be very hard pushed to say actually, it's probably more of a case of where the band's cultural allegiances lie than to do with their music per se. For instance both Zep and ACDC strongly refuted being Heavy Metal bands. Ultimately though, Hard Rock is distinguished by never losing touch with the notion that it is amplified blues. Metal is actually a progression from that point forward. Metal actually might be a more interesting phenomenon for that very fact.

When examining the Hard Rock angle I explored a lot of band's work: Foreigner, Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, Blue Oyster Cult, Aerosmith, Nazareth, Bad Company, Free, Deep Purple and ACDC. I also looked at two bands which people occasionally class as Heavy Metal: Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. My feeling is that neither the Sabs or Zep are actually Heavy Metal bands. They're both heavily blues-influenced and they both are "on the same page" as the rest of Pop/Rock culture. I think perhaps Metal becomes Metal when that schism is unavoidable, when Metal becomes a self-sufficient universe outside of and beyond the particular musical universe I live in. When Kerrang and Donington become the whole world for Metal fans. Of course, and here's the rub, Metal fans are actually quite catholic, they'll tell you they like Jazz-Funk and Zappa and Techno. It's just that everyone on this side of the great divide isn't open to their music. I think perhaps the crux is that there's some kind of conceptually different approach to the way Metal and non-Metal fans categorise music. On "our" side perhaps we are more comfortable with this rhizome, this plateau of inter-connection, while Metal fans are more open to digesting "in rupture", less bothered about reconciling competing philosophies to understand music.

For me Led Zeppellin are the one. To Simon's quote about Metal, elucidating as it does the mainstream critical view about Metal: "its inertia is its success is its intertia" I'd like to add the classic disparaging quote which was (by Rolling Stone?) appended to (I'd still argue Proto-Metal) Led Zep, that they were a manifestation of "internalised violence". S'funny because they're both extremely arch, po-faced, aspiring-to-be-intellectual put-downs aren't they. Giggles.

The great book on Zeppelin, and indeed probably the greatest book about a rock group, is Stephen Davis's "Hammer of the Gods". If you haven't read this, I urge you to get a copy as soon as possible. It's a veritable chocolate box of delights, that is until the current edition's appended afterthoughts kick in (the Unledded Tourzzzzz) and the tension drops palpably. Stephen Davis is an interesting guy because he also penned the fantastic "Reggae Bloodlines" book, the tenor of which reminds me a lot of some of the breathless "hip-outsider" discovery of Grime of a few years back. Obviously not your stereotypical metal hack though innit.

"Hammer of the Gods" is, of course the Ur-text for the Methuselah cartoon. Indeed I pieced the music together for the soundtrack partly from recommendations I got from it. Davis refers to Heart's "Barracuda" and Billy Squier's "Lonely is the Night" (why hasn't this been sampled to death?) as "little Stairways" so I chopped up loops from them and added my own vocals on top. I like the fact that they're cheesy suburban version of Zep, cos that chips away at the mystique. Much more suitable for the deliberately nihilistic tenor of the film. Other tracks I used were Deep Purple's Proto-Speed-Metal "Highway Star" and, for the airplane bit, Sailor's euro-disco classic "A Glass of Champagne".

I read this as well for research. But, written by the roadies (whose names I used in the animation), it's pretty dire. I know what Simon's referring to about the "idiotic and horrendous" behavior in Metal with this. I mean, Hammer of the Gods actually succeeds in making the debauchery queerly cosmic in its dionysian way.

And now, well, you're just going to laugh, cos I really pushed the boat on the research and skimmed this as well! I always remember my Maths teacher telling me how he respected Lemmy cos he was obviously an intelligent guy.

Ha! This is ridiculous! Well I can explain. I got this one and the Sabbath book, and the Quo book and the Bon Scott book for $8 in HMV. $8! I must be the only person alive interested in this shit! I haven't read the rest yet. But I may one day.

So why does this kind of rock'n'roll debauchery interest me? I suppose, truthfully, being a father of two, loyal husband and reformed drug-abuser (winks) there's practically none of this sort thing in my life at all. Though I hasten to add I don't miss it one iota. It seems surreal and hilarious to me. But equally this way of living has been discredited by the broader society as well hasn't it? Slightly off topic, Acid House seems the last time when kids went crazy. As for Rock groups, outside the 70s and probably some bits of the 80s they've never really behaved like this since have they? Sure there are bands who live quite dangerously, but they're quite a long way from the edge aren't they?

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:59 AM | Permalink