WOEBOT

Latin Rascals.

My esteemed colleague Dr. Lloyd Beryl of Aberdeen (fellow graduate of Edinburgh's Pure Academy of Ambient Nosebleed, feat.Trainspotting) gave me a perfect prescription a couple of weeks back in the form of deephousepage.com. I had been before, but in the era of bounty that was Audiogalaxy had been a bit blase about the abundance of riches there.

My first target were the Latin Rascals mixes on page one, and get all four (WKTU, NY 1985 .859 and (better) 98.7 KISS FM,  NY 1985 .863). PC users choose the mp3 icon and "Save target as" Mac users (doh!) drag the mp3 icon to your desktop to initialise download. Who said I was a smug elitist snob?!

The Latin Rascals were Tony Moran and Albert Cabrera, a Latino Electro remix outfit from NYC circa 1985 (think Mantronix and Chris Barbosa's Shannon, see also Babie+Keys and Amaretto). They're often namechecked as "The Kings of Edit" by the Bay Area BOMB scratch crew and DJ Shadow, but don't let that put you off (ouch!)

This music while incredibly modern, direct from that state of mind called the future, sounds like MOR electro and saccharine pop have been beamed to the Rascals on their urban moonbase in the 23rd century who've then beamed it back to eighties New York. They've twisted those knobs labelled Spangle, Contrast and Drama clockwise and the (possibly indistinguished, but fruitily tacky) pop is stretched across digital canyons and peaks, sometimes the pop is completely lost in an abstract desert of huge drums. One of their favourite tricks being to hook a vocal snatch, pitch a loop of it up or down 15 times in an arc or just let it repeat. Breathtaking stuff and take note fans of 1997 era Glossa-Garage (Dem 2, Todd Edward etc etc)

I've only got one Latin Rascals record "It must be you"(1989) which was pegged by Music and Video Exchange as "early Todd Terry", cos of course that's where Todd emerged from, and he does one okey-doke mix on it. It features one amazing riotous stomp of a breakbeat track (assistance by Little Louie Vega) which is just so liquid and flexible it's in the proto-jungle category. Once again, so dramatic!

Underground Overground.

How delightful to see the Darkrider doing his bit for Burton Menswear!  There he is at the corner of the Tottenham Court Road in the window of their flagship store (on a poster) behind the decks, flashing his teeth sporting a pastel stripey jumper. I'm quite against all these people saying he's sold out, of course he hasn't.

I used to bump into him alot, that is before the days of cameo appearances on Eastenders and Celebrity Big Brother evictions. At Speed in the early days (trust me it was Danny, me and a couple of mislaid Japanese tourists) I, dancing like a spastic by the speaker in the corner, got under his feet more than once. Also at Section 25 and Blackmarket and once at that Jungle stall in Camden when he winced at me and my little heart raced with fear.

It'd take nothing less that the G-Man presenting Tikkabilla on CBeebies for me to give up on those old trax, honest! (Please don't hurt me G I have a family.) Wandering down Oxford street and whaddya know, there, in the Pringles window (on a poster), deep in a fog of dry ice, clutching a bottle of lucozade, a whistle clenched between his teeth, arms akimbo in a lilac golf jumper was no less than Doc Scott.

Vinyl Freekin'

I spent an hour and a half in Vinyl Freaks record emporium in Cowcaddens in Glasgow at the weekend. There are other good shops in Glasgow, namely Avalanche, Missing and 23rd Precinct with a healthy stock of the old black plastic. There used to be a little record store run by Stephen Pastel of The Pastels (nice chap) in John Smith's bookshop on the Byres Road, but the premises was taken over by the devil, sorry I meant Starbucks.

Cowcaddens must be a seriously low-rent area, sandwiched between the Centre and the West End at the mouth of the motorway which carves Glasgow in two. Vinyl Freaks is a great store overflowing with 2nd hand records. I only get to go there every few months so have the pleasure of almost always finding a new batch of stuff. Immediately what caught my eye was a 2 foot block of entryist pop, BEF Human League, Depeche Mode, Classix Nouveaux and a whole host of strange pop/dance 12"s by the likes of The Mood and Datura. It seems quite clear, in retrospect, that it was this current of long-fringery which fed into Balearic-era Acid-House. The records had to be from one collection (sure enough the owner said they belonged to a guy who "does really well" and now only DJs disco) and it was interesting to note the Acieed section was stocked with numerous Day-Glo comps.

Sadly the World music bin had been stripped bare (by me probably-snort) but there was plenty else to look at. They've got heaps of old dance stuff- I took special care going through the boogie and disco sections because usually if anything has found it's way up here it's quality stuff worth transporting to the frozen wastes, added to which the geeks (while no less obsessive, trust me) are thinner on the ground- it's an equation which can produce rich pickings. In fact in London I probably wouldn't bother with the Disco bin, another feature of being "abroad" being that you change your habits ever so slightly. As it happened I didn't find much- a good C-Bank 12" (not "Another Shot" which I've had in the past) a HiTension 12" piqued my curiosity (more on that later) and alot of minor label Disco (always worth listening to just in case).

Just as I settled down with a stack of tracks to inspect, my mobile phone went off. "Oh shit!" my 18 month old daughter had locked herself in the bathroom. I ran out of the shop and burnt rubber down the length of the Great Western Road flashing my lights, caning the horn, down the wrong side of the road. Just as I pulled up I got a call saying her resourceful grandfather had gently prized the door off its hinges with a spade.

A little rattled I thought it best to return to the store, after all you've got to get your priorities right. I mopped up 20 quids worth of stuff (a healthy pile) a little hastily. Highlights being a couple of early Strictly Rhythm 12"s, Project "86"s awesome "Legends" on Nu Groove and Toxic Two's "Chemical Reaction" an improbable tranche of early New York Breakbeat Rave.

There were, however, a larger handful of records I left. Including the HiTension 12" and Material's "American Songs" EP. Now I don't know what kind of saddo you are, but what whizzes any died-in-the-wool record collecting geek up, is an elegantly composed chart. It just so happens that on the train into London I saw both those records in Peter Shapiro's recent Death Disco primer in that curate's egg that is The Wire. I've really struggled over this one. If my memory serves me well, the HiTension 12" I heard (an Island Promo) was not produced by Chris Blackwell, like Shapiro's. Also I didn't think it was very good. But I'm not afforded the luxury of a second peak, drat and blast. Secondly, I've tried to comfort myself with the idea that I really am better without the Material EP. I'm not a real fan of Laswell's, I even sold on my copy of "Memory Serves", supposedly their swansong. Furthermore I think I have "Ciguri" tucked away on some compilation. But you know it still hurts, more than you can possibly imagine.

Burns Night.

On the 25th of January I had the pleasure and honour of attending my first Burn's Night dinner, a bonafide ethnic event! I was a guest at the Bridgeton Burns Club evening in Glasgow, established in 1870 and reputedly "the best Burn's night in the world". It was a crowded event, 650 men (no women!) with an average age of 60. I reckoned on being the youngest there by a long chalk and possibly the only one not affiliated with the Masons (boom boom).

Robert Burns must have been the most electric personality. No less a figure than Magnus "I've started so I'll finish" Magnusson regaled us with the speech entitled "The Immortal Memory", a serious toast to Burns in contrast to the more ribald Speakers who followed. As I became gradually more mashed on single malt I learnt of Burns forays into the Highlands on field trips to collect Highland song. Burns has a reputation as a poet but clearly the boundary here with song is practically non-existent. This was underlined by performances of Burns's songs and also recitation of his work in the form of extraordinary Choral speaking. This has to be seen to be believed; a choir of East End kids (the winners of an annual competition run by the non-profit-making club, which discovered no less a singer than Lulu) rhythmically chant Burns's poetry, the choir splitting to point and counterpoint each-other with occasional soloist breaking from the melee. The kids did "Tam O'Shanter" with such humour and passion, it was only a pity that I was alone in not grasping the meaning.

Anyway, learning of Burns's ethnomusicological forays made me flash on Bartok's scavenging of Medeterranean music (I wish I could find that collection he compiled) also of course the work of the Lomaxes for Folkways. One of my party who hadn't made it this year (the Vice-President of one of the Scottish Universities) was apparently an expert on Scottish folk music. It would have been fascinating to talk to him, it seems amazing that the same songs wash up in the Appalachians and even the Missisippi Delta three hundred years after their journey to America, preserved by the rigidity of tradition. Indeed the evening was marked by such a formality, the same straightjacket which preserves Ragas in India for hundreds of years, I thought I was going to be lynched when I asked for the vegetarian option before more wisely plumping for Haggis (tastes like a Hamburger).

The musical treats extended beyond the Wordsound of the recital of Burns's work, we of course had the Bagpipes. My neighbour George, a hillwalker but Kidney Specialist by vocation, hated them insisting they were appropriate only for the battlefield, and sure the accompanying drumming is martial by definition. George said they were either Roman or Irish by descent. There is still some wild Italian folk in the form of Tarantella, the top end of which bleeds into Opera Buffo. I really like the bagpipes. I even have an Ardkore bagpipe record Armitage and Shanks's "Bagpipes in Effect", a real kicker at New Years Parties. When I hear the bagpipes I immediately associate the sound with the plaintive wail of Bismillah Khan's Shenai.

It's a sad truth that connecting with the initial charge of an idea or person or music becomes weaker with the passing of time. It's a feeling I often get on visiting a Church (Christians please be gentle with me....). However it's worth a crack, and one need only feel the vibe faintly to be able to imagine how strong it must have once been.

Soul Jazz.

Even before Paul Meme emailed me this I felt a very tiny pang of guilt for painting Soul Jazz black, but hey I was in their shop buying (cod) Reggae so you shouldn't necessarily take what I said too seriously (i.e. "lets all lighten up a bit"). 100% Dynamite sucks (good music, but rubbish compiling oblivious to chronology and sporting a dearth of information about the music, where's the Respek?). Furthermore other Reggae reissue labels do a much better job in general, namely Pressure Sounds and Blood and Fire, and arguably have stronger historic connections to Reggae. However, the Studio One series (artfully put together by Mark Ainley, of Honest Jon's who also does their excellent compilations) are not bad. They're useful for the more serious geek too, because beyond being widely available, they focus on 12"s and 7"s and don't double up on material you can get on the LPs (Coxsone Dodd's own reissues of his stuff have been available across the UK for years), though these comps too have scanty liner notes.

If any of the alleged thousands of people who have read anything I've said on this blog which stops them from buying a Reggae record, because they would have bought a Soul Jazz one and now because I've been a little mean about SJ that they're not so sure, then I will personally buy a Soul Jazz record of my choice and mail it to them First Class. Failing that, ahem, I will email them a list of Reggae which is available on the High Street but which is also TWANBOC-endorsed (whopee that's brilliant!) which may even contain some Soul Jazz titles, possibly the Roots one, cos its quite nice.

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Postscript

Despite sending a civilised email back to Paul, I felt much of his letter was completely innacurate and wrong-headed, loaded with strange assumptions and guilty of extrapolating a very long distance from what I actually wrote. I'd say judge for yourself, except for the fact that I don't want to get b(l)ogged down in the matter, or indeed any of the topics in his email. I very nearly posted a very vicious reply here on TWANBOC but decided to try and keep things above the belt and as "to-the-point" as possible. I would say, however, that charity has never influenced my taste in music.

Oh no not more RetroRock TM stuff!

Amazed by the intensity of the response to the RetroRock idea and it's given chronology. Indeed I'd say to the characters who wrote in demanding Punk Rock to be admitted to the RetroRock TM category: "mmmmmm" (strokes chin). You fellows may be missing the point. Punk was a doomed futurism not in the least interested in the Retro impulse. You write Punk up as a chapter in the Who/Seeds/Stooges/Hell story and you strip it of it's intention and relevance. I think it's a (deliberately) artificial revisionist history which has been assembled more recently by the likes of Griel Marcus. Or in the case of Lester Bangs one written a good deal beforehand which had little bearing on the explosion which took place. I don't think the Sex Pistols cover versions ("Schools Out", "My Generation", "No Fun", "Stepping Stone", "My Way") mark them as retro, more lacking in ideas for tunes. But hey, I've been wrong before.

What I ought to be clear about is that the idea to cannibalise Rock Music was clearly a good idea at the time. There is an air of freshness and lightness, even irresponsibilty, to Rock and Indie from 1983. We heard some great music from Husker Du, The Replacements, REM, Sonic Youth in the US and The Smiths, JAMC, and Primal Scream over here (please excuse the US/UK thing) but with the benefit of hindsight I think that they suffer from the weakness of even the greatest Post-Modern art - a lack of heart. When one listens to The Smiths, even though it's affecting emotional music, one hears a surface. Bringing to mind recent stories of Moz driving around Beverly Hills in a Cadillac with a Husky in the front seat.

Music must be the least forgiving art-form with regards to the Pomo motive. You don't ask a building to make you weep. My really big problem with RetroRock (and it seems almost insanely churlish to take the aforementioned bands to task) is where it has left Rock music now. In a way I couldn't care less, there is so much else on offer. Sure some people might think Rock's pulsing with blood at the moment (your Yeah Yeah Yeahs, White Stripes, Strokes etc) but I don't. I hear some good tunes but no new feelings. Indeed I am almost dreading the inevitable moment when someone tries to devour the rotting corpse that is RetroRock. The JAMC cover band.

The only time I've felt even vaguely positive about Rock recently was the result of an interview with Mercury Rev who said what they thought was Rock's strongest card was it's ability to syncretise. I rushed out to buy their "Deserter's Songs" record and an old copy of Royal Trux's "Twin Infinitives" (which I had earmarked as "one to pick up" for 5 years and not bad in an ESP records kind of way), but was left feeling pretty despondent.

I'm not the first person to have said it, but why do other (even more cannabilistic) musics like Dancehall and Hip-Hop sound so fresh?

What's with the Avant-Garde thing?

Picking up a certain monthly periodical at the moment never fails to raise a sigh. What's with the Avant-Garde thing?

There comes a time in every record collectors life when he or she stumbles upon the Avant-Garde. It's an exciting moment for the theorist in all of us. Suddenly everything makes sense, our view of the whole field of music shifts. It becomes clear that lonely old fellows with beards had every idea a very long time before everyone else. Your favourite party music was a twinkle in their eyes as they laboured in subterranean studios keeping their tape-edits clean from cobwebs. Furthermore you realise that the only true radicals were those hardy souls with their Saxaphones. They look as bold and cool as those chaps doing messy paintings in Art class.

Some of us get lost in this particular maze for longer than others, directly proportional I believe to the amount we actually like music and admire the beauty of sound. The more insecure people are about their instinctual loves the longer it takes. The happier they are with the certainties of theory, then the more time is spent fawning over the historic Avant-Garde and by extention it's current copyists.

Sure there is some unspeakably beautiful Avant-Garde music- but I believe it tends to be wild and insane often druggy, street, religious or folk music which has transcended itself through a sheer intense love of sound. I'd put La Monte Young, Sun Ra, Bernard Parmegiani and John Coltrane in as examples of the aforementioned categories. John Cage? Not a musician mate, never said he was one. You certainly don't get there by aping Avant-Garde music itself. Indeed I think we could even institute a RetroAvantGarde TM category for all those desperate young men and women trying attain divine inspiration by proxy- suggested starting date Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" with Oval's "Diskont" as "The Year RetroAvantGarde TM broke". Going by this definition you could comfortably argue for Darkcore era Ardcore as a true Avant Garde rather than pomo street music with a curious avant twist, or even any Hip-Hop for that matter from Cannibal Ox to Jay Z (feeling generous today).

Of course the thing with RetroAvantGarde TM is that it's jolly easy to deal with. It turns up to the interview on time, wears nice clothes, flatters the editor, has it's CD in the office in time for the review staff, properly advertises it's concert in the appropriate press and is a really nice interesting chappie (though bloody rude and arrogant to everyone else who fails to understand how brill and clever and original it really is).

It makes me heartily sad to see column inches filling up with this stuff and stores choking with it's product. It also has a nasty habit of infecting "cleverer" musicians. I for one wish Herbert would stick to making gourgeous House music. So I've one thing to say: GET OVER IT!

More thoughts on RetroRock TM.

Reynolds has opined that Jesus and the Mary Chain were in fact the first RetroRock TM outfit. He's correct. I'd counter with the suggestion that Oasis are of course the mainstream manifestation of JAMC, and isn't it strange that the conservative Retro impulse filtered from the (supposedly avant-garde) underground to the mainstream. I thought the underground was supposed to provide the mainstream with unpredictable ideas which it could sanitise dammit! (Electro=====>Madonna).

In a cosy symmetry, and in a hopeless attempt to try and shore up my sagging theory I also countered that Sonic Youth had exactly the same relationship to Nirvana as JAMC do to Oasis. Creation to Geffen etc. Sonic Youth are surely the most uber-concious Rock band there ever was. I have a theory that the reason Ed Bahlman (honcho of 99 records and one the last Modernists in Rock) was suspicious about SY was that he smelt Post-Modernism on their breath, but like the simple country cat he was he couldn't figure out what that smell was. They looked like a 99 records band, Branca was sure as hell keen to sign them, but gee something just wasn't right.

Of course when Sonic Youth sloganeered with that "Year that Punk broke" shtick what they were really saying was. "The Year RetroRock TM broke" no scrub that, what they were really saying was "The Year Sonic Youth broke."

Chris Morris.

Right from being told by the man behind the counter at hipster-boho record store Sounds of the Universe that the new Chris Morris reggae 10" was a bit "off-key" I had to have it. Very queer that the emporium that has made such a fortune re-re-repackaging Studio One for the unadventurous and launching the truly awful 100% Dynamite series should even consider stocking the record.

The A-side of the perfectly packaged Chariot records 10" features Bigga Dread. Musically the pastiche is bang-on, dub inna Aba Shanti stylee. Without the kind of accurate sonic detail in the form of Morris's over-ripe croon (a budget Dennis Brown), matched with a DigiDub plod rhythm and Casio FX, we'd be in cod reggae territory. Cod Reggae as in Stackridge, Faust, Snow, 10cc, The Clash and Ace of Base. Of course that the pastiche is so stunningly accurate sharpens the satire immeasurably. The Bigga Dread "Batty Dread" track goes, hilariously, "Natty Dread sitting in the park, in his car, after dark, waiting for the young boy to suck pon his cock." It's tremendously improbable and brilliantly suprising. I've never had a problem with Reggae's "offensive" lyrics - it's habitual bashing of Gays and Women (probably for no better reason than I'm neither) but boy is it funny hearing the culture being skewered so perfectly, just desserts and more effective than a march in Manhattan. Expect a Rasta Fatwah on Morris's head.

The flipside features two tracks by Carlton "Killawatt" Valley, Morris's deejay parody, the alias instantly charming for it's accuracy. The "Special Request" track is once again perfectly done, styled as an early Dancehall version of Derrick Harriot's "Solomon" rhythm in the vein of Dennis Alcapone's "Riddle I This". It features our hero Carlton Valley chanting "Special request to the man like Fred West cos you are de best" inciting the girls to leave him alone because "you might find me hands around your neck real tight." Morris switches between Deejaying and Chorus like the perfect singjay, his vocals distorted in a Stone Love sound-system fashion. Of course it sounds like a rip-off, but close enough to the real thing for one to ponder that the lyrics wouldn't be that out of place in the Dancehall. Compare it to the content of something like Cutty Ranks's "The Stopper" for implied violence or the slack-era "Toilet Sex" by Welton Irie (replete with Welton's charming pig oink) and you begin to wonder what on earth you let Reggae get away with.

The absolutely best comparison with the Chariot 10" is a track released by Prince Jammys in the mid-eighties in Jamaica by a cockney called Dominic called "Boy George". What the hell he was doing out there ("come from England and me mash up the Yard") I don't know, except there is a micro-tradition of tourists finding their way into Reggae studios, very often German women being given the proverbial "come and see my etchings" by leary producers. The lyrics to "Boy George" are less shocking than TOK's "Chi Chi Man"'s with it's incitement to burn gay people or Buju Banton's "Boom By By", shoot them: "me no wine pon man, man me no kiss, AIDS is a disease me no wan catch it" but in his drippy weekend-patois and despite the full authenticity of Jammy's rhythm track, he sounds like such a jerk.

I missed the Morris TV specials, some of them sounded very ham-fisted. Ditto Blue Jam. But this is satire of the highest order; subtle and sophisticated in many ways, and satisfyingly blunt in others.

Flattered.

Blushing from Reynolds' descriptions of T.W.A.N.B.O.C. A compliment from the highest quarter. Realise I may have inadvertantly sounded a little down on UK Bounce, hence Simon's suggestion of my "road to Damascus" conversion. Here's my original letter in full in response to his suggestion that So Solid Crew were the new Sex Pistols:

"Isn't it ironic that punk has never had such a low currency culturally. It's not on the lists anymore is it? (maybe post-punk,but surely that's progs coda). For so long it was such a dominating influence- an inescapable year zero all those years, until we lost touch with what it really was about (thanks to Greil Marcus no doubt) I'm sure Eater, 999 and Chelsea were unavoidably part of it-cheap and nasty. Probably more so than The Clash and Buzzcocks (reputations intact).

For your info the tempo of the pirates has dropped right down. It's all crappy Swizz Beatz remakes with bad rapping, heard one track yesterday that made me want to vomit (all these detuned churning lower frequencies)- its funny cos ragga has sounded as repulsive these last couple of years and the pirates are mixing the JA tunes on an equal footing. Its hard to figure out where anything is coming from....

Of course there is the problem that hardly anyone is listening to it. HMV on Oxford Street has quartered their Garage bin... "There's just no demand for it" one employee told me. Does this mean we have to wait 14 years for Rave-punk-mainstream in the form of a seattle-based uk garage combo?

No ideals either just ugly ambition with the bad sonix-It sounds almost as bad as old-school hip-hop.And that's not to criticise it mind. This movement needs a better name too. Ditch the continuity of "rave", "gabba" and "garage" for starters.What about Spunk (speed garage+punk)? Will it catch on?"

I think perhaps the good Mr. Reynolds thought I was trying to shoot down his theory. Far from it, I was trying to suggest that the musical inversion I was hearing was a good thing. "crappy Swizz Beatz remakes"and "repulsive" (in reference to Ragga) were actually compliments, as was the report that one track made me want to vomit (what higher praise can there be?). That the music was headed back underground, and away from the High Street, was also, in my opinion a reason to be cheerful. "As bad as old school- hip-hop", why thats the other original nasty music, and nasty is of course good. Finally "bad sonix" and "bad attitude" were once again supposed to be punky compliments. I really meant it when I said "this was not to criticise it". The "open-letter" was a poetic attempt to reposition the vocab- to try and invert the usual modes of criticism. You know back to Jacques Attali, noise as subversion and all that kit. Oh well.........

As a brief coda it is interesting to note re:UK Bounce that many people were sitting around wondering "Is this Darkcore circa 1992? or Techstep circa 1997?" Everyone was wondering where the twist of darkness at the start on 2002 was taking us. The truth....somewhere completely different.

The Clash.

The Clash were the second greatest Rock'n'Roll band ever. Second to The Rolling Stones. The Beatles of course weren't a rock'n'roll band- they were a pop group. The Clash run a very poor second-place. They made three good albums (“The Clash”, “London Calling” and “Combat Rock”) to The Stones's six (go figure). They make up good ground as a singles band as is attested by something like “The Story of the Clash”.

What's Rock'n'Roll? Essentially bastardised blues. Amplified (Led Zeppelin), sped-up (The Stones) stretched out (The Grateful Dead) freaked out (Captain Beefheart), or elaborated upon (Eric Clapton). I would say that Chuck Berry was not a rock and roller - but a bluesman. Likewise Bo Diddley. Likewise Jimi Hendrix. True innovators all of them, but working within the possibilites of the Blues.

Rock'n'Roll is fake blues, in which the potent cliches of the Blues become exaggerated to accommodate unsubtle aspirations. The Blues itself has none of the cloying warmth and predicatability of Rock'n'Roll. It's become a commonplace utterance to comment of the blues as anthologised by Harry Smith that it couldn't be weirder or colder- but this assumes that once you move beyond the scratchy 78s and out of the Delta that Blues ceases to be a powerful music. Not so, much by Howling Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters or Fred McDowell has a still depth we're more accustomed to hearing in the freezing wastes of Krautrock. Interestingly (and not at all ironically if you know your onions) Krautrock, particulary the work of Neu! stands time immemorial as the anti-rock. In the short history of amplified guitar music you could draw up a sliding scale of influence which would have “Blues-influenced” at one end and Neu! at the other. Neu! function as a kind of strange attractor, most people seem oblivious to their presence but dig a little deeper and there they are. Their most obvious conduit being David Bowie.

Rock'n'Roll was bonkers and could be measured in quality by the distance it travelled from the blues. Led Zeppelin win points for defacing their own image of it, Captain Beefheart wins points for chucking it out of his pram. In many ways the whole affair is an embarrassment. Through the same logic Canned Heat are the worst Rock'n'Roll band ever, such is their assumed proximity to the source. That makes sense. My attitude towards the whole Rock'n'Roll thing is pretty ambivalent. It still remains, however, the best music to get drunk and cut loose to, perhaps by virtue of its "unrealness". It’s too easy to view the title “Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band” as an oxymoron.

If there was any real musical target for the 90s it was rock. It was irrelevant to ravers and anathema to the new-music fans (Wire readers). I can't think of any Rock music in the 90’s with a hip cachet. Madchester was white funk with a dose of Krautrock so we can exclude that. A lot of critical energy that decade was expended in trying to contextualise a space for Rock within the new hegemonies and hierarchies of music appreciation (someone stop me!). This was motivated by the a desire to rationalise the pleasures it produced within more current modes so as to preserve it's memory. Don't throw away all those records and waste all that time, money and effort! Both the Carducci and the Reynolds models sought to build bridges between old and new music. Reynolds tried to imagine a way in which Rock could be "new", Carducci tried to rationalise the music to make it politically relevant. Carducci viewed Black Flag, the american Hardcore band, as a model of cooperation and musical democracy and Reynolds suggested a new lineage of Post-Rock, virtually the antithesis of Carducci's vision, a new tradition of nerds using the studio as an instrument epitomised by Brian Eno. Essentially they were both saying the same thing “Yikes!” The point was of course that Rock was essentially pretty daft. It's silliness was it's motor. Like the journalist Chuck Eddy said, it was "stoopid". Stoopid like Funkadelic and Black Sabbath.

The Clash were the last Rock'n'Roll band by virtue of lasting longer than The Pistols. The Pistols said they killed Rock'n'Roll but “as any fule kno” P.I.L's Metal Box killed Rock'n'Roll. The Pistols were in fact, in their pure “Chuck-Berry-icity” the very epitome of Rock'n'Roll. They may have even been more Rock'n'Roll than The Stones. But wait, I hear you say, if The Clash were the last Rock'n'Roll band, what does that make The Vines and The Strokes.

The last Rock'n'Roll record was The Clash's “Cut the Crap” (ha ha). There was in fact no Rock'n'Roll after this point. The latest wave of Rock music can be dated back the 'orrible Oasis or the quite good Nirvana. This is the era of Retro RockTM, defined not by artists reinterpreting Black music but by reinterpreting "Classic" Rock’n’Roll. Right from the outset we get diminished returns. The archetypical Retro RockTM relationship is what Noel Gallagher has with John Lennon. It's also the relationship The Strokes have with The Ramones, the relationship The Beta Band have with The Beach Boys, the relationship The White Stripes have with The Stooges. I tend to think there are trace elements of Neu! in Nirvana through their relationship with post-punkers like The Raincoats and Steve Albini.

Were The Clash stoopid? They certainly didn't think they were. Perhaps unintentionally. In fact they were awesomely earnest. The first time I met Joe Strummer was at the Rock against the Rich tour. I paid for my Tour T-shirt with my Coutts cheque book and wore it around my public-school. There can be no more goofy thing than that, perhaps with the exception of being a Public-school educated Diplomat's son throwing the gig in the first place. There is one dopier thing, which would be to sign over your share of profits to your record company so as to keep things punky (oh dear The Clash!)

Were they Blues derived? The Clash tried to fashion a Rock'n'Roll in the same manner as their Rock forebears, with the exception that they used different source material. Country (Joe Ely), Reggae (Mikey Dread) and New Orleans Soul (Lee Dorsey) all got the nod. Perhaps they were Rock's first real syncretists? Although I have always thought how Rock’n’Rollish they made Reggae seem, while the tendency nowadays is to view it as a kind of systems music.

Where did The Clash stand in relation to Neu!?! Well if Keith Levene, and his icy chops, had stayed on board they may have stood a chance at attaining the same kind of immortality afforded P.I.L. but I just can’t imagine the band holding together.

Joe was The Clash and I’d like to think that all the things I’ve said about his band actually said rather wonderful things about his personality. He had a surfeit of good humour and generosity. He had an uncomplicated, direct world view and was happy to get stuck in there and not worry too much about the contradictions in life which can grind the best of us to a halt, someone with a lot of love in his heart. The Clash were a band exhibiting that one quality which is most easy to criticize, faith. I will always remember, aged 18, cycling down the Portobello and Joe (who recognized me from gigs and lurking on the All Saints Road) waving at me. I felt I had cheated him. But how can you cheat someone who was (as described by Lester Bangs) a fake?

Panjabi MC.

Panjabi MC's "Mundian To Bach Ke" sounds like any other Bhangra track to me, ace. Why has it blown up so big? Is it that subliminal bassline, surely lifted off the Knightrider soundtrack? You remember, David Hasselhoff and the car with the accent.

Here’s to it, resplendent in its suavely designed sleeve, the Bhangra 12" for the almost-mainstream. For people too hip to buy the (also excellent) Bend it like Beckham Soundtrack and not mad enough to track down the real thing from the source. Anyone have anything on RDB?

A Potted History of UK Bounce.

What’s that? You want to know about the history of UK Bounce. Well pull up a chair and I'll tell you all about it. You have to go a long way back to the actual point zero of Brit-Bounce. It was those Shut up and Dance fellows who started it all off as we know it. We can ignore that Streetsounds UK Electro compilation because, well, its not got that distinctive UK flava, its still very Kings Road B.Boy. We're going to ignore Derek B (though he had a few hits which were rated in the US including "Rock the Beat") and Normski (don't laugh, besides shacking up with Janet Street-Porter, strangely apt name, he also raps on that Reese track). No, PJ and Smiley (SUAD) are the godfathers. A track like “Rap's my Occupation” sounds 10 years ahead of its time. They also produced a whole raft of stuff with a similar aesthetic for people like Ade, Nicolette and The Ragga Twins. Its Ardkore with vocals, early enough for rapping and songs not to be swamped by drug-noise.

And lets also not forget the Tribal Bass stable, Rebel MC’s label. Rebel MC is playing for SchoolDisco.com nowadays (nothing wrong with that, good gig I imagine). Anyway the Rebel was the (reluctant) pop face and a few MC gangs, like the Demon Boyz and Blapps Possee lurked in the background. The Blapps Possee's “Don't Hold Back” is pure UK Bounce, in fact I even heard it played at the start of some chaps set last week.

Finally I guess you could lump in Genaside II, they also had a yearning to be a rap crew. Heck they ended up hanging out with the RZA, although the evidence musically is less strong (kind of rests on “Narra Mine”).

To be honest I think we all thought these acts were a bit quaint. Memories of hip-house were still fresh (there's a genre ripe for rediscovery) and while we could just about stomach Fast Eddie (now delivering Pizzas in Chicago, nothing wrong with that, nice work if you can get it, handy moniker etc) a whole gang of UK Fast Eddies was perhaps not such an enticing solution. I guess the point was that these were all guys and girls who couldn't cut a tree as straight UK Rappers. They probably would have soldiered on like London Possee in terminal obscurity surviving on mentions in Public Enemy's global round-up liner notes. There just wasn't the market for it; everyone would always buy the American variety, so just like The Ragga Twins (“Reggae owes me Money”) they sold out into Rave. Except that that didn't really work out either (despite producing some wicked tunes).

And then it goes quiet (or gets too noisy?) for nearly ten years. You have rapping in the UK but you hear it in the Dancehall and on the Pirates but nowhere else. Of course that’s the axis from which it emerged (vis a vis the Jamaican model of music), so its not gone but its withdrawn like a Virginia creeper from a tower block. Ardkore produces some truly lunatic rapping, but in the spirit of that music its regressed to Hugo Ball-style babbling ("having a vindaloo in the loo doing a poo poo" etc) There are only a handful of rap tracks amongst the millions of Ardkore records, and if anything Ardkore is skewered towards Ragga chat, its a sonic bias, largely to do with Ragga's terror-inducing alienation effect. What are these scary fellows jabbering about, crikey?

Come 1994 and Jungle and we start to see the emergence of celebrity MCs like Det, Navigator and 5-0 However these guys still weren't actually saying anything, merely pushing the party along, bigging up the DJ and giving shouts out to all the sexy ladeez. Det and Navigator made it onto a few comps, but nowhere near a 12". The comparable trope here is US rap before "Rappers Delight", where it exists but nobody's thought anyone would want to buy a whole record of it.

Then, my chickadee, Jungle turned into Techno in 1997 with the atrocious Tech-step and completely lost its humour, sex appeal and popularity. The story goes that the bad-bwoy swagger the basslines and the charm migrated to garage, while in truth it took a very long time to infiltrate. We patiently sifted out the more rootical tracks and gradually as the elements of street music seeped back into the disco and so did the rapping.

Lazy (and ill-informed) commentators credit Oxide and Neutrino with defining the UK Garage Rap revolution, sure “Up Middle Finger” is a classic, but “Casualty” was more innovative for its stentorian electro bassline than for anything else. For me O&N will always be The Prodigy of UK Garage (nothing wrong with that, a few more miles on the clock and they'll be hanging out with Oasis and bagging stray All Saints), as for their connection to So Solid, oh yeah well whatever.

In my humble opinion UK Bounce was flowering in a whole host of beds. Notably on labels like Red Rose records ("A little bit of Luck", "Troublesome") who I fancied as the new Suburban Base and Kronik records ( “G.A.R.A.G.E.” and now the home of Genius Cru) In the hands of Zed Bias (“Seven Wonders”, “Neighborhood”) and with artists like Teebone (“Get Down”, “Fly Bi”). However Teebone does sound distinctly (ahem) old skool, a voice in tradition of the Jungle MCs phat, rolling, confident and masculine- not in the least scrawny like your proverbial Dizzy Rascal. Also, with the exception of “Troublesome” (worth hunting down) the other tracks were really 2 bar loops of raps, not your full flow.

Of course the real light to the touchpaper was So Solid Crew’s "Oh No"- caned to death on the pirates. After that everyone else took a little while to catch up. I'm of the opinion that 2001 was the poorest ever year for the Ardkore continuum, and up to this point I'll admit being totally unimpressed by the idea of UK Garage Rap (Reynolds was trying to pitch it to me as long ago as “Fly Bi” - I mean c'mon: " the F the L, the F the L the Y, the F the L the Y the B the I" ) Perhaps in this deathly year Ardkore finally petered out, and now we're living in the UK Bounce era. Some of my colleagues have playfully alluded to So Solid being the new Sex Pistols and UK Bounce as being the new punk. It’s more accurate (and less rock-centric) to compare it to “Sleng Teng” and the birth of Ragga, or “The Message” and the birth of Hip-Hop, or “Mentazm” and the birth of Rave. To my mind the significance of the movement lies in the fact that we've never had UK rappers before on record and now well, we have a deluge.

Last year we had stacks of MC tracks by the likes of East Connection, Dem Lott, Roll Deep (and its constituents), Heartless Crew, MC Dynamite, Dynamite MC (!), Stush, MC Dappa and Hyperactive, Pay as you go Cartel, Genius Cru, More Fire Crew, So Solid Crew, Musical Mob, Tubby T etc etc etc. Musically the pointers are more Dirty South (Ludacris, Mannie Fresh) and Swizz Beatz than Timbaland (who will always be an R&B producer, his stuff is too disco-ified for these artists to aspire to), hence UK Bounce. And also Ragga but finally for its rhythm tracks more than the vocal delivery (Dave Kelly, Lenky, Patrick Roberts, Lloyd James etc)

Did I say Bounce not Hip-Hop, well yes I did. New Orleans bounce (my fave example of which being DJ Jimi's "Where they at?") is dance music, not for the old head-nodding crew. It's interesting to note how close UK/JA/USA have become. I can't think of a time when they've been so synched up. Now with tracks like Roll Deep's “Regular” slowing right down to the same tempo as Ragga and Platinum Rap, who knows the yanks might become as casual as we are with geographical specificity and start playing UK Bounce over there, not that I really care (lord knows they're playing ragga! The Neptunes certainly can't get enough of it)

My hopes for 2003, more of the same please only different. Lets keep that tempo dropping too. I hope that answers your questions. Now if you don't mind I've got to fit these new wide rims on my bimmer.

Shandar Records.

Very heartening to read the excellent article on Daniel Caux in the last Wire magazine. Maeght sounds like a cool dude, hanging out with Sun Ra and Matisse. Apparently only "hardcore record-collectors" own the records. I dunno if I'm one of them. All the Shandar records I bought on the cheap out of the weird bin. I'm most fond of the La Monte Young "Dreamhouse" record which I paid a meager £15 for in Camden (what were they thinking?) I used to put it on in my basement where I was storing a friend's 10K rig. You have to turn down the treble (for some sonic/mathematic reason) but then when you wander around the room- in this case quite a large space, the drone changes pitch according to air pressure. It’s a very psychedelic sensation- you can end up in one position moving your head up and down listening to it. It’s a great record to play your mates. My old pal The Black Dog used to really enjoy it. Once upon a time when I rang the MELA institute (to offer La Monte and Marian a room on their imminent trip to London) I actually spoke to La Monte at great length. In fact I spoke to both of them, because like your grandparents they both answer the phone simultaneously and talk at once. La Monte, who is clearly a hip record collector, wanted to know how much I'd paid for my copy of Dreamhouse. I felt quite terrible having to admit (I mean lets not undervalue it), he was amazed, "you did well there chuck". I felt duty bound to let him know that I paid £100 for my copy of his black album, which I found in a dusty basement in Cannes. That store has since closed down- I was back there this summer hunting in vain.

Anyway back to Shandar. Of course the other great La Monte Young record on Shandar is the Pandit Pran Nath LP. This is a wonderfully powerful, with an alap which seems to go on forever. The tambura, which La Monte plays, is mixed really high and it sounds like the national grid. La Monte actually chose the key C for one of his pieces on the basis that that’s the tuning of US electric power. The only other record I know with the Tambura mixed so high is that yellow Pannalal Ghosh LP, there the flute melts into the drone, kind of like the Velvet Underground's instruments all mash up with each other (that’s what Eno liked about the Velvets). Pran Nath sounds mature and exceptionally confident. I think he sounds thin on the Earthgroove LP on Douglas, and I've never really liked the melody on the Ragas of Morning and Night on Gramavsion. Of course the true Indian music enthusiasts have no truck with Pran Nath. They all prefer other Kirana vocalists. But Pran Nath was an outsider, like Fela Kuti and Mulatu- a transnational if you like and they often encounter hostility at home.

Other Shandar records I have? I have the Steve Reich Four Organs. It has an exquisite cover photo by the Canadian Michael Snow of a lapping sea in black and white. Michael Snow made a famous art film of a slow zoom across a sitting room from the window to the wall. I think it's an hour long. Saw it at film school sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair. That’s a nice record. It’s got quite a harsh sound. Cost me a tenner.

The two Sun Ra LPs are also lovely. I got the first one from Italy, which is only OK, the second is dreamy with two outstanding lopsided grooves. I don't have the Albert Aylers or the Cecil Taylors. I dunno about these guys. Cecil Taylor is an admirable figure but I think his music sucks. Ayler is a queer cat. I know Lester Bangs adored Spiritual Unity on ESP, but I can't get with it. Have you heard New Grass on Impulse? Its kind of ghastly- a real case of a record company scrabbling around to cash in on a hip artists credentials by trying to sweeten the music. The same tactic worked for Impulse on Archie Shepp's Attica Blues but not here.

I have one terrible LP on Shandar the Francois Tusques LP. I got it in Bristol from another recently closed-down record store. I was accused by the owner of being a chequebook socialist of buying out community jazz (ha ha). Its a clinker- one of those Free-Jazz holy grails. I could probably make a good return on my initial investment (tee hee). Lastly I am the owner of one Shandar CD the Charlemage Palestine Strumming Music. I did see the LP once in La Dame Blanche in Paris but it was excessively expensive. Hey it’s a great CD.

Maurice Gibbs Dies.

Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees has died. The Bee Gees have a certain place in my heart as a production team. The Neptunes of Soft-Rock, coralling disparate A-list MOR folk instead of celebrity rappers.There is a queerly intense Bee-Gee-isity they brought to tracks like Dionne Warwick's Heartbreaker (which has a kind of Numanoid windswept glamour- perhaps Post-punk's only mainstream disco ballad), Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton's Islands in the Stream and Barbara Streisand's What kind of Fool. Real junk of course. However you'd be hard pushed to come up with case for Diana Ross's Chain Reaction.

THAT WAS A NAUGHTY BIT OF CRAP.

"THAT WAS A NAUGHTY BIT OF CRAP" was what my dad typed into his Lightwriter at a Mendelssohn concert we went to together last October. We sat patiently through the second symphony, which to my ears was florid and overwrought without any emotional substance. After the applause had subsided dad set to his Lightwriter, this portable keyboard with it's voice synthesiser. A terrible typist before, now with Motor Neurone Disease wasting his arms, he was more useless than ever. A deeply uncharacteristic comment, it was all the more funny as a result. If he had pushed the SPEAK button it would have issued from the low-lit green LED panel in the machine's ominous, monotonous speak and spell tone.

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(postscript 17th April 2004)

TWANBOC was the name which I called my first Weblog. For a whole range of reasons I it changed WOEBOT in October 2003, chief amongst them was that I didn't want to be saddled with continually writing a memorial. See this entry for the post commemorating my dear Dad.