WOEBOT

Rampaging Word Counts.

Blissblog
Reynolds has been SMOKING this week. He’s supposed to be working on his book, I was awaiting the hanging paragraphs. We’re bloody lucky he’s finding time to chat. Sheer class! Double Figures! As we say in ice-skating.
Word Count (high for him): 276,776.

COM
Marcello sounded seriously pissed off this week. He too has his hands full, so once again, we must colour ourselves lucky.
Word Count (down a few million): 324,976,435.

Heronbone
Luka has been busy chasing girls in stolen cars. Good for him.
Word Count (a juicy): 645.

Astronaut's Notepad
Jon’s been organising successful Avant-Garde Cinema events. He’s pulled back from the brink, and has still made a respectable entry.
Word Count (a beautifully organised): 18. (I actually counted these, ha ha!)

K-Punk
My new mate, the swinging professor. We share smokes after class (me in shorts clutching a conker, him hunched in tweed and tortoise-shell glasses) We talk Phil Collins and John Foxx. A stunning entry into the blogosphere. BRAVO!
Word Count (it’s purely academic) 3,674,888

The Pillbox
Penman‘s been trying to sell his copy of Mutant Disco to some geeky fanboy.....me? I have a copy. The best thing about that record is his liner-notes (true…) Last Sunday Ian wrote a small novella in about 45 parts. I’m like, Lyotard that’s some kind of ballet outfit, right?
Word Count (a bollock-breaking/flowing): 6,754,001

Phil Sherberne
Phil blessed me with a TRULY lovely Microhouse mix CD this week. Will be honoured somehow. Clearly collating music in his image, Minima Moralia is gentle, charming and sophisticated.
Word Count (nice): 1,453

Uncarved
I love Eden’s site. But seriously John? You’ve written about Reggae and homophobia? Copy and Paste that shit. In case you didn’t know there’s a f*** of a lot more to Eden than writing about music.
Word Count (It’s not the words that count): 674

Sacha Frere-Jones
Brevity is the essence here. SFJ spinning his blog like a Haiku/Ramones song. A refreshing snapshot of East American life…meals and all.
Word Count (oi!): 23

Matos
Unaccountably ommited from my last Sinking Links TM (smacks forehead). Michelangelo "God fears him" Matos has been polishing some very pretty marbles.
Word Count (after a quiet patch....going up): 7,655

Skykicking
I keep linking Tim up, but you know, he has kicked me hard in the bollocks recently. I did notice! I only mention it in case you thought I was a total dumb ass giving him props when I should be sulking. CONTROVERSY! What could I say against this dude! He’s the RUSHIEST!
Word Count (going up all the time): 9,755

Inglistan
My soul brother Bismillah Raxmani Rahim. Eden described this site as “pleasurably disorientating” which nails it. Test your psychoanalytical skills to the max, see if you can figure what makes this dude tick…
Word Count (er…): 0

Spizzazzz
My kind of music journalism (true…) Oh Missy Mack, Missy Mack, you don’t reply to my calls. I lurve you Missy Mack! Don't marry Pharrell, he's a no good chicken!
Word Count (It’s the pictures of celebrites in tight-fitting clothes which count): 622.

Woops!

Got emails from Dominic Goudie and Marcus at Rephlex telling me that the Batty Dread record was not the work of Chris Morris but rather that of a builder from Nottingham called Danny Birtwhistle. Apparently Danny was interviewed for Muzik magazine. I missed that, didnt pick up the mag, at least I got something right.

Was rooting around for people to blame for making me look even stupider than I usually do, those bastards at Soul Jazz (rolls up sleeves....just wait till I get......) then I got the crowning glory an email from N*** K***** who runs the ace gabba.net. Nick thanked me for turning him onto the record (ha ha....puffs out chest...my pleasure old chap) then informs me he actually works for Morris!

Get this, Nick took the Batty Dread record in one morning and played it to Morris who "...didnt bat an eyelid" saying "Nope, nothing to do with me!" Nick actually assumed his chain was being yanked by La Grande Dame but found out later it was indeed true.

May I wipe the egg from my face!

Comedy Rastas.

A while ago I mentioned Chris Morris's hilarious Chariot recordings gay rasta record. It’s not really available any more so I’ve ripped one of the best tracks as an mp3 for your pleasure. Will Morris bring legal action against TWANBOC?

A few older folks remembered the template for this natty send-up, Keith Allen's Sex Boots and Dread, which comes courtesy of my friend Advertising Copywriter from the Earful Crew. It’s an obscene scat over a peak period Joe Gibbs rhythm, which I think Tappa Zukie uses on the lovely "Pick Up the Rockers". There can’t be many copies of this 12” around.

The story goes that for the record’s release in 1980 Allen (a slightly vicious British comedian, like Morris) installed a rented caravan on the All Saints Road. Hidden inside he addressed the assembled media in a Gregory Isaacs styled accent over a loud hailer.

Clearly this stuff sails very closely to the wind, and I’d like to assure gay readers of TWANBOC that, while I don’t believe these records to be homophobic , I would be upset if they caused any offence.

10 East-Coast Post-Punk Left-Overs 1977-1981.

Hi! It’s me wasting yet more energy on this pale shadow of real-life intercourse. Force-feeding you casual fellows with my fan-boy drivel. Trading precious gems with anonymous strangers for nuts. Pimping this imaginary identity of mine on the WWW. It’s my birthday today! Blows out one candle and the cell goes black. On a positive note it all works out cheaper than a psychoanalysts bill.

I’ve put these records together because they’re all lesser-known right-coast rarities. This “special-a-roonie” matches the Krautrock one I did a few thousand years ago, and is the conceptual sister of the Launderette spiel. Not necessarily classics but drooly record collector stuff. All have splendid sleeves. I take pride in the fact that I spent under £10 on all of these records, apart from the Y Pants one which was a bit dearer. On topic I’m coming to New York in June so if you fancy buying me a bud drop me a line. I am extremely abnormal.

--------------------------

impLOG: Holland Tunnel Dive (Lust/Unlust 1980)
As we say in advertising, put your best stuff at the front. Come in with a bang! Stick out yer tits! I’m going to single-handedly take credit for the re-discovery of this record, cos why not? I found it in La Dame Blanche in Paris. I paid 50 francs for it, that’s about $6.4528. At last my research into the lack-lustre Love of Life Orchestra paid off! This release is affiliated with them (more on this later)......

I showed it to my (even sadder) friend Gwen, who always pretends to have seen every record before, but is sometimes unconvincing, tell-tale signs include an undisguisable curiosity in the eyes. Gwen introduced Autechre to Bernard Parmegiani by the way. I also put it on a tape for Mr. Reynolds which he sweetly told me he played at his Millennium party (a donkey, a duck and a bottle of meths- don’t knock it!), thus time-stamping his introduction to the track. GOTCHA! Simon recently told me he saw it racked up for $40 in NYC. I also sold a copy for a song to Jon at Atlas (Small Fish) Records, another standing stone at the Post-Punk Party.

Here are the lyrics, amongst my favorites of any song EVER, which lace a pre-Night Drive Thru Babylon sub-Suicide grubby synth drum pattern. The speaker is contemplating a plunge into the Holland Tunnel/Underworld. It’s the one of the original modern “death/motor” records, giving Warm Leatherette a good run for it’s money:

No Support,
No Bridges to cross,
No Wood to burn,
Nothing to learn,

No Soul,
No Love,
No Dinner tonight,
No Woman,
No Cry,
No Respect,
No Equal rights,

No Garden to hoe,
No Seed to sow,
No Food in the fridge,
No TV shows,

No Emotion,
No Devotion,
No Trips to the ocean,
No Time to play,
No Lays,
No Way,
No News,
No Blues,
Nothing to lose,

No Soap,
No Car,
No Cigar,

Leaving for the other side
Going to Take a Holland Tunnel Dive
Oh what a ride
Going to Take a Holland Tunnel Dive

And after the WHOOSH of the car accelerating down the tunnel, then you get this improbably placed afrobeat-styled saxophone solo. You wouldn’t like it………;-)

Love of Life Orchestra: Geneva (Lust/Unlust 1980)
While we’re on the subject of LOLO we might as well address the issue. Start sniffing around this era and pretty quickly you come across LOLO. Peter Gordon co-produces Arthur Russell’s Go Bang*5. LOLO are Laurie Anderson’s backing group. Collaborations with David Byrne. David Van Tieghem pops up everywhere. Lower East-side hipsters. I’ve always assumed that this should mean their records are good and so keep buying them, even when they disappoint. I have Geneva, Casino and the Extended Niceties 12”. And they’re all CRAP! Ha ha. Well that’s only semi-fair. Geneva sounds exactly like Tortoise would do if they were naffer. Terrible cheesy synth lines over pub/prog/punk squeezings. There are moments, a couple of nice Reich-ian minimal piano tunes on Casino. But really I’m glad I persist. See Above and below.

Peter Gordon: Star Jaws (Lovely 1977)
On the uptown Lovely records label who also put out sterner avant-garde stuff by Alvin Curran, Gordon Mumma and Robert Ashley. All these 10 Post-Punk records are distinctly European, like an unfunny-era Woody Allen movie. This one is no exception. The killer track on this is the semi-daft ‘Intervallic Expansion’ which floors everyone I play it to and sounds like a Canterbury outfit (think The Soft Machine, Caravan etc) on a Jazz Funk tip. Almost like Teletubbies music (I bet the guy who scored that is some Mike Batt-esque 70s wash-up with a rural studio in Stratford-upon-Avon). The dance guys love this track. Wonderful. Why such terrible inconsistency Peter?

Polyrock: Polyrock (RCA 1980)
I searched for this record for ages and then was disappointed when I found it. I’m actually listening to it now, and its GREAT! That’s nice. The reason for my interest was that Phillip Glass and Kurt Munkasci (his engineer) produce it. I think Phillip Glass is cool, and I hate The Wire’s knee-jerk line that the hairier guys like La Monte and Terry Riley are somehow more valid than Phil. If you want hairy, check out Phil’s heavy early recordings on Chatham Square. I have a number of these and they’re rock hard. I’ve always respected Brian Eno for sticking to his guns and defending Phillip Glass. Glass was the guy who really started pushing the amplified thing and the Rock textures (yeah I know La Monte had a “jet-plane roar” of his own). But unlike La Monte who “drew-a-line-and-followed-it”/”arse-froze in-the-sixties” (depending on which person you believe) Phil moved on. He did a fucking opera! I love that Laurie Anderson story about how after Einstein on the Beach everyone she met was “working on their opera”. I’m well up for any Postmodernism if it serves to deconstruct social and cultural boundaries.

Back to the record in question. It’s like a mildly atonal version of The Feelies “Crazy Rhythms”, and hell it’s good. Which brings me to…..

The Feelies: Crazy Rhythms (Stiff 1980)
This is a really tremendous record and one of the rare instances when my affection for music has infected all my mates. As 19 year-olds we would get really stoned and listen to this, A trip as good as the nascent acid-house. Everyone loved it. I was strong-armed into finding copies for loads of people and spent my life taping it under threat. Later Feelies records are also very good. The Good Earth in particular is wonderful. Amazingly I found a lot of entrenched rockist anti-feeling towards the record. There’s almost no dirty feedback on it. Mercer and Million plugged their guitar straight into the mixing desk, so it has an exquisite up-close ‘headphone’ sound. Maybe this record was also vilified for the band’s preppy look, quite sweetly nutty and in a “real” and “street” way, though surely spawning the likes of (yuk!) Ween. Anton Fier went on arty projects like The Golden Palaminos (never delivered as far as I could make out). A classic!

Pylon: Gyrate (Armageddon 1980)
Pylon were from Athens Georgia, progeny of the same scene that gave us the B52s, R.E.M and Love Tractor (anyone?). There are quite strong comparisons with them and the B52s. Drop the B52s slightly off-putting NOO WAVE personality shtick and mix in a little Neu! and you get Pylon. I’ve always believed (perhaps erroneously) that the New Zealand bunch got as much out of Pylon as they did The Feelies. (Back to work Jon!) Pylon are ripe for re-discovery, the whole day-glo PP zeitgeist is incredibly Pylon. Pylon Pylon Pylon Pylon. Also great is the ‘Cool’ 10” EP and their swansong LP Chomp which I’ve unaccountably mislaid. As with all these records, if they were reissued tossrags like Q and Mojo would give them *** (three stars out of five) and witter on about historical specificity and their status as minor curios. IGNORE. This stuff is awesome. I once sent Pylon a postcard in 1990, I wonder if they got it?

Glenn Branca: Lesson One (99 1980)
Glen’s classics got buried in Ed Bahlman’s 99 personality problems for years. Ascension has just got a re-issue it’s a very STRONG record. It’s a piece of ART, right down to the Longo cover. Also great, a bit less strident and maybe more approachable is Lesson One which is like a cleaner Sonic Youth circa Daydream Nation and the gay twin of Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio. Branca is very cool.

Y Pants: Y Pants (99 1980)
Here’s another 99 records classic. The Y Pants are nice. They meet every year on each-others birthdays. They’re New York’s answer to the Raincoats with better production. Instruments used here include Toy Piano and Baritone Ukelele. Branca did this record (not Bahlman) and I believe it’s been reissued with other Y Pants stuff on a CD recently. So check it out….

DNA: A Taste of DNA (Rough Trade 1981)
Utterly brilliant EP. No Wave at it’s most inspired and infectious. Blonde Redhead, the track gets a particular mention……er, because its really good!

Arto/Neto: Pini Pini (Ze 1979)
Subject of a famous anecdote in which Blixa “swamp-rat” Bargeld accosts Arto “then grown-up” Lindsay after a NYC Neubauten gig and screams (distorting smack-tortured face) “I have Pini Pini.” The quote wrongly relayed in one un-namable publication (The Wire) with the record title in question as “Penny Penny”.

What a mad record! Neto (who he?) delivers a bizarre story about a woman (the Pini in question) getting married to a “bull-cow’. All the while Arto is having random epileptic convulsions on his guitar in the background. There’s a secret partner to this record on Marion Brown’s Geechee Recollections LP. Get your coat and get hunting!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many records ommitted (wan tes me! you wind up ded!) but the aforementioned deemed apposite. You lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, people. Altogether to the tune of SPAM: "Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog! Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog! Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog! Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog! Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog!"

Garage Update.

Picked up a copy of deuce magazine. Illuminating and witty. Dizzy Rascal referring to NEW music he sees himself and the newer MCs and producers belonging to: “taking in all the stuff that you hear out there- jungle, garage, ragga, hip-hop.” Dizzy goes on to say “It comes from the ghettos and it’s moved on a step from garage, same way garage moved on a step from jungle. The garage heads might be dissing me now, but they’ll be into it when this sound takes over.” What’s he referring too? The slowed-out UK Bounce? Bashy? Place your bets. As a side note, Luka has caught that rare butterfly of a track I heard last November on C90 and was referring to recently. He thinks it’s as hot and seismic as I do. Maybe you too will get to hear it soon!

deuce also came with a free CD from Dumpvalve Recordings featuring very “Neurogarage” artwork (wireframe 3D) marking it as an update on the slightly lame Neurofunk-era Jungle. Not to be confused with Neuromanticism. On the other hand this collective is almost all black dudes, cue the usual semi-suspect remarks about Black Sci-fi being less myopic, and somehow more interesting. One of the Geeneus riddims featured is called “Detroit”. I’m not sure how much I care about this. Currently heartily cheering on the MCs, not the back-room boys.

Big “special-a-roonie” in the works. One of my record-collector’s drool pieces. So stay tuned.

Old Folk.

Just talking to my best pal Sacha.

Sacha was haunting one of his old stomping grounds, the charity shops on the North End Road. Apparently you can pick up good bargains there, unlike at most of the mainstream charity shops in London which have become rather "together".

Sacha is actually barred from a number of record stores which he's gleefully cleaned out, and then altruisticly told the owners afterwards that they should watch their pricing. What's he thinking! I'm far more covert......

Anyway my old pal found a couple of nice things, a Nonesuch Explorer compilation LP for 40p (bits and bobs of world music from this increasingly valued label, man I used to ignore their shit) and a compilation of Folk music called "The Roses", featuring amongst others Peggy Seeger. He paid £1 for this second record.

Sacha then went up to the Music and Video Exchange in Notting Hill. Upstairs to the rarities department. Working behind the counter was Dick. He's the guy with the enormous flowing white beard, who can seem grumpy but is actually very sweet. Sacha hands him the English Folk record which Dick happily gives him £25 credit for.

Then Dick looked closely at the cover. It had been in the Music and Video Exchange before. In fact Dick noticed that he himself had once marked it's price down from £2.50 to £2. Over twenty years ago!

Ecstatic B-boys on Slight Return.

How I laughed at DJ Hell’s comments at some Miami drinks party, words to the effect of: “Oh yeah man Puffy’s House record’s going to be massive, gonna change the game, squirm-squirm, oh Puffy I love you.” With one eye on International Gigolo’s US sales. Thinking hard with the remaining two brain-cells how he can massage his roster into a Hip-House direction.

Elsewhere Herbert stroking his invisible goatee, musing on this global validation of House music. (By the way I listened to that Herbert record, it is pretty crap. First track’s nice, but just reach for your pre-Marsalis Man with the Golden Arm Soundtrack and THINK.....the original is always better blah, blah, blah, sneer, sneer.)

Apparently Puffy asked Nellee Hooper in Ibiza who he should hook up with to realize his ecstasy fantasies (I didn’t say he had anything approximating a heavy habit, even that he had ever taken the drug). Nellee Hooper says: “Puffy go see the Felix Da Housekatt.” The most sensible thing he did since production on that excellent Naomi Campbell record. I cherish my copy, the only one sold in London. But bitching aside, Hip-House IS Chicago innit. Fast Eddie, Chip E, and Doug Lazy.

It’s a weird development, which I’m almost certain will have no impact on mainstream American hip-hop, despite it having it’s own Xtacy dream a year or so ago in the hands of Ja Rule, Missy Elliott, et al. Puffy’s a distant iconic figure, lacking the rhizomatic connection to the underground to kick off a cultural turn-around.

Funny that the context of this potential explosion is the Platinum. B-Boys on ecstasy in the UK (where it’s flourished) have always swung more towards a marijuana/ecstasy combo rather than the courvoisier/cristal/cocaine/ecstasy cocktail which floats the US scene. B-Boys on "X" here (in consequence?) have always been gutter psychonauts. The likes of Shut Up and Dance, DJ Crystl and Dizzy Rascal. Puffy’s gonna be all glossy and sumptuous with Felix’s lush productions. Isn’t Da Housekatt in a new UK commercial? I swear that’s him.

All this time I was in a chalet at Butlins in Skegness. As luck would have it Luka was staying in a caravan on one of the nearby sites with his wife and five kids. Luka told me over a chip butty that Puffy has his own dedicated goatee stylist (THIS IS TRUE!)

TWANBOC Sells Out!

Marcus at Rephlex sent me a copy of The Bug's Gun Disease EP. On the face of it an extremely generous gesture. It's smashing in red. I've painstakingly ID'd it for the CDDB.

Now in receipt of my first promotional record I am no longer a reputable source of untainted music business info. It's all payola, back-handers and bribery from here on in. (I accept all major credit cards.)

But sheriously folks, it's a great record, The Cutter's voice does NOT sound like "spent knicker elastic" (actually Old Testament gruff as opposed to Street Corner ferocious) and the production is noice noice noice. You see, you don't believe a word I say any more.......

Fashionable Reggae.

It really suprised me to hear Reynolds piping up in favour of Ragga. He's usually so self-conciously "off-the-money".

I'm not going to go into a historical protestation of who got there first, for one you've heard quite enough of the pathetic justifications of my own suavity, but also because in this instance not looking down the barrell of history (Back to Ragga in 1991) is more illuminating. Truth is someone who was tuned into Ragga two or three years ago (which as his luck would have it Simon was....you can relax big man) would stand a better chance of convincing me they were down with the programme than someone who was tuned in in the early nineties (scoffs-who wasn't!)

If you were buying Ragga two years ago, in my opinion, you would have been wasting your cash. Lloyd Bradley was on pretty safe turf in sticking the knife in it at the end of Bass Culture (no Basslines, Tut! Tut!) Though he changed his tune in time for that three part BBC Documentary on Reggae, with Elephant Man embodying the carnival-esque. Moi, at the time I was heartily sick of the lack of anything to hum along to in Dancehall, and retreated to the perfectly respectable but unadventurous habit of picking up snapshot comps, then wondering why the hell I bothered. Mo Wax's brave Ragga Dub comp fell on stony ground (yeah I'm gonna stick up for Lavelle! SO WHAT! Back off you gits!) However now, pretty suddenly, we've got loads of great tunes. A whole Bashy Culture crying out for Ragga and even Steve 'Roots' Barrow chastising us for not being hip to Lenky's Diwali. Me, I've been back at the coalface for a couple of months hewing out 7"s which I like the sound of (screw other people's reccomendations). It's bloody marvellous.

As for being self-conciously "off-the-money", this I want to explore. I'm currently so sickened by the wall of Good/Bad taste which has been erected here at the blogs that I've come *this* close to shutting down. Good/Bad taste? What's that? Good/Bad taste was Lester Bang's invention and Reynold's took the ball and ran with it. Good/Bad taste is GENUINELY liking things which infuriate your bohemian mates, half enjoying the fact that it pisses them off. Thing is, online all the disparate practioners of Good/Bad taste are able to hang-out together. Who is there to annoy! Only eachother in an ever escalating war of Good/Bad taste. I actually set out on the way to work this morning to find a copy of Smash Hits with the idea of scouring it for the most hateful looking boy-band with the express intention of scanning in their picture and writing non-ironically about how much I liked them, without recourse to comparing their lesser known B-side to The Pop Group and Jimmy Cauty's Brilliant. Just to fuck everyone off and wilfully destroy my tiny audience. In fact I would do it (threatens readers) were it not for the fact that it would just be the most arch example of Good/Bad taste ever (see Marcello on Girls Aloud!) I dunno. Where next eh! Any of the assembled masses up for a match of BrokenBeat-vs-Microhouse, bagsy be extra-long leg!

Poor old Kodwo!

If there's one thing worse than having your records burnt in a fire . It's having them nicked, as in: "Where's the body to bury?"

If I can find the Enforcers 6&7 (I know where some are) he can have them for free, the bill's on me. Such largesse! All Kodwo has to do in return is set up a blog.......(cackles)

Welcome Wire Readers!

Apparently T.W.A.N.B.O.C. is mentioned in this month’s The Wire Magazine in a micro-article. I didn’t get the full double-page spread and cover photo I usually insist on, so I’m pretty pissed off.

Added to this I’m apparently sharing the very small spotlight with an Ian Penman and Simon Reynolds (who the FUCK are these people?); a couple of interlopers riding my coat-tails that’s who!

Oh and don’t expect miracles from me. I’m already a bitter twisted burnt-out shell completely wrung dry of ideas and wholly lacking in inspiration. Make sure you close the door after you.

Lotta Continua.

I got tremendous pleasure from the Lotta Continua: Roots Music and The Politics of Production article sent to me from my dub-marxist pal John Eden. My favourite bit was this, loosely in reference to the Reggae practice of re-versioning old tracks:

“There is no ‘first time’ but only ‘again’ of certain popular tracks being played over and over on the Sound-system. Such tracks represent a peculiar nexus: not just a tryst between ‘first persons’ of the DJ and producer (an assemblage of expression), but a well-protected ‘eternal return’ whereby those participating in a living culture produce a context through which they can realise the surplus value of their living labour (an assemblage of reception). The labour of the past is therefore not squandered and wasted (the ‘murder of the dead’ of capitalist production), but re-activated on to spar with the living labour of the present. Marx understood this cultural revolutionary effect when in a letter to Ruge he wrote: “Mankind will not begin any new work, but will consciously bring about the completion of its old work”. Originality, then, as the marker of bourgeois cultural legitimation in the West becomes more than a misnomer and operates as an oppressive cultural-structuration that seeks to deter a wider-scale production of culture……”

I really felt this. Not least as someone who worries about being too Retro. In fact it’s about the best argument for Retro I’ve ever heard. I was about to join the brothers at the barricades (clutching my share portfolio) but then I slept on it.

I’m going keep my critique of this piece by Howard Slater to the points in hand. Thing is I believe the good Mr. Slater has a soft-focus perspective of how politicised roots music was. The opening tract of the article features a snippet from the film Rockers in which a record producer warns a cop about the ramifications of taking on the recording business: “Once these jokers get hungry enough to start trading without you, then you’re finished, then law and order is finished in the whole area”. Slater sees this as prima facie evidence that the Reggae Music Industry is in some way a threat to the status quo. I think he’s making the mistake of mapping too altruistic aims onto the music industry. What we’re seeing here is two competing strains of capitalism, not capitalism in competition with Marxism/Anarchism.

Sure there were strong currents of Marxism in Jamaica at the time. Prime Minister Manley told the USA to get lost (they’ve been back-pedalling ever since) and snuggled up to Castro and African Communist states like Angola. It clearly cost them the security of their economy, which was previous to this largely being propped up by a small trickle of American Investment. Manley was a crazy bastard and surely had some New Testament cosmic profile of himself, no doubt reinforced by Bob Marley who propped up the campaign trail for Manley, helping him secure the ghetto vote.

Roots music certainly did offer a space for an expression of these kind of politics. Slater pinpoints the proliferation of minor labels which got set up, quoting Burning Spear: “Although we was up against the establishment it actually wasn’t so hard, because then you didn’t have to go to one of the big studios to get your record made.” However while there were a whole heap of little labels (Dread at the Controls, Morwells Esquire, Jackpot, Rockers, Jah Life, Monicas, Negusa Nagast, Song Bird, Pantomime, Propherts, Virgonian etc) many of these were freelancers hiring other people’s studios to cut a few tunes. Glen Brown, Augustus Pablo, Big Youth, Yabby U, Jimmy Radway and even Lee Perry himself (early on) rented other big studios for sessions. And even if they did use their own studios, Willie Lindo’s outfit where Burning Spear recorded his stuff is out in the country on the north coast at Ocho Rios (been there), they would have used the usual avenues of distribution. The same record stores, big dances and radio airplay to sell their stuff.

Slater discusses stoned sessions in Lee Perry’s yard in which everyone would be expected to chuck a bit of chicken or fish in the pot with dewy-eyed sentimentality. This is not some north Italian commune! Lee Perry was a shit who would do anything to avoid paying his artists. Sure let them hang out get tree-d and fill their bellies, but that was it. The same ruthless capitalistic instincts would have been found at all the big popular profitable studios (Channel One, Bunny Lee’s, Joe Gibbs, Impact, Studio One).

One can grant a certain generosity of spirit to the string of (often talented) punters who trekked to the studio desiring to record their little tune. But by in large all the producers were, well, cunts. Certainly not riffing on utopian ideals, even mid-roots. The big producers probably saw Roots as being effectively pitched at gullible foreigners wanting to hear Black Radicalism. This doesn’t necessarily mean the recording artists didn’t believe in what they were espousing. But once the artists are as big as Marley or Burning Spear you wonder. The only Reggae producer I’ve heard anyone talk about with respect was Keith Hudson. Apparently he paid well and on time. However Keith had a profitable primary profession, as a dentist.

For me what all this boils down to is that YES in terms of the sonics (and Slater talks interestingly about the suggested politics of dub) and conveyed attitude of the lyrical content of Roots Reggae there is a good deal of utopianism. But in terms of whether Roots is “offering an example of the re-appropriation of a totality of the means of production into its different ‘specialised’ moments as a means of creating monetary value” and “is a political threat to the rule of capital for many reasons”, I’d have to say NO.

Fallacy.

Too Shabby,
Too London Bashy,
Pushed around Cars with a scratch on the chassis,
Left-hand drive with the German plates,
With the Lock broke down it just ice the cake.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fallacy’s Big N Bashy is something like a revolution. Or at least a new chapter. The man’s interviewed in the excellent free mag FWD. He says hey that’s a lot to place on one fella’s shoulders. Those lines above send shivers down my spine. Bringing back looping drives through the metropolis spliffed up in beat-up motors, (always) soon-to-be-nicked bassbins locked on hard-left.

I LOVE this track since I saw it on MTV Base, with its thrifty anamorphic-stretch DV video. Busting with hookers in shiny black leather pulling obscene dancehall moves. Our man Tubby T (gave us a coupla plum Sticky tunes on the UK Bounce tip) with his eyebrows shaved in stripes coming on all young/old with the denatured Gregory Isaacs melody line. Fallacy SO confident with Eastern Hospitality.

We KNOW bashment is a shady promotional gimmick. We KNOW Dizzy* is on a different tip- but admire the promotional crew’s chutzpah. Fake UK Platinum Rap. Too right its bloody dodgy mate. It’s a dutty street crime.

Last Eastern Connection show I caught they played not one UK Garage track. Just a fashionable pile-up of Ragga and Gangsta Soul with a likkle MC-ing on top. Why do I riff on this slowing-down of UK Rap tip? I heard a tune last November on Mystic FM (in the car) :“Slow, sounds almost like ghosts-era Japan/Yazoo with really moving inner city rap ("believe what they tell you in school, you only get one chance")” with a mnemonic “I love…” spoken riff. It was one of those alternative-futures white labels that disappears between the cracks. A garage dubplate, but that slower pace decompressed both the music and the rap. Inner-space opening out. All that’s here with the Fallacy tune (OK more Scorpio-scratch in the sample, but close, close!)

All this for £2.99 at HMV.

*Ditch the stylist mate.

Moan, Moan, Moan.

Just got a delivery in the post from John at Uncarved a wicked Ragga Roots CD (listening to it right now, no ID3 tags shame on you John!) and a fucking cool article, on what distinctly looks like paper, by a certain Howard Slater entitled "Lotta Continua: Roots Music and The Politics of Production". You think that sounds all academic and stuffy? I think it looks fucking hilariously brilliant. Check the Bibliography on the back....er fumbles to back of creased photocopy.....Walter Benjamin "Author as Producer", Graham Birtwistle "Living Art", Gilles Deleuze "Cinema Two", Pierre Klossowski "Diana at her bath", Karl Marx "The German Idealogy" (ha ha this is ferreal), and er Toni Negri "Social Struggles in Italy"...oh look also Pier Aldo Rovatti with the seductively titled "The Critique of Fetishism in Marx's Grundrisse". Just wait till I get this to The Weathered Rock of Stratford.

I'm always slagging off The Wire for being all high-brow and ivory tower. I've actually been begging them for work recently. It's all envy and jealousy I tell you. I'd kill for Philip Sherburne's job. In fact I'd probably kill Phil for his job. They're either ignoring me or they just are completely fucking oblivious of me. There's no shortage of people who want to talk about music, go to a pub for chrissakes! I'll bet Peter Shapiro's tripped round the blogs, he's such a net-head, and maybe he's been over here. Hi Pete! (empty echoing room) Don't mind me prating on like this! Anyway the last thing The Wire need is another mouthy personality-obsessed tea-boy. I'm probably better on the fringes, an amateur journo forever (cries into expensive freshly squeezed carrot and apple presse) Anyone recall one Sylvestre Balastrade who they let loose on reviews for a while? Ahem. The general point being the particular axe I grind with The Wire is this: They used to survey the whole landscape from atop a mountain, and currently they manage a little macrobiotic organic farm on the estuary. I'd like a bit more theory like Ian Penman espouses chez lui. I don't think that should preclude learning about a wider more interesting field of music. Indeed theory, if used well, can help socially-incapacitated over-educated bourgeous losers like us all to grasp the dynamics which affect society. Kind of like electro-shock therapy. Or Wilhelm Reich manipualting bodies.

To return to John's package. What great people out here! Followed a link yesterday and found Dave Mandl's Psygeocon Forum which if you've read my Cary Grant comic (Luke was alluding to it, and i guess it's on-topic, being largely about music) you'll know I'd find interesting. There's alot of new blogs sprouting up, and as a self-confessed amateur who enjoys the opportunity to talk openly with the pros, I'd like to say that I'd be sad if some of these other big$hots don't feel the need to DISCUSS. Hey not with ME! On the other hand maybe that's just my tip (I've been critcised for it before) and maybe blogs are more suited to monomaniacal rants. Maybe if you want to get messy and greet the natives you should go to a chat-room. Is it a diary? Is it a bar?

Hey John I can see why you borrowed that Half Pint "Political Friction" from your mate Danny!

Black Dog Story.

Quite soon after I put out this photocopied comic in record stores in 1996, I was the grateful recipient of His Royal Canine's generosity. Consequently I have the missing pieces I didn't then. Check the recent TBD stuff and Ken's lively boards.....it's all good!

In Defense of Simon Reynolds.

I promise I will get tired of shadowing Reynolds. Please no one flame me. I have a weak heart. Jess, keep it to yourself.

Reynolds on the other hand has the hide of a rhinocerous. I’d really suffer if Nick Southall laid into me like that. For that matter, if any chap who didn’t know better laid into me like that. Not that Nick doesn’t know better. Reynolds seems to find the whole thing jolly amusing and really rather stimulating (takes off his half-moons etc). He actually didn’t seem to find it necessary to outright defend himself, just paced round his high-backed leather armchair, leant with his back to the roaring hearth (twirling aforementioned specs).

Remember how Wire got sick of being asked to perform their early tracks? They hired as their opening act a dedicated covers band called ex-Lion Tamers who played all their early numbers (note-for-note) before they came on. Do I have to spell this out for you? I’ve gone through Nick’s salient points and done a point-by-point riposte. I would smooth this out into a bit of sparkling prose if I thought it would be any more interesting to read:

--------------------------------------

1) Simon Reynolds think's Prefuse 73 is crap. Simon Reynolds says that Ludacris "creams [Prefuse 73] on just about every front, including riddimological invention."

Yeah poor old Scott! While I bet he could do with with Ludacris’s lucre, he isn’t short of people telling him how bloody great he is. Ludacris on the other hand could do with a little back massage from clever folks.

---------------------

2) That bit about Reynolds being as keen as Freud to pigeon-hole stuff.

I weep. I thought it was only musicians who complained about being pigeonholing (on and on and on and on and on and on).

---------------------

3) What’s wrong with music without sociological relevance?

No such thing as music without sociological relevance. It’s so easy to be blind to one’s own implicitly-held bourgeois agenda.

---------------------

4) That bit where Nick says Simon’s patronising with his “Hope lies with the Proles” approach.

Er, desire criss-crossing social, racial and class boundaries. Champagne in the dancehall. Folks with gold vomit stains sown into their jeans. U2 dragging their leather jackets out of the back of their Cadillac. Blah blah blah.

---------------------

5) Simon wouldn’t like it because it’s a white guy doing arty hip-hop.

Er, Ardkore being mix-race. He did like the Recloose LP!

---------------------

6) Black music beyond tampering by those with privelleged backgrounds.

Well it is a bit naughty!

--------------------------------------

Yeah well Prefuse are OK. I did like the Phoenecia stuff on Schematic more (different crew, same square root). I had a secret history mapped out for them (which I know they were riffing on) via Miami Bass like DJ Battlecat’s DJ N Effect, Ladi Luv’s Good to the last (Dub) and Dynamix II’s Purple Beats. That Miami Bass stuff is pure Techno. Dave Tompkins might have spotted it but (maybe?) he’s too myopic a hip-hop head.

As for Ludacris, well nothing did it better for me than Southern Hospitality.

Feedback Loop.

My mate Jon's been telling me he doesn't hear what I do in UK Garage Rap. Hey, Jon's entitled to his opinion! Some folks, however, are not. Truth is things are extremely quiet in the record stores, which is causing snearing foreigners to say "Where's your revolution?" On the other hand it's buzzing on the airwaves. I'm going to tackle this subject in two parts.

A few hundred posts ago I made a comment bemoaning UK Rap's lack of "slabs of art", that's to say recorded pieces. Since I made the equation between ART and VINYL I've been beating myself with a rubber hosepipe. Daily. True ART is often too spontaneous, site-specific and amorphous to fit within the grooves of a record. This is why I tend to prefer studio recordings that conciously exploit the recording process (If it aint alive, it might as well be perfectly stuffed). My most treasured musical experiences have always happened beyond the stifled relationship between me and the record deck. From evening choirs simultaneously accordant across Dakar at night, to sweaty nutters on whistles and busking Ghanaian Mbira players in the tube. The Pirate Crews shows and their mess of magic and chaos exist at the same life axis.

There ARE a lack of MC Records. The only two really hot ones right now being Donaeo's Bounce and The Surgery's Shott the Weed, both on Social Circles, rapidly shaping up to be the new Suburban Base. There are great new riddims from Big$hot, Menta, Slimzee, Dizzy, Wizzbit, DJ Marsta and Wiley but little new MC stuff. Luke thinks this is because everything is going to go wild in the summer, maybe.... My friends at the shops say it's because no crew will play another crews MC record on their show. The stores, which mainly supply the DJs on the pirates, can't sell MC records. It explains why Dizzy's using his rep to put out instrumentals. The only MC records which are getting played are HUGE tunes by famous collectives like Roll Deep who everyone respects. It's WAR.

In truth, despite paragraph two, this is pretty fucking spastic. Because everyone is being so small minded the scene is stuck on the pirates. My mates tell me this is a new-ish development (six months old) and yes look at the incredible amount of MC stuff that came out last year. What this should give all you folks (who can't pick it up on your FM dial) is an idea of the hugely explosive nature of the movement and also it's true immaturity. It's not gone away (it never will, its going to be MASSIVE) it's just in pressure-cooker mode. What happens next is anyone's guess...

Animal Collective at the Rough Trade Shop.

Download here.

O Bigmac.

Laurie Anderson has been working in McDonalds for the past six months. How cool is that?

Grinding Axes.

A couple of people have asked me why I've slightly slagged off Herbert's LP. I'll be brief:

1) I haven't heard it.

2) The recording of the band in all these sort of projects is bad. Think dcBasehead, Copkiller, The KLF Milennium remix or Herbert's last LP. The drums sound so weak. Dance folk have been spoilt rotten with beautifully recorded breaks and can't record their own stuff for toffee. The craft just aint there.

3) With my (crap) Big Band Cut-Up Idea I was imagining people were going to sample all the old stuff. Mixology. Virtuality. Sonic Collage. All that kit. Actually recording a band seems dull. Sorry. When the Junglists went on about getting their hands on Symphony Orchestras we all fell out of our trees laughing. Dance music is interesting because it's a cheap fake.

4) When I DJed a Private Party attended by the Herbert last year, I embarassed myself by clearing the floor playing old Ardkore. I blame him (not). Holding court at the back of the room like a low-rent Eno (they even look alike, no?) Dani was nice though. Kept hustling me for R&B, luckily I could oblige......
5) I love Herbert's stuff. Just not so keen on the REAL things.

Sooth.

He’s a crafty old bastard that Reynolds. Tell me the future he says. If I do, can I get an A&R job Simon?

The blissed-out one’s idea of an update of his points-to-the-future article in The Lime Lizard in 1994 has put me in a right spin. Do I ignore the entry (as in: “I’m not telling you!”) but then risk looking the copyist when his collation is exactly the same as mine would have been? Do I trust him to accurately credit my ideas? (Paranoid as ever) Will he be upset if…….I dunno? Do I want to be strong-armed into laying all my best cards on the table anyway?

After thinking long and hard on the matter I’ve decided that I would blog up here my responses. That way no one will be under the impression that any of this comes from him (So difficult to escape your shadow oh master!) Also I’m hoping (raises eyes to the skies and gives supplication) that what was once full, and which thus is rendered empty will again be filled anew. Also, now we’re talking stocks and shares, If I big up my own collection, it can only increase it’s own worth (I’m as crafty as the best of them!) My only restraint here being that I’m not going to name names in many cases, only genres. It’s getting to easy for all you eBay/Gemm jockeys.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

MY 1994 POINTERS:
As a general rule the following prove that it’s never a good idea to believe that culture is capable of much imagination, and that in my case (and please forgive this little arrogance) it’s better to assume that my own tastes are going to be everyone else’s in ten years time. (I know, I know, horrible to say, but in this instance it’s true):

WHAT I SAID:

1) BIG BAND CUT UP.
Now no laughing in the back! I pitched this to every man and his dog. People on the tube. Strangers in the park. I saw some kind of collision happening between Ellington (one of my heroes), Ra and Hip-Hop/Dance Music. Actually the new Herbert album proves me to be a little “on” here as I guess do The Cinematic Orchestra and a few Coldcut things. However all of these are decidedly dreadful and perfect examples of being careful what you wish for.

2) SONGWRITING IN DANCE MUSIC.
Ask Simon. I was hitting him with this ages ago (now buried somewhere in an EEC Mountain size deluge of emails probably). Slightly came to fruition with The Beta Band, Badly Drawn Boy (which went horribly wrong just before the LP, which actually I like in a Nick Drake-y kind of way), Leila (oh no!), Shantel and even The Horrorist (c/o Reynolds)

WHAT I WAS LISTENING TO:

1) POST-PUNK
A Director I worked for gave me his entire record collection (10 boxes, cos I asked, amazing!) It was a perfect time capsule of 1979-1983 full of both hip stuff (Ze, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Zapp, late B52s, Vivien Goldman, The Associates) and okey doke not bad stuff (Fun Boy Three, Kid Creole, Imagination, Lynx). It mashed up nicely with the Tricky Kid/Massive Attack stuff I was listening too, and really made me dig up my own Post-Punk collection (to give you an idea, 10 of the tracks of Launderette were stuff I owned well before this)

2) AFRICAN MUSIC
That’s a whole other story. One day (maybe in November when I’m off this course) I’m gonna give you the full Director’s cut. We’ll call it “Africa” month.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

OK you smart-arsed git, I hear you saying, that was probably all complete bollocks. We don’t trust you, you, you slimy turd! If you’re so f****** clever tell us where it’s all going to go next, without going crying to your so-called-friend Simon “Celebrity Journalist” Reynolds and cribbing his stuff you pathetic clone. (And you think some people are harsh on me, listen to my inner voice!)

--------------------------------

COME IN YOUR TIME IS UP:

First of all lets mop up:

1) Arthur Russell: A god of course, but bled dry with the exception of reissues of scraps (I have these and they’re not worthy of your attention) and The Tower of Meaning and Instrumentals LPs (the word boring springs to mind).
2) Ardkore: Sad to say but……..
3) Terry Callier: Enough folk-isms already!
4) Lee Perry: There are so many other brilliant Jamaican Roots Producers. Give Lee a rest.
5) The Velvet Underground: The greatest band ever (of course!) but now giving too much weight to diverse stuff like Tony Conrad’s re-hashes, endless Angus MacLise re-issues (I had a MacLise poem read at my wedding, but you know one LP would do), Lou Reed projects and by extention the eighth wave of Velvet’s copyists (now on a minimalist tip).
6) Musique Concrete.
7) David Axelrod.

--------------------------------

LIFE IN THE OLD DOG YET:

1) Post-Punk
2) Disco.

--------------------------------

THE TRAIN IS LEAVING THE STATION.

Retro revivals gathering steam:

1) Blissed Out: Poor old Reynolds, he’s been dreading this. Just look at the cover of the new Jockey Slut, I quote: ”My Bloody Valentine. How the wall of sound space-rockers have shaped today.”
2) Early Dancehall: Soul Jazz have decided early Dancehall is now dead enough to be safe for clod-hopping Beatniks.

--------------------------------

……….IS THE NEW NIGERIA/ETHIOPIA

OK you’ve got the Strut (RIP) Comps and the Shrine Comps and the Fela Kuti Box Sets and the entire Etiopiques series etc etc

1) Mali
2) Guinea
3) Zimbabwe
4) South Africa
Cloudy heads will be unlikey to latch onto the sweet gentle music of the Congo, Senegal and Madagascar. They like it dark, hard and weird.

--------------------------------

……IS THE NEW BRAZIL
Argentina.

--------------------------------

RETRO DANCE.

OK so you’ve found all those old Ardkore records….now what?

1) Early UK Garage.
Time marches on…
2)) Late Chicago.
After Acid, before Relief.
3) Gloomcore.
This one is going to keep fingers dusty!
4) Early New York House.
As per my entry in the Gangsta Techno thing.

--------------------------------

SO HIP MY FINGERS ACHE TYPING IT

1) Vanity 6 and early Prince
2) Bleep’n’Bass
3) The Associates
4) The Minutemen
5) Glen Brown
6) Gil Evans (toss away your Ra!)
7) Early Einsturzende Neubauten.
8) Early 80s Conny Plank (I have a new cache of this stuff, snicker….)
9) Rock on 99 Records (as in NOT dance)
10) Francois Rabbath
11) Harry Hosono.
12) The Black Dog (the early work, am gonna work on Ken to get this reissued)
13) DJ Premier
14) Egyptian Lover
15) Juice Box
16) Retroactive
17) Field Recordings (the height of capitalist-commodity-feitishisation-sickness i know!)
18) Bollywood
19) Classical Music
etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc

--------------------------------

WHO I WILL ALWAYS HOLD IN THE HIGHEST ESTEEM DESPITE THEIR ENDLESS FLOGGING TO DEATH AT THE QUALITY END OF THINGS/PERENNIALS:

1) Jimi Hendrix (as I was saying to Michelangelo the other day…..)
2) Can
3) Neu
4) La Monte Young (How art thou guru?)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

How do I feel? Naked! Spent! Fragile! In need of a stiff drink! I’ve held a bit back just so I can go, aaah but that was one of the things I didn’t mention. There are also going to be things I’ve completely forgotten about, I’ve only been fairly rigorous putting this together. I only hope all you other saddos are as generous to Reynolds with your nest-eggs as I’ve been and so I get some shit back in return. As I was whingeing to Tim, it’s all give-give-give at TWANBOC!

Phew!

It's bloody lucky I didn't go that night. Not only would I have narrowly missed being shot (ahem), I also would have had to sit through a whole evenings R&B. Luka says that Nu Skool changed venues at the last minute. I would have been down the front with my Time Out guide to UK Garage, Binoculars and Notepad all night tutting. Lisa Mafia is the UK's Jennifer Lopez innit.

Local Violence.

I was *this* close to going to this party. I saw this flyer in the back of RWD mag which I picked up from Rhythm Division. It was just down the round (I live off Old Street) and had a great line-up (Roll Deep. FULL ENTOURAGE!). Luckily I was in Glasgow.

Look what happened!........There are still big yellow notices up on the bridge at the foot of the Clerkenwell Road and Theobald's Road requesting people come forward to report any info about Jason Fearon's shooting. Very ghoulish.This weirdly local situation was compounded to by the fact that The Guardian's offices, who report on it, are about 50 yards from Turnmills. Gangsta is a scary horrible thing. One day, after years of glorifying sonic violence, I'm gonna get my come-uppance. Where's that Avant-Folk CD?

Infectious Enthusiast.

As a general rule of thumb my only criterion for pursuing a particular avenue of music is that I discover people enthusing over it. It's not that I'm incapable of drawing lines between disparate musics (well I have a good crack) but that tends to come afterwards. Enthusisasm is infectious. If you ask 10 people what their favourite record was, and you went out and hunted out those records, respective of genre you'd come back from safari with 10 great interesting records.

Which brings me to my colleague Jay at Agony Shorthand. Jay seems to occupy a parrallel universe to me. I dig many of his reference points: Wire, Crime, Minutemen, Pussy Galore, The Birthday Party, Numbers and the Blues. Jay has a very defined aesthetic, kind of Post-Rock without studio frippery. I can tell he's someone who is open-minded. Actually I bet he thinks the same of me, that I'm on some particular tip. I'd like to swallow Jay whole, that's to say engulf his influences in my own (guiltily: Isn't that what everyone does?), or write him off as anachronistic (I've too much respect for his passions to do so).

If we're going to break this down culturally I'd say that Jay is someone of the Joe Carducci school. I'll bet Jay has absolutely no truck with "Dance" music or its spawn. He'd probably disagree. I imagine he thinks I'm of the Simon Reynold's Academy. I'd have to completely disagree with that. Preposterous suggestion!

The Other.

“All three of Lewiston’s Bali albums contain versions of kecak (pronounced ‘ket-chak’), the percussive chant of massed male voices which is the island’s musical signature in the minds of many listeners. Though kecak accompanies a depiction of a battle scene from the Ramayana epic, it is of comparatively recent vintage. Kecak’s first appearance in the 1930’s was inspired by a German artist named Walter Spies. According to Lewiston, “He noted the tendency of moneyed visitors of the day, such as Charlie Chaplin, to zone out when presented with an all-night recital of shadow puppetry or dance. Spies suggested to his Balinese friends that a condensed piece that was representative of the island’s arts might go over with greater success, He was fascinated with the ‘chak’ chorus of sanghyang dedari, a ritual in which two prepubescent girls entered trance states and became spirit vessels for heavenly maidens.” So it was that a dance of exorcism featuring a crowd of 200 men arrayed in concentric circles, hunched over in imitation of monkeys became simultaneously one of the islands most accessible and thrilling musical experiences.” Richard Henderson excerpt form an article on the Nonesuch Explorer series The Wire May 2003.

Richard Henderson is no slouch. He has a great handle on the genre of field recordings. However in the re-telling of this story (which I’ve heard before) he doesn’t really go for the jugular. The essence of the tale is of the foreigner re-fashioning another culture’s musical heritage with the express intention of giving the tourists what they really want. It’s when set against the backdrop of colonialism and “The Other” that the story gets its pungency. The music of Bali is generally very polite “ultra-culture”. However, the 1930s tourists (and presumably those since) want to see a “primitive” culture. The Balinese obliged and redesign an innocent sounding piece (two prepubescent girls singing in hocket) into a Hollywood-esque “bones-through-the-nose” monkey dance starring 200 men. In consequence the foreigners get their fix of the Heart of Darkness.

I’m actually not so cynical as to view Walter Spies as an exploiter, a vicious 1st World manipulator. I believe the Balinese saw the remake as an effective way of stimulating the tourist trade. Although on the other hand it’s reminiscent of other German interventions like Fritz Lang’s obscure homo-erotic Gaugin-esque South Seas movie “Tabu” (the photos of the Balinese dance in question have a strong art-deco look too!), Leni Riefenstahl’s portraits of the Nubians, and er…..the invasion of Poland.*

Reading the story again made me flash on one of the other great head-turners of field recording lore, which in conjunction with the Balinese story will tell you more than you’ll ever need to know about culture, authenticity and desire. It’s from a recording made by Colin Turnbull who, along with David Lewsiton, was one of the great British ethnomusicologists, entitled Music of the Rain Forest Pygmies of the North-East Congo. I’m going to quote from the sleevenotes:

“The single recording of the Twa pygmoids, south of the Ituri, in the Kivu mountains, is a final example of acculturation at its most unexpected. With the help of a Watussi friend, I located some of the Twa, who long ago had common origins with the Mbuti of the Ituri. Their music however was almost pure Watussi. After pleading for a really old song, one of the great religious songs of the past, an ancient lady finally agreed, but with hesitation, saying it was so old and highly sacred.” To the tune of Oh My Darling Clementine.

*Hey we invaded Iraq!

Sinking Links TM.

These would all be permanent if I could figure out how to do it:

Blissblog The Don! Had enough props yet this week? Just tell me when to stop ;-)
Heronbone Freaky Styley my Bredda!
Astronaut's Notepad Watch out for Jon's imminent Associates Piece!
Church of Me Marcello kicks arse (as always) with KLF diatribe! More is more!
The Pillbox Cats and Semiotics!
Uncarved Chaos The Crusty Dub Webring! Yikes!
Shard, Fragments, Totems Paul Meme you is (not) a dutty bastad!
Bassnation Great mixes care of Marky D!
Sufi Bismillah Raxmani Rahim!
Spizzazzz Lil' Missy Mack you slinky little thing!
Skykicking I is watching you! No slacking! Nuff excuses!
Needledrops Looking forward to the CD Phil! Dare you to link GT from Critical Beats!.....(pant pant)

Corrections.

John Eden has pointed out that Paul St.Claire is..............wait for it.................Tikiman. Which, looking at it in a positive light, shows just how "on-the-money" I am (ahem).

More seriously I chanced across a very YARD 1985 Daddy Freddy LP today called "The Party is Fine" production by Gussie P and Junior Delgado on Incredible Records. The Fredster, to whom I clearly owe an apology, has written beside his name "Guinness Book of Records Talker". I should like to see Norris McWhirter's entry.

Finally I neglected to mention one of my other fave chapters in the crusty-dub history. A neglected LP by a very white sounding bunch called DigiDub titled "South of the River Thames". It had a ropey looking silkscreened cover and must have been an edition of 1000. I sold it ages ago. At points the record had the same YMO chinois-dubby feel that Prince Jammy gets on Computerised Dub.

Crusties laugh last.

World Domination Enterprises: “Lets Play Domination”.

For me that’s the pinnacle of anarcho-squat artistry. This 1988 LP popped recently into my head by way of personal recollection of hustling my way backstage to meet The Doms in the late eighties. It’s cover, a boardroom style montage of the band in acid-house neon, was put together by artist Slim Smith. Maybe a pseudonym derived from the Studio One crooner, either way squarely hinting at the perennial adherence to Reggae of those folk with dogs on strings. I actually saw a show of Slim Smith’s at a squat warehouse art happening in Camden a few years later. Low Production values were in evidence.

I’m in no way trying to kick start the “blissed-out” revival by foisting this on you. That’s the league of A.R.Kane, Loop and My Bloody Valentine that, yes, Reynolds was championing back-in-the-day, although if my memory serves me correctly Simon had World Dom pegged as “Arsequake” his brilliant coterie of artists employing sphincter-rupturing bass frequencies, top of the chart being, natch, The Butthole Surfers. Indeed, I’m gonna remind him here (he’s such a tirelessly voracious modernist that I bet he never checks his back-pages) that he once reviewed a live show World Dom did at a tube station. I think I dropped my rattle after reading the review.

Actually this record is the Grandaddy of the kind of squat Jungle/Ardkore/Ragga mash-up practised by DJ Scud and his crew (check last years Roots, Rock, Ravers EP) and now The Bug (Kevin Martin’s avant-ragga record which this piece is also an arse-about-tit review of). Lets Play Domination was light years ahead of it’s time. Sure there were other crusties on the dub tip, the awful Rhyth-mites (way too straight a reading fellows) and if you went to On-U gigs you found the audience was 95% white rastas drinking cider; but World Dom deep-fried their riddims in white noise till the edges went crispy, taking the Metal Box template and stripping the P.I.L. collage of any ironic post-modernism, serving it up as headfuck noize for its own sake. Actually maybe they had more common with The Ruts, more straight-forward barrelling. That’s just what Scud does, yunnuh mash-up the place to mentasm-tastic bad ass bass.

There’s a hell of a lot more to the record than dub. Lots of covers got fed into the blender, U.Roy’s “Jah Jah call you”, L.L.Cool J’s “I can’t live without my Radio” (my secret party trick is that I can deliver this whole track, stand me on the table with the salt and pepper and make me sing for my supper) and Lipps Inc’s ace “Funkytown”. However unlike Will and Gareth, Keith Dobson could also pen crackers like Asbestos Lead Asbestos. But mainly it’s the SOUND. Denatured disembowled grumbling out-of-tune bass, skeetering rattling rolling drums all topped with post-Gang-of-Four/Chic ice cold chicken-scratch feedback guitar. Naturally Keith’s troubled vocals got lashings of echo, though listen to the studio masters (no I haven’t……….yet) and you still can’t understand entirely what he’s saying, he’s gargling mice. They did a live dub LP after this “Love from Lead City”, which my bro had a copy of.

Which brings me to The Bug’s “Pressure”, in which I detect a touch of the free-festival. Firstly check John Eden’s great interview with Kevin here. Straight up I like the fact that Martin is totally aware that this is NOT a real ragga record. Indeed the cast of chatters is (to be very cruel) a bunch of “renta-raggas”. I used to have that Daddy Freddy/Asher D LP on Profile and also the Daddy Freddy LP in red and yellow (matched the wall-paper). Freddy had the reputation of being the fastest ragga chatter in the world at one stage. That’s like Alvin Lee of Ten Year’s After being the celebrated as the fastest guitarist in the world. Completely missing the point. Daddy Freddy was always a fusioneer, never really a chatter from the yard. His other fusion stuff? Well he did Daddy Freddy’s Echo Chamber with Beats International (Norman Cook’s pre-Fatboy Slim outfit) which I used to play out pre-ragga-jungle, I used to like that track. Though even then (and actually I wince when I admit this, cos it shows what an absolutely pathetic hipster I was even then) I tippexed the Beats International logo off the front of the 12” ha, ha. He also contributed to the Mango Volume 2 Ragga Hip-Hop record. Well Freddy’s up for this project with Kevin, and I think (uncruelly) he’s well cut out for the job because clearly Martin needed to rely on open-minded contributors. The others, Roger Robinson, Toastie Taylor, Paul St.Hilaire, Wayne Lonesome etc I’ve never heard of. This is because no-one has heard of them. But they do a bloody good job. Apparently Martin’s got something lined up with Cutty Ranks (giggle at John going “Fuck!”), but in truth Cutty’s vocal chords are like spent knicker elastic these days (though I wouldn’t say that to his face, wink). I bet the Cutter is more open to UK producers than most, after all his massive “Stopper” was the work of the UK-based Fashion imprint.

The real point is that AT LAST someone has had the guts and brains to do a Ragga influenced record. Shit I was gonna have to roll up my sleeves, get personal with Pro-Tools and record my own bloody one. See we’ve had (since P.I.L’s Metal box in 1979) nearly 25 years of art rock influenced by reggae and not a single attempt to get to grips with Ragga. And you know what a lot of that fake Reggae has been bloody brilliant, and doesn’t in the least detract from the original. Kev’s riddims are extremely interesting, and he’s totally upfront about them not being “for real”. I’m only hammering away at this because this is the first hurdle suckers are gonna have to leap. He’s actually grasped how Ragga’s rhythmic inflection differs from Reggae’s. Well done mate.

While I’m trying to draw a line between this and the World Dom record, the best tracks on Pressure are actually not in-yer-face at all, but rather quiet, nodding and slinky. There’s a strong influence here of the Rhythm & Sound Tikiman stuff. Tikiman was also another “renta-ragga” and those 10’ EPs differed by sticking to digi-dub as a rhythmic template, but you know what, I loved them. It’s a hipster’s escape clause to say something works better as something else (Undie as Art-Rock, etc) but when the artist in question (ex- God rocker and the perpetrator of Techno-Animal’s Re-Entry) is clearly a bit of an old shapeshifter then I think it’s excusable. So here it is the best Techno record you’re gonna hear all year.

Where have all the nutters gone?

But seriously? Where'd they go? Nowadays I feel like gay men must have felt in 1979. Glam had melted all those boundaries down and Bowie was confessing to liking blokes on the side and cross-dressing was practically de rigeur. I saw that terrible TOTP2 the other night and there was this bloke from Mud who looked like a miner………in a pink chiffon dress. The Gays must have found Punk OK, get to dress as a cockatoo, that’s nice. But circa 1979 and mid-Joy Division miserabila, long grey overcoats and the cold-war fetish they must have been like: Where did all the queers go? OK I’m wheeling out the clichés, (smacks own wrist) but you know I’m making sense.

So where DID the nutters go? When I was a little smug bastard I used to like the alternative (indie) press (Melody Maker and to a lesser extent NME) and the bands and the scene because I identified with this picture of society in a mirror. I looked up to and sought out people like Thomas of Pere Ubu (who I introduced myself as a 16-year-old, in a T-shirt with my name on it), Wire (ditto on crutches!), The Butthole Surfers (aged 17 at Brixton Academy when someone tried to sell me a passport), Alex Chilton (who I gave my illustrations for The Lovesong of Alfred J.Prufrock aged 17), World Domination Enterprises (aged 17 brushing past Flea of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, asking him for directions to the World Dom dressing room, ha ha still makes me laugh) and Mark Stewart (19 backstage at Glasgow Barrowlands, Keith LeBlanc taptapping on his digi-pads beside him, Mark head-in-hands unable to look up, tangled in some shockingly intense mental trauma, greeting me without looking up) These people all seemed to openly endorse INSANITY as a perfectly (un)acceptable means of being. Crazy was cool. It was wild. It was interesting. It was fun.

I used to love those larger than life stories, you know, Skip Spence crossing the US on a motorbike in his pyjamas, before proceeding to attack his manager with a chainsaw. Al Green shooting rats with a sawn-off mid interview. Brian Wilson making his band record in a sand-pit wearing firemans helmets. Er......I was going to say Phil Spector, but that didn't have a happy ending. These tales make me laugh, although I'm quite aware they sometimes shear off into tragedy.

On reflection things had started to get a bit tidier in Indie by the time I tuned in. The insane element was mainly a hangover from the nutters of the late 60s and 70s, those times when it was almost fashionable to ingest vast quantities of drugs, and when the already edge-of-losing-it folks went off the edge. You know the folks; people like Syd Barrett, Wild Man Fischer, Captain Beefheart, Brian Wilson, Lee Perry, Iggy Pop and all the Krautrockers. This is Sunday Supplement shit nowadays. Tee fucking Hee. Many of the above figures who I introduced myself too (what was I thinking?) were 70s figures still trucking their shit around. It always amazes me that in 1987 Pere Ubu’s The Modern Dance (a big touchstone for me) was 10 years old, that seemed like a pre-historic recording to me. Look back 10 years now, 1993. Feels like the other day (wink).

Actually for the nutters Dance music was the way forward. There the outsider values of LUNACY got a big thumbs up. We all had friends who lost it on the cocktail of LSD and MDMA. Nutty was just fine with Ardkore. Actually I never trusted my fragile psyche with the hard drugs. I WATCHED raving happen to my mates. I only did MDMA once (didn’t like it) but hijacked the party by smoking copious amounts of dope. Funnily enough I only truly interfaced with rave culture much more later on when the party decelerated and the zeitgeist itself was stoned (Jungle, Tricky, the RZA). Some of the truly important figures of Rave/Techno wore MENTAL like a badge. The KLF for one. I met Jimi Cauty with Ken Downie, post-million quid burning, at the Olympia exhibition centre in his tank equipped with sonic stun gun, which he’d used to incapacitate cattle. Nuff said. The Black Dog too, Ken’s first photo-shoot he did in a straight-jacket and that’s just scratching the surface. Tricky. And madness wasn’t just at the polite end of things. Ray the bass-player from AR Kane, who now runs a stall in Spitalfields market selling Drum and Bass (he said “Hi Simon”) told me, that Danny Breaks told him, that Winston “Run Tings” Meikle is in an asylum now- that’s a fucking shame.

We all know that music and madness are pretty much horse and carriage. Mozart NUTTER! Stockhausen NUTTER! (Read his brilliant Towards a Cosmic Music). John Coltrane NUTTER! (Sorry Jazzniks, there’s no getting away from it). Some of my fave writers have tackled the subject really well. Simon Reynolds in conversation with, I think, Achim “Mille Plateaux” Szepanski on the subject of auditory hallucinations induced by the white noise in Ardkore. Also David Toop, who explores the subject in tremendous detail in Ocean of Sound with regards to the musics of Brian Wilson and Lee Perry, suggesting of both of them that they were driven crazy by the quest to materialise the music in their heads. It seems like the symbiotic relationship between music and madness could only have been accelerated by the disembodying effect of the record-player (that’s Wireless for the older readers). You’re literally hearing voices.

Some of the greatest writers on music have also walked this thin line. Ben Watson, who runs the interesting Militant Esthetix site, and who was Frank Zappa’s official auto-biographer also runs an organisation called M.A.D. (they throw punky gigs, have a manifesto, lobby parliament) which to be honest with you I feel has the whiff of Bedlam about it. Madness as an organisational principle, are these people crazy? But you know, good work I guess! Another very famous writer on music (not mentioned beforehand in this article, who will remain nameless, but has written openly on the subject in the press) talked of “taking a walk on the Moebius loop to the soundtrack of John Martyn’s One World” Nice choice of music mate.

Anyway, I ain’t bonkers. I’m a little crazy (yee-hah!), but there’s plenty of it in my family I can tell you. I bet there’s a little in your family too. An uncle who’s swept under the rug. A cousin no-one mentions. But that’s just it with culture right now. It’s so squeaky-clean. Unreal. The figures for people on Anti-Depressants these days are shocking. I bet madness is bigger and badder than it ever was, and I’m sure this “pretty picture” society we live in only makes it WORSE for people. They don’t feel like they have a home, no little culturally-endorsed backwater. They feel their craziness is UNACCEPTABLE. If we’d all only open up and BREATHE. It’s more healthy like that.

That Dizzy Rascal though, he’s reassuringly "edge-of", and maybe D.E.E from Nasty Crew too, who’s gaining the reputation of being the Biz Markie of UK Garage (you can’t hear it on the records yet). Reynolds pointed out the Glossollalia thing a while back, this speaking-in-tongues on the pirate airwaves, that could be a promising thing. Lets hope everyone can hang on to their hats. A bit crazy=Good. Too crazy=Winston Meikle.

Spring-cleaning.

Bit of spring-cleaning here:

1) 154 Downloads of the Gangsta Techno Mix (Yay!) I hope people liked it. Seemed to go down well. Will do something dissimilar soon-ish

2) In case you missed it, have a good laugh at me squirming here.

3) As a general note, folks should know that I NEVER heard of the *almighty* Animal Collective before I read it on Blissblog.

4) Thanks to Jon at Astronauts' Notepad for being so good-humoured. Mate, I've suffered for years with all my mates slagging off Jungle. This criticism thing is a bitch sometimes.....

5) Thanks to Luka for being a rock. And not minding me biting his style ;-)

6) Big piece on Jennifer Lopez in the works........so stay tuned.

Peace and Love.

Stores.

In total agreement with Simon over Rough Trade. I do rely on them enormously for that central body of music (indie-tronica+++) and they are generally pretty catholic. But YES no UK Garage! Simon cites the work of Paul Kennedy at Tower NYC; over here the only people (outside the small coterie of Planet Phat, Rhythm Division, Uptown and Blackmarket) who dealt with it were another flexi-giant, HMV on Oxford Street- but they've since dropped the ball.

In Rough Trade's favour Darren in Covent Garden (who I hit in person with my URL last Friday, if you're reading this mate, hi!) does stock Ragga, which is almost foolhardy in the face of market forces. I mean how many people really buy it? However, I'm a little imp when it comes to things like this, and (not wanting to overturn any apple-carts here, HEAVEN FORBID!) should Rough Trade start stocking UKG I'd probably take it as a sign of that scene's imminent collapse. Certainly I think I only ever bought a very few Jungle records from them.

And while I'm on the "react-to-reynolds-tip" have been mulling over this 70% thing (safe within the walls of a secure mental institution). There must be a point at which these scenes (UKG and Hip-Hop) become severed from their hot plastic mass and float like bubbles in a Mathmos lamp to the surface. That's the point when they stop being "real" in a sense and start to "project". Maybe that's also the point when HIP institutions (like Rough Trade) start to stock their stuff. Though certainly I'd have to tie myself up in theoretical knots to figure out how Platinum rap fitted into this equation.