(Fade up. Somewhere in the middle of Carlin's 500 questions for music bloggers. Ingram spotlight in large leather armchair, mostly shielding face.)
C: Which NME jounalist famously remarked that he preferred a Tight Fit single to Led Zepellin's third album?
I: (Grips forehead). Pass.
C: Who sang (rather cheekily: "Jack? I'd rather Fleetwood Mac!"?
I: (Face brightens.) Oh yes I know this. The Reynolds Girls.
(Audience sighs, coughs, shuffles.)
C: (Drolly) Bringing your score up to 6. Gothic plainchant chanteuse Kirkby and pop siren Bunton share this first name. What is it?
I: Pass.
C: Which svengali was behind the maverick ZTT label who released recordings by artists such as Propaganda, Art of Noise and Frankie Goes to Hollywood?
I: Er. Oh shit! It's on the tip of my tongue.
C: I'm going to have to press you Matty Lad.
I: Ian Penman?
C: Wrong answer. The correct answer is of course Paul Morley.
I: (Tuts.)
C: Which former British free-jazz singer coached the Spice Girls?
I: Pass.
C: What is a "punctum"?
I: Oh hell, you were talking about this recently... I'm sorry, pass.
C: Who wrote the excellent "Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City" ?
I: Pass.
C: On which Roy Harper LP did Linda and Paul McCartney sing backing vocals?
I: Pass. (mumbles to himself). Not doing well here.
C: Which artist recorded LPs entitled Bullinamingoase, Stormcock and Flat Baroque And Berserk?
I: Pass.
C: Which 1970s album by conceptual rocker Todd Rungdren anticipated the, quote "Junior Boys Sound" unquote, by a cool thirty years?
I: Damn. I know this... Sorry, pass.
C: Which is the best Kate Bush LP?
I: (quickly) The Dreaming.
I: Sorry that is the wrong answer. The correct answer is Hounds of Love.
C: Jimi Hendrix and Peter Brotzmann both recorded a song by this name. What is it?
I: "The Star Spangled Banner"
C: No the correct answer is "Machine Gun."
Which former record-label boss was described thus by Brian Eno: "The greatest thinker / writer / social critic / tv presenter since Plato / Keynes / Duchamp / Betjeman'
I: Pass, sorry.
C: Which British free-jazzer appeared on Nick Drake's "Bryter Later" LP?
I: Pass.
(Ingram takes a sip on a glass of water to steady his nerves)
C: Which Peter and Michael track, a ham-fisted, if charming portrait of folk-artist Lowry was number one in the charts for 7 weeks in the 1970s?
I: Pass.
C: What was Lonnie Donegan's debut LP entitled?
I: Pass.
C: Which British free-jazz label issued classics by Keith Tippett, Chris McGregor and Marc Charig?
I: Pass.
C: Here's a dance music question you may do better at.
Which disco diva featured on Black Box's Italo House masterpiece "Ride on Time"?
I: Gloria Gaynor? No, oh shit, it was Loretta Holloway.
C: I'm afraid I'll have to take your first answer. Which incidentally was incorrect.
(Carlin shuffles cards. Frowns.)
C: In the immortal phraseology of the ILM message board: Mike Skinner, classic or dud?
I: Dud?
C: (Grins.) I ask the questions round here. I'll take that as a pass...
What is deterritorialisation when it's at home?
I: This is supposed to be a music quiz!
C: The question stands.
I: Pass.
C: What is the connection between Girls Aloud and junglist Boymerang?
(Pause. Ingram looking pale.)
C: C'mon Matthew you MUST know this one..... Moving swiftly on.
Who composed "Music On A Long Thin Wire?"
I: (Sighs). Pass.
(Fade down)
Found out some great little anecdotes reading that Barry Miles biography of Paul McCartney. BTW Just because it was authorised doesn't make it untruthful. Apple records lost a spectacular amount of money, notably through their shop which was both a thoroughly bad business idea AND abused mercilessly by not just the shoplifting public but also contributing designers like The Fool. Badfinger and Mary Hopkin can't have brought that much in either. According to Paul the only reason they ever made made any cash was owing to what he describes as "good housekeeping." He takes credit for ensuring that Apple was fully trademarked and copyrighted.
When Steve Jobs set up _his_ Apple, McCartney came knock-knocking. "You can't call your company Apple mate! That's our name." So they settled out of court for a quite handsome sum, with the proviso that Apple computer had nothing to do music.
When Apple subsequently put a sound chip in their PC, McCartney comes knock knocking again. This time the sum is substantially larger and THAT'S why Apple records is in the black. I must confess that I find the idea of one of the figureheads of the counter-culture (you can't knock that pygmies!) endorsing "good housekeeping" extremely salutary and cheering.
Then just today a colleague at work informed me that the Macintosh system sound named "Sosumi" was Apple's cheeky rejoinder to Macca. "So-sue-me." Geddit!?! Geddit!?
I've never really had much time for the cult of the obscure, so when Reynolds has a go at Keenan (clash of the titans innit, the figureheads of the two hegemonies of underground music "locking horns like moose") for championing scantily released music I kind of giggle. Vis a vis Reynolds' turntabilist antics and their potential significance, I remember Ian Penman making a very similar joke about his solipsistic bedroom guitar antics in relation to Loren Mazzacane Connors. Punster laughing out loud that maybe he should be headlining festivals in the German lakes, giving interviews etc. Maybe he should be. Funnily enough just last week I found a tape I'd made in 1992 which has me plucking one note on a violin in time with a metronome for about half an hour. Rubbish of course but I really enjoyed listening to it, had a bit of fun weaving a validating dialogue around it.
The thing is, I have to admit, my love affair with (that old cliche) "socio-culturally significant music" is on the wane at the moment. Isn't that what's at the heart of Reynold's attack on Keenan? That what he's championioning is inneffectual because it's obscure by definition. The common counter-attack of the poor noise-nik (and I'd hazard a guess what Keenan's own would be should he choose to enter the fray, to his credit that he doesn't in one sense, it'd be like entering someone else's gladiatorial arena with only Jon Dale on trident to help out) is that their music is the anti-capitalistic McDonalds-slaying force. The Ying to the Yang. The cape-shrouded other. It'd probably be the yob's riposte that those same qualities of sonic revolt are present in Crunk and Grime; that HIS music is at once commercial and avant-garde. Boomshanka. Check-mate.
However, brushing aside the pieces for a second, it seems to me that the champion of obscure music would do better to dwell on the fragile qualities of their proposition. Obscure music's greatest asset is ATMOSPHERE, an ATMOSPHERE that often ripens with time. This isn't the ATMOSPHERE you get listening to an old ABBA record (though that'll have one) it's something more rarefied. This dovetails with that Johnny Trunk review I just did. I don't think the Japanese Avant-Rock groups or the Folkies can do battle in any proper sense. All these hopeless one-offs, clumsily charming losers are putting down their overalls and delivery bags to deliver snapshots of what it means to be them, then. What's valid in those frail, epheremal visions is the antithesis of what music made for the spotlight contains, alot of energy for sure (energy wanes), but often a dearth of ATMOSPHERE.
Thanks to people who have given links to this blog. I'm afraid the txt format means I can't reciprocate with traffic or the ol' "Technorati Peek-a-Boo" and since I dropped my /webstats/ I have no idea how many people tune in anymore or where they come from. This may no longer be the kind of blog which gets mentioned in magazines (blissout/catchdubs/fluxblog all garnering praise in the reinvented CTCL "Plan B," wot no mention of their own Jon Dale's blog!) but it's a mite less stressful than being a chatshow host/website designer. Big up to all the crew:
(SR/LD/MF/JC/JH/JE/PM/JD/GD/SH/OC/MC/DS/PS/SFJ/MM/EM/SN/GL/NK/TE)
Rather than do the back-handed compliment review thing for The Wire I stuck my neck out and penned this about the Johnny Trunk record, was *JUST ABOUT* to send it to them when (er woops) found some twit named Ken Hollings had already reviewed it (probably in the late 90s). My spiel is better.
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JOHNNY TRUNK
THE INSIDE OUTSIDE
TRUNK RECORDINGS JBH008CD
You inevitably arrive at The Inside Outside with a head full of scripts. Johnny Trunk is the man behind Trunk records and responsible for notable re-issues such as Basil Kirchin's "Quantum" and Jon Cameron's OST "Kes." Johnny has a soundtracks-only show on Resonance FM. But you'd be wrong if you had his own music pegged as either reverential or slavishly 'breaks-oriented." One might expect as much from one of the diggerati.
The whole record is characterised by charming whimsicality and a casual creative fecundity. Like such notorious predecessors as Position Normal and De La Soul, Johnny is mining old records not just for loops but for atmospheres. He shares with outfits like The Focus Group (the project of Stereolab sleeve designer House) an intense affection for the mustiness of early 1960s Britain, an universe populated by Diana Dors, British Jazz musicians in session for KPM, Gainsborough Studios, Donald Cammell, and shoe-string sonic pioneers like the Joe Meek and Delia Derbyshire; an unintentionally seedy world and a brazenly cheap mirror-image of American glamour. Trunk takes delight in this fustiness and spiv-ery.
There is precious little sonic pressure in the tracks here, which flow in a manner akin to the liminal grooves of discarded library records. Tunes like "Sister Woo" would have had their samples (what sounds like a Bacharach loop) stripped clean of off-kilter wobble and polished into chrome turd in lesser hands. Johnny makes it stutter and lurch drunkenly like an accountant in a Soho basement. With "Asylum" and it's lopsided kick-drum, discordant pianner and plaintive flute things just get odder. While not crackling quite as shamelessly as the Position Normal oeuvre here's something as seductively pointless. There is also much in the way of sheer loveliness here. For example "Nine Bob Note" and it's delicate backwards-bossa flecked with glockenspiels and cor anglais, drums and bass compressed into billowing feather-soft cushions. Likewise the exquisite "Deep In a Dream" which displays a truly musical lightness of touch, harps, flutes and fluttering tom-toms spun together from disparate samples with elan, the track twisting gently in time. Also "Zeus" with it's sepulchural hushed choir and after-image strings.
Of course you expect a little Jazz-Funk-styled 'Trip-Hop' action, and in "Curl One Out" you get it, but the territory is always thankfully close to Wagon Christs's similarily 'second-hand and proud' "Throbbing Pouch." It comes as a surprise that this most cravenly backwards-looking nexus of the obscure record collector could produce something as fresh and light.
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Do you hate reviews in blogs too? Well fak off.
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I met Trunk the other day and he was well cocky so let's hope he doesn't read this.
Recently I visited a favorite dingy subterranean record store and asked the assistant behind the counter whether they had one particular record in stock. While they didn't have that recording, they did have one of the same group's earlier records which turned out to be one a friend had recommended. The assistant pulled it out from the wall of paper behind him and handed it to me.
In my hands I held a dark green velvet sleeve with the band's name embossed in gold upon the cover, the limited edition piece was numbered with an imprinted black stamp on the rear. Opening the sleeve I found, beneath the hand-printed liner insert and rice-paper tissuing a nested gatefold format which opened out to reveal two slabs of black vinyl both of which had cuts across their circumference so when abutted they resembled (with their white labels) a figure of eight. As I was I remarking aloud that, as they stood, these records would be impossible to play, that the needle would fly off their edge, the assistant produced two smaller yellow sections of vinyl which (nearly but not quite) fitted into the holes of the larger records.
The assistant then took one smaller yellow and one larger black section placed them together in a clear shallow plastic tray the size of a twelve inch record (this plastic dish in some ways resembled the lids which cap cream pots in super-markets). Handing the assemblage to me I was distressed to find the vinyl crumbling into jigsaw-shaped pieces between my fingers.
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SOUL JAZZ have hunted me down nearly a year and a half year after Paul* laid in to me when he'd assumed that because I didn't like the 100% Dynamite series this meant I was both a snob and a racist. I didn't like 100% Dynamite because I thought they lacked proper liner-notes and I thought that Blood & Fire and Pressure Sounds made a better job of making stuff available to the public, managing to be at once both populist and yet still succeding in offering solid information up to collector geeks. I went on, in subsequent weeks to say how much I liked their Studio One series (then just picking up steam) and later on praised their shop to the skies.
The bloke who is sending me rude emails telling me I'm a racist declaring that I ought to get out more often hasn't even bothered to check out the links to the entries I sent him which would effectively clear my name, he just goes on heaping me with insults. Actually I've decided I don't care, and that it goes with the territory when you hold strong opinions. I put a few moments more thought into it this afternoon. The Tighten Up Trojan releases never used to have liner notes and neither do the current crop of VP and Greensleeves comps. The crucial difference here, I've decided, is that they didn't/don't need them; that contemporarily repackaged material doesn't demand it. On the other hand if you're digging up old Jamaican tracks, and you're serious about making Reggae available to the 'General Public', then you ought to provide liner notes. They needn't be dull, they can be a crap newsprint insert but you need 'em.
*For the record the Meme-ster wrote a sterling rant to them in my defense. Big up.
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http://shutyrgob.blogspot.com/
http://beyondtheimplode.blogspot.com/
http://john_mpc.blogspot.com/
http://dripdropdrap.blogspot.com/
Was in Rough Trade in Covent Garden and saw that the Hoxton Electro thing is still in force down there. Ever since pre-Ministry Fischerspooner (ha remember them!) and that Felix Da Housekatt LP I've had the genre ear-marked as "probably worth checking out if there weren't so many other more interesting things to investigate" and "music made by people too similar to myself (white, middle-class, over-educated, over-privileged with too much time on their hands) to necessitate taking seriously." It kind of flitters before my eyes: City Rockers, Tiga, Anthony Rother, Ivan Smagghe etc. All probably quite excellent stuff, er, except that in spite of living one minute from Hoxton (been here since 1996) it means nothing to me.
Is this a fault on my behalf? I think the "genre" has good things about it. As an electronic music ditching the muso baggage and aligning itself closer to cocaine, fashion and club dynamics than sonic experimentation it's doing healthy things. Music which is later rehabilitated by muso gits like myself is often originally 'superficial' and socially mechanical. Or at least that's how it used to be in the days before there was a cluster of academically-inclined fruits ready to praise The Sound of the Pirates.
Then there's the residual anguish I have about being an old raver. Am I dismissing this genre fallaciously cos I think it's a rehash of better music from better days? You can just FEEL the creeping gentrification of the whole dance music explosion. Naturally "Energy Flash" (as Simon said as much in it's outro) was the first manifestation of this. It's just a matter of weeks before those day-glo smiley-face compilations of old-skool rave anthems DO garner lush repackaging in leather-bound CD cases and Q magazine is full of interviews with Carl Craig and The Prodigy. As a critic (flourish of horns) I fear being roped into praising it, and as much as I relish getting stuck in to Desi, Kwaito, Grime and Funk I still worry I'll that at heart I'll always be a raver. Old swampy. I guess you can't shake off those drug-impressions. "I got high in 1992" or more accurately in my case "I got high roughly between 1987 and 1996."
But there is so much in the electro revival that I find puzzling, unenthralling even. Why do these people fetishise the eighties? Strange how the eighties, in their hands, reads as _shallow_? What was shallow about the eighties, I don't get it? Mark Fisher please talk to these people immediately. Also why don't these people design their record sleeves properly so they look sexy? All electro-clash records look like shit. Maybe Electroclash's pinnacle of achievement is at the axis of mainstream entryism with the jolly "The Show" and "Some Girls"?
Five out of seven!
(The Peixe and Smetak extremely recherche)
You people rock!
The internet rocks!
Dale at Worlds of Possibility greeting my "conversion" to NWW somewhat over-enthusiastically. With a big grin on his face. Ha ha, told you so Ingram! (Only joking Jon!) Actually I think I've been quite consistent, if you wanted to check out my earlier comments they're probably up there somewhere. However, in this game it's good to be wrong and it's good to pick up new things, to put your preconceptions to the test. Funnily enough me old mucker Sacha who just came back from France (he thinks I've stopped blogging!) told me of this great NWW LP that he picked up, and that was a first for him whereas I've already a couple of their lesser recordings under my belt. I was like, Sacha, that is sooo last week!
Jon's done a nice thing on Coil too. You couldn't want for a better, more passionate, articulate advocate. I was at a party the other night and I didn't know anyone. I asked the host if there was anyone there who was into music (easy conversation isn't it?) and he said: 'Why don't you go and talk to Jon Balance over there on the sofa?' 'Oo-er missus,' I said. 'Is there anyone else?' Yeah Coil. Blah blah blah. Time Machines, Love's Secret Domain, Musick to play in the Dark, Horse Blinkin' Rotovator, Scatology. Really! Enough! Buy a book! Buy a Reggae record! Leave it out aight.....
Friend of WOEBOT Sacha Dieu will be doing a Clear Spot on Resonance Fm, today Monday 19th of July from 19h00 till 20h30 (UK time).
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- David Jackman/Organum.
Thanks to Jim Backhouse for promising to get me this. Organum IS David Jackman. He's a geezer who emerged from Cardrew's Scratch Orchestra and part of a small nexus which also loosely included NWW and Morphogenesis. Morphogenesis was a nutty avant-garde collective which featured both Roger Sutherland (who wrote the excellent, but critically lambasted 'New Perspectives in Music' book) and Michael Prime (who got picked up by The Wire a while ago). Apparently in 1988, according to Craig Appleby, Stapleton was 'feeling' Jackman's stuff. Vis a vis my organic Avant-Garde micro-theory it's a very interesting connection. Sutherland's vision of the A-G is (I think suitably so) extremely occult-tinged. For example the hippy-avant Taj Mahal travellers figure highly in his cosmology as does Bernard Parmegiani. The thing about Parmegiani is that his whole concept of the continuum and mutability of sound, pairing together and mutating into one another similar sounds (swarming bees > clustering electronic glitches > rain > violin sounds > etc > etc) is pointedly psychedelic; it's an aural hallucination of divine sounds communicating to us through the filters of material existence. Parmegiani foregrounding the means of their transmission. This 'filters' thing is something I often used to dwell on, always connecting it to the "interfering" objects which musicians of the Third World often affix to their instruments or use to break the tone's clarity. Springs and rattles affixed to the necks of lutes, split reeds in wind instruments etc. Also by extension Miles Davis's loose skin from his lip occluding his embrochure on "L'Ascenseaur au Echaffaud" and John Cage's nuts and bolts in his prepared piano. I guess Morphogenesis and it's ilk probably didn't get proper dues (as per academification and revisionist simplification of modernism) but right now this nexus seems interesting. Looking forward to hearing some Organum.
- Guerra Peixe
Legendary Brazilian orchestrator. Did the Moraes/Powell Afro-Samba record. No takers yet.
- Walter Smetak.
Swiss-born Brazilian instrument maker. Word-of-mouth tip from Kodwo. No takers.
- Linda Lewis (esp. 'Lark')
Thanks to Joe Estes.
- Mark Wirtz Productions.
German (?) producer who worked out of Abbey Road Studios. Responsible for Keith West's "On a Saturday." Tipped off by Nick Wrigley. No takers yet.
- Pyrolator (esp. 'Ausland' and 'Inland'. Tried ordering these TWICE online...)
Thanks to Baz Van Hoof who is spinning me off some Der Plan, Abwarts and Palais Schaumberg as well. I had PS "Luna" at on stage and have unnaccoutably sold it. Check out Baz's great top 40 European LPs in (where else!) the k-punk comments box:
http://www.abe1x.org/movetype/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=3414
- Gunshot (esp. 'Mind of a Razor'; I only have 'Colour Code')
Thanks to Adam Levine (aka Nordicskillz) who's also chucking in Hijack's "Horns of Jericho."
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Cathy at http://eyelet.blogspot.com/
Nordicskillz at http://www.taksi.blogspot.com/
WANTED!
CDs of music by the following, copies is fine:
- David Jackman/Organum.
- Guerra Peixe
- Walter Smetak (Anything at all...)
- Linda Lewis (esp. 'Lark')
- Mark Wirtz Productions (esp. Compilations)
- Pyrolator (esp. 'Ausland' and 'Inland'. Tried ordering these TWICE online...)
- Gunshot (esp. 'Mind of a Razor'; I only have 'Colour Code')
REWARD!
CDs from me. Whatever you fancy.
///Lady Sovereign: Ch Ching
Absolutely excellent. The main mix is really stretched out, much of Sov's banter goes into the accappella. Unlike Shystie (whose voice is just WRONG for grime, sorry but sound-wise it's in _the wrong place_ and quite ugly if you ask me) Sovereign, who I've never heard before is excellent. Squeaky white Ragga chiquita, an MC Kinky from the blocks. On (what must be) a major label and still brilliant.
///Ruff Squad: Lethal
I haven't heard their highly-rated show, but Ruff Squad are perhaps a *little* over-rated. Last years 'Tings In Boots' only made it onto my years-end round up because it was just SO basic. This is the same riddim as their 'Pied Piper' isn't it? Granted it's a good track, great thud on the drum and kazoo synths trailing around in a sinister fashion, but.....
///Jon E Cash/Black Ops: Bang Bang Bang
Great stuff from Jon E Cash. The Black Ops are a little thuggish, not quite nimble enough. The charm of fat hip-hoppers (Chubb Rock, Biggie, Diamond D) is how agile they can be; like watching an elephant figure-skating innit. Built on a churchical alternating 2-note salvo. Played it to a mate who thought it was leaden compared to God's Gift on Str8. I like it though. That God's Gift on Highly Flammable is a clinker, terrible sonix.
///Bruza feat Footsie, Triple Threat and Shizzle: Bruzin'
Disappointing on Aftershock. Very routine Terrah Danjah production and flat chat. Bought it nevertheless; label fetish kicking in (Pros and Cons etc).
///Nikki Slim-Ting feat Jookie Mundo: Wonky
Nikki Slim-Ting was in the studio on the Box Bloody Fresh DVD and I thought the track he was having D Double version was really ropey, Grime-by-numbers. This is much MUCH better. Funny little metronomic bleep paired with great slabs of bass. Jookie smearing it all over the canvas. Ich-Ne-San-Sche vocoder in the riddim bringing a nice Kraftwerk flashback.
///DJ Target feat Dogzee and Syer: S.T.D's
There's so much wiggle in Target's beats, plenty of evidence for this on the excellent Aim High Comp. But (blushes) what a rude track! Also unsure of how much I want to know about the ins and outs of Doogz's urinary tract... But nonetheless great blustery bug-eyed vibe. And, I guess, in a sense, a valuable lesson for da kids. Bwoys and Gyals.
///DJ Target: Aim High Music Presents Vol. 1
Excellent round up of Target's productions. Two major hits with 'The Chosen One' and 'S.T.D's' Yep this is shaping up to be another imprint to watch. Particularly liked Flow Dan's 'That's Me' which has him snapping his fingers and leaning into the mic. Riddim courtesy of Missy's 'Pass That Dutch' (er, I think...) curling this likkle phrase round in tiny orbits: "That's Me, Sell Drugs, Sex Gals, Smoke Weed" perfectly capturing the infolding feedback loop of stoned life. Also Donaeo on the mad gypsy riddim with the accordian.
Matt Johnson walks into his local music store:
"Excuse me, do you have the the The The record?"
Matt Johnson walks into a restaraunt and sits down:
"Can I look at the the menu?"
I remember Ken Downie (aka The Black Dog) playing me some huge soft-edged Basic Channel-styled astrolabe grooves quite like harder-edged versions of these NWW tracks; long-form stuff. I've always kicked myself that I didn't offer more encouragement for them, they quite took me be surprise. I don't imagine the trax ever got released. Ken almost certainly knew about 'Soliloquy for Lilith.'
Been absolutely ADORING Nurse With Wound's 'Soliloquy for Lilith.' Before you ask, no I haven't given up on Garridge. I just found a copy on vinyl this weekend. Gleefully showed the purchase to a friend who nearly stymied my enthusiasm for it before I'd even had the chance to listen to the darned thing. Actually it was a bit of a punt; I've recently found that 'Homotopie for Marie' one too, and was pretty underwhelmed. The first reason being that many of the supposedly alienating 'super obscure' samples on it were from ethnographic records I own, plus actually I don't like composers making things 'dark' by using Third World samples. Not that these samples made up the bulk of the record, but what was left wasn't that enticing. Added to which NWW's debut LP, the one with the list of obscure records on the back is absolute rubbish (didn't Stapleton confess as much too?); the chances of this one excelling had to be pretty remote.*
But joy! It's completely superb! It's six sides of slow rotating drones are more like super oilagenous drum-less grooves, reminiscent of, amongst other things the B-side of Basic Channel's 6th record and Thomas Koner's 'Permafrost.' NWW's vision is much grander however (love writing reviews for these old records!) his is a very organic Minimalism, you COULD see it as existing in quite stark contrast with the ferocious Modernism of Phillip Glass's 'Music for Changing Parts', Jon Gibson's 'Two Solo Pieces', Charlemagne Palestine's 'Strumming Music', La Monte Young 'Black Record' etc, except that (and people seem to have forgotten this) Minimalism was essentially extremely baroque, opiated and suffused with influence from Indian classical, Plainchant and Tribal music (the latter is cheesy term I know, but encapsulates the community aspect of Third World music as well as it's geography). That's part of the problem with the austere reading of Modernist culture at the moment, it fails to tease out, to acknowledge the richness of the culture. All the Maths and Science was then in effect often as a result of occult number theory (La Monte/Catherine Christer Hennix) or out of a fetishism for ancient culture (Xenakis), not simply for it's qualities of abstraction. Off the top of my head I can only think of Roland Kahn and Charles Dodge who were pimping the Maths for purely mechanistic effects.
This is handy too, because it enables us to see Stapleton, not as an inferior copyist but as someone ploughing his own rich groove. Listening to the record super loud I discovered the staircase in my my study throbbing in time to it's ultra-bass tones. That makes me well keen to hear his 'Marie Celeste' record another exercise in atmosphere; all those creaking timbers. Sadly 'Soliloquy for Lilith' doesn't appear to widely available any more, I couldn't find the CD, though I'm sure some dude will straighten me out.
*Though natch the Stereolab 'Simple Headphone Mind' collaboration rocks.
Seen from the window of the train bound south from Victoria to Romford. Facade of building emblazoned with man-size font, white-on-black paint chipped and worn away by the years:
"THE MUSIC ROLL EXCHANGE"
Just the other day I heard Hendrix's "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" and flashed back to the feelings I had when I first heard it, aged possibly 14 or 15. Do you remember that age in your life when some music sounded almost overwhelmingly alien, so threatening, liscentious and radical? Sounds that seemed to be the manifestation of unattainable states of mind, of philosophies cryptically obscure? Of course at my age, our age, we're so blase, so unshockable and impermeable, our emotional retinas toasted to a crisp that such a profound response is rare. I still look for sounds which generate the kind of effect that the Hendix tune did but, sighs, they're thinner on the ground and have to work immeasurably harder than they once did.
Hearing "Burning of the Midnight Lamp", it's churning phases and oral fretwork brought back those feelings that the track had originally instilled. This in exactly the same manner that friends can reactivate the e-rush by listening to old rave records. I'll probably pick the Hendrix record up again, it was off that Smash Hits one, I sold it ages ago, and I'll play it over and over again untill (inevitably) it ceases to generate the same psychic reaction. It's power worn away.
I've done the same things before with old poptones, tracks specific to one particular period of my life, usually latched on to in a brief glinting happy chink in my childhood. I'll play them over and over again until I've milked those same vibrations dry and their force dissipates. We all do it don't we.
BTW Hendrix's "Easy Rider" and "Dolly Dagger" choons!
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Looking through my old cassettes and found one from 1998 I'd labelled "Raggage." That's exactly what all the new Grime is like! Versions and Patois ahoy. There's a neologism I can actually dig! And it's mine (or at least I think it is...) Coining genres is something which, as a rule, I make a pig's ear of.
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Derek Walmsley of the Poplife blog has not one, not two but THREE reviews in this month's The Wire. Nice interloping deek!
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Jim Clarke email me or you die.
I've been so engrossed at work that I haven't been able to make it down the shops. I've worked the last two weekends too. Squirrelling away cash I guess, vainly trying to allieve my neurosis at imminently becoming a father of two. Two children! How did that happen? I'm clearly still a child myself! (You're gazing at the evidence) BTW the only reason I'm finding time to type this is I'm mid-render, hands are tied etc.
So I turned to the net, and decided to order some vinyl and CDs off it. It's supposed to be such a great idea, so simple, but shopping online is so fucking convoluted. In fact it's about a million times more strenuous than digging around in musty basements.
Obstacles to my objects of desire include GEMM's appalling layout (designed by monkeys surely), the purveyors of DJ Screw's mix CDs at the Screwed Up Shop (who NEVER answer emails though you can get a discount if you are a US serviceman, touch of Hendix in 'nam there), er the purveyors of DJ Screw's mix CDs on eBay (who've clearly been supping that codeine; "Sorry kid, what was it you ordered?"), the South African-based Kwaito exporters (no actually they're really efficient) and primarily Catherine's VISA card (don't trust myself with one) which is choked with our holiday expenses. Dunno why I even started trying to buy stuff online! With that last one I pretty much stumble at the first hurdle.
***NOTE TO GOOGLERS***
I do not have the All Aboard Compilation! Instead buy the HMV "Chilrden's Classics" Volume One and Two. If another person emails me about "All Aboard" I'll scream.
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Seems like yesterday was the day in which everything was turned upside down!
My old mucker Matt Moore scuppered me by identifying the compilation which I have that Terry Scott "My Brother" track from. It's called Children's Classics. I bought it for Lulu a while back and ripped it to disc cos she mangles all her CDs something 'orrible. Here's the track-listing:
1. Laughing policeman - Penrose, Charles
2. Ugly duckling - Kaye, Danny
3. Robin Hood - James, Dick
4. Right said Fred - Cribbins, Bernard
5. Hippopotamus song - Wallace, Ian
6. Banana boat song (Day O) - Freberg, Stan
7. Goodness gracious me - Sellers, Peter & Sophia Loren
8. Bee song - Askey, Arthur
9. Who's afraid of the big bad wolf - Pinky & Perky
10. I know an old lady - Ives, Burl
11. My boomerang won't come back - Drake, Charlie
12. Teddy bears' picnic - Hall, Henry
13. Nellie the elephant - Miller, Mandy
14. Sparky's magic piano - Blair, Henry & Ray Turner
15. Owl and the pussycat - Hayes, Elton
16. Ernie (the fastest milkman in the West) - Hill, Benny
17. Buckingham Palace - Stephens, Anne
18. Windmill in old Amsterdam - Hilton, Ronnie
19. Grandad - Dunn, Clive
20. My brother - Scott, Terry
21. Morningtown ride - Seekers
22. Gnu song - Flanders & Swann
23. Two little boys - Harris, Rolf
24. Runaway train - Holliday, Michael
Yeah, and it's wicked. I'll admit I adore it. Matt says:
"Nothing could touch the ecstatic exuberance of Nelly the Elephant, the tongue-in-cheek elegance of the Gnu Song or the sheer bowel-weakening terror of Runaway Train.
As a pre-pubescent child you listen to music as pure sound - an eternal NOW devoid of history / context / genre."
As I type this I can imagine Reynolds on the point of picking up pen to commend Matt's remarks. Queerly it's Coldcut at their most psychedelic who give me a fix closest to those that these tracks do. They have this unique ability to tap into that Roald Dahl circa Charlie and The Chocolate Factory/Chitty Chitty Bang Bang* vibe; shades of Wacky Racers and Heath Robinson too. Don't ask me how I made this synaesthetic jump.
I also got dropped a line by man like Jim Eaton-Terry, who suggests that Elizabeth David is probably Elvis in my cookery cosmology. He also quite rightly takes me task over Nigella. Jim points out that: " How To Eat is one of the all time stone classic cookbooks." Fair enough blud. I'd follow that by by grudgefully conceding that "How to be a Dosmestic Goddess" is also well solid. I'll have to revise my placing of Nigella. Let's think, someone who blew it big time, how about Lee Perry pre- and post- Black Ark incineration?
Finally, almost forgot to admit that I found myself listening to Lloyd Cole today. You start to enjoy it, and your critical faculties recoil in horror.
WOEBOT: Keepin' it real.
*Yeah I know Ian Fleming wrote the book, but Dahl wrote the screenplay.
Aynsley Harriott has this particular show he does called 'Aynsley On The Road' and the programme is punctuated by these amazing tableaux in which he cooks along to a pop song. He's out amid the redwood trees with a couple of mounties dancing to something like Queen's 'Another One Bites The Dust' as he flash fries turkey escallops on a barby.
My all-time favourite of these has Aynsley on a boat at night in Sydney Harbour as fireworks go off in the background. He's prancing extravagantly to The Lighning Seeds "You Make It Happen" and dousing sliced tropical fruit with alcohol. It is probably the most awful and hilarious bit of TV ever, and thus in consequence the best pop video yet made.
It's always fun to witness a colleague letting off a bit of steam, and Mr Agreeable is one of our treasured geysers (geezers), old reliable innnit. The other day he was taking out controller of BBC2, a Jane Root, for daring to suggest that one of her great regrets was that she failed to secure Jamie Oliver for another TV series. Scoff!
Everyone hates Jamie Oliver don't they. He just stands for everything crap about yoofTV, all that's empty and godforsaken about safe middle-class culture's meaningless obsessions, he's practically the antithesis of everything that alt culture stands for, made worse by his co-opting of drab super-bland shite like Jamiroquai, The Doves and Toploader. He's just a bit too far right of that invisible line which exists just to the right of the Mercury Awards.
But of course he's OK isn't he? He's alright! Cheeky bloke! A cut off the mockney block, it's not like he's pretending to be less classy than he is (like Guy Ritchie for instance). He's done some quite good things I reckon, that restaurant '15' he set up is still training unemployable dufuses, setting them up with careers for life. While he'll not quite make it into the >heronbone< canon of people so awful they're magically exhilaratingly wonderful (like Tim Westwood and Brian Sewell),he's still OK. I've even bumped into him myself on a couple of occasions and he was polite, courteous, friendly even. His crime, is of course, that he's a celebrity chef.
But why are celebrity chefs reviled, and celebrity DJs revered? OK, let me rephrase that, why does alt culture despise celebrity chefs and laud it's DJs? I think the chefs, on the whole are much more worthy recipients of adulation. They know a lot of recipes, they're often staggeringly kinetic charismatic figures in their kitchens inspiring awe and trepidation in their workers, they actually produce something of enormous sophistication, something of sensual power. Whereas the DJs (straw man I know) just spin a few records their mates gave them, often too lazy to reach beyond the narrow circuit of record companies who pump them material.
Over the years I've become something of an expert on celebrity chefs and it's struck me that there are a lot of parallels between theirs and the world of music. Robert Carrier, now he's the don. He's like The Beatles. I don't know why I'm finding myself in this position always defending The Beatles at the moment. I think it must be because, essentially, they represent a music that is an undeniable source of power. I get tired, and a bit bored, always reading about such and such obscure musician with their seminal influence on culture. Yawn. Gimme beef and spuds! The Beatles mate! Yeah! The Beatles weren't some sideline to the main cultural spectacle, they ate the whole culture alive, ingested it. They were HUGE! Isn't that fascinating? How could that not be fascinating? Also, you can't knock The White Album...
The thing about The Beatles was that they changed everything. Before them it was Alma Coogan and Frank Sinatra, shit in other words, old school pantomime, and after them it was in your head, coursing through your veins, waking you up at night. Do you really think Reggae would have changed music had it not been for The Beatles? Just like Robert Carrier. Robert Carrier sold French cuisine to the Brits like The Beatles sold electric Rock'n'Roll to the world. He was the don dada.
Then you have Keith Floyd. Keith Floyd is I reckon like Neil Young. Well maybe he was like The Rolling Stones in the seventies and then in the nineties he became like Neil Young. I always thought that his kicking alcohol and doing that series on Indian food and vegetarianism was like, booyackashak, Neil Young twinning up with Sonic Youth and Arc-weld. Radical reinvention that you just couldn't have predicted. Delia Smith she's like Bob Dylan (no she's NOT like Siouxsie Sioux), she had the archive shit going full on, Delia studied those ancient English recipes like Dylan absorbed the Appalachian ballads. She would be someone like Shirley Collins (yeah the Alan Lomax connection would have served me well) but for the fact that she ripped it all up with her Summer Collection in the 80s, that was radical noggins. That was like Blood On The Tracks baby, the master is here, step back all imitators: "We deliver the ku."
Of course Delia's football team makes her look a little like Elton John, but her Christianity, ah you gotta hand it to me, that makes her look like Bob Dylan again. And of course her retiring to a state of nun-hood like she did for a few years, well that makes her look like Bob Dylan too.
Rick Stein! The man! There's a big place in my heart for Rick Stein. He's like second-rank isn't he. When it comes to fish Rick is the daddy. The things he can do with scallops! Rick's big thing is sourcing the ingredients proper, and in that sense he's quite like my man Kirk Degiorgio and his synths, equally he could be like Harry Partch, cos he was an instruments man. Actually Harry Partch is probably more like Hugh Fernley-Whittinstall (a friend of the family, I saw his lovely Mum just the other day), cos Hugh actually grows his own stuff in that little Kitchen garden of his. If he spliced a few genes together and made a carrot that tasted like a courgette then he'd REALLY be like Harry Partch.
Nigella Lawson. Oh dear, don't start me. She's a total interloper, very shallow talent, rode into the limelight on Nigel Slater's coat-tails. Slater, who reacts to tungsten lighting like a Yorkshire pudding, and is better as a journalist. Slater is like Lester Bangs when he was playing in The Delinquents. Him on TV, it's like a hack's jolly. Nigella is like Peaches, she's pathetically pimping her not-quite good looks in an arena overstuffed with so many unattractive male specimens. It's almost as if you see the competition spluttering, "But it's not fair!" The way she provocatively nuzzles strawberries is like Peaches snogging audience members. The cooking, like the music, is totally superfluous, a botched together make-do snapshot of stolen gestures and ideas.
Gary Rhodes, aah I had plans for Gary! He started off so promisingly in the eighties, somewhere betwixt Tom Robinson and Nigel Kennedy. I have an image of him eating cockles in his mohican at an East End Café indelibly burnt in my memory. This was punk cuisine! But, regrettably he's become yet more and more anally retentive. The way he strokes pork joints and gently handles cauliflower, yikes. Maybe he's like Phillip Glass, starts off brash and iconoclastic but becomes gradually homogenized and incorporated into the dominant culture at an imperceptibly slow pace. You never saw it happening.
The super-cool, behind-the-scenes, indisputable rulers of the current crop of celebrity chefs are of course Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers of The River Cafe. They're like Lou Reed and John Cale those birds. It's definitely a case of psychological domination of the field. They may have performed the same trick with Italian cuisine over here, that Carrier did with French cooking. Everyone nicks their stuff like the 80s saw every band in the UK nick The Velvet's.
Anthony Worrall-Thomson, I dunno I give up, he's like Aerosmith. Aynsley Harriott, Harry Belafonte of course! What does strike me as somewhat curious is that British Cuisine has failed to have a dance music revolution. British Cuisine is indelibly Rock. Jamie Oliver you see, he's just another chapter of Rock'n'Roll. If Gary Rhodes was New Wave, Jamie is like Nirvana. Likewise the excellent Giorgio Locatelli, you can smell the leather trousers in his closet. Where are all the disco chefs? Most worrying I think it may suggest that Dance music failed. Dance music failed to radicalize the mainstream. Dance music failed to ring the changes, it was like a dream in the way conversely The Beatles singlehandedly DID signal something new.
For the first time ever I've had the super-scary jukebox on my computer spooling out into a room of other people. Damn there's some strange stuff amid that 71 gig of data! Lots of things I 'acquired' I've subsequently never got round to listening to more than once. Stuff by Choclair, DJ Seduction, Doris, ECC, Gigolo Tony, Hal Blaine, Hedningarna and J.B.Lenoir. That's just C to J! And just so much Reggae, a relic of my insane year-long CD copy session; I have 96 I Roy tracks and one by I Roy Junior. Also some super dreck: Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (fist punches sky!), Mike Oldfield's "Moonlight Shadow" (take me back baby!) and Terry Scott's "My Brother" (it's not mine I promise). Funnily enough though, I'm really struggling to programme a sufficently svelte set.