X-Ray Spex

Selling two thirds of my LPs two years ago turned out to create some emotional turbulence. The worst part was realising I had parted with records that I should have kept. First out the gate was my copy of Big Star's #1 Album. It was only an eighties reissue but a clean copy. The blood drained from my face when I realised what I had done.

Thankfully in the intervening time I have felt the urge to reacquire only relatively few - the minutest fraction of what I sold. Indeed, I used it as an opportunity to pick up better editions, or copies in better condition. I remember the same thing happened when I had an equally huge purge in 1996. I ended up picking up things again which I had sold. To some degree that's one of the good things about vinyl, nothing I parted with was so rare that I couldn't easily buy a replacement. It's a mechanical reproduction, not an original work of art!

The last thing I picked up again though took me by surprise. I had never given it much thought previously. I first bought X-Ray Spex's "Germfree Adolescents" upstairs at the Music and Video Exchange in Notting Hill in the late eighties. I remember I liked "Warrior in Woolworths", oddly not even the most remarkable track therein, but never really paid much attention to the rest of the LP for 26 years. Eventually it was among the thousands of items I sold on Discogs.

Other records I reacquired in these two years snuck up on me in various ways - but there was something definitely uncanny about the way "Germfree Adolescents" seemed to be actually looking at me. I kept finding it peeking out at me in various situations. It was as though it felt I had missed out something about it. "Yoo hoo!" It appeared to be saying.

My reservations about the album in the first case had been to do with its almost New Wave-like qualities. The saxophone on it had always struck me as a bit cheesy - played in that leering bar-band manner, like Lee Thompson's sax for Madness. The backing band seemed a little like jobbing musicians, probably with a pub rock background. There might even be a bit of the gutter end of glam rock about them? And, tuneful and even a little poppy, it wasn't as obviously confrontational or aesthetically abrasive as the punk rock I respected. So I sort of dismissed it...

In the final reckoning I yielded to its insistence and, seeing a copy on the wall at Flashback in Islington, put down the cash and brought it home. My first realisation was that its very nature, as I've just described it, was exactly why it is the most authentically punky LP of them all. The original, true Punk of this era should be ill-fitting and protean. It shouldn't be calcified into a recognisable form. Possibly the most punk recordings are things like The Mekons "Never Been in a Riot", which staggers along never gaining enough momentum to rock out, Joy Division's thrillingly bleak "Warsaw" - Chuck Berry's influence nowhere in evidence, or even the bedroom electronics of The Normal's "Warm Leatherette" - ultimately that's to say music which inadvertently sounds more like Post-punk.

What is so astonishing about X-Ray Spex though is Marianne Joan Elliott-Said aka Poly Styrene. Oh my! Let us not forget in the first instance that this was Marianne's band that SHE assembled. All of us have our own karma to work through. But she was freighted with more to assimilate than it seems fair for any single person to have to cope with. You can see ideas she was the first to explore being worked out more leisurely throughout Post-punk but notably by The Raincoats and Neneh Cherry, by Prince, and Bjork, in Hardcore and Jungle, and by today's alt-pop figures like Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, Greentea Peng, and Nia Archives.

Thanks to Marianne's daughter Celeste Bell we have the wonderful documentary "Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché" [2021] from which I found out so much fascinating information. Marianne was half Somali, a quarter Scottish, and a quarter Irish. This was at a time when in the UK it was much more unusual to be mix-raced. As a teenager she had traveled East on the hippie trail. It was on seeing The Sex Pistols at a sparsely attended show on Hastings pier that she was inspired to form her group.

After a dissociative reaction to time spent with the band in New York, and exposure to harder drugs there, back in the UK Marianne saw a pink light in the sky after a gig in Doncaster, wound up being committed to care, and was placed on a heavy cocktail of psychiatric medication. She remained on meds for the rest of her life.

Early interviews with Marianne uncover an exceptionally thoughtful and intelligent young person. The lyrics of "Germfree Adolescents", with their incisive critique of antiseptic life, are more poised and reflective than the standard oppositional punk fare. It's agonising watching her trying to field cringe questions from music journalists. Photos of her reveal a unique style and totally courageous demeanor which, with hindsight, look they would have been impossible to sustain amid the brutality of seventies Britain. Particularly shocking is footage in her daughters documentary, from after a concert in New York, when the tiny figure is mobbed by grim blokes fondling her.

Marianne had one of the best rock voices ever. Taking John Lydon's muezzin-like wail as a departure she brought almost operatic vocal gymnastics to bear on her ranting. But the voice is never grating, always playful, occasionally shifting up registers when that seemed impossible, swooping and ducking over the music, and placed beautifully, slightly back in the mix, in a way which curiously reminds me of Mantronix.

Poly Styrene, Lora Logic, and Celeste Bell.

The usual rockcrit dialogue abruptly cuts off with Marianne's embrace of the Hare Krishna movement in 1983. However, her experience with visions and alternative states of mind, and her travels in the subcontinent connect her directly to the topics I explored in my 2020 book "The "S" Word." I reached out to my contact Stuart Coyle, the Hare Krishna Cow Protection farmer and former high priest at Bhaktivedanta Manor, and he remembers often seeing Marianne at the temple. He was yet more familiar with Lora Logic, the other member of X-Ray Spex who also ended up in the movement. Lora still apparently involved and living nearby. Celeste Bell's documentary was, I thought, very open-minded about the Krishnas and John Robb sensitively discusses them. The film concludes movingly with Marianne's ashes being taken to Lord Krishna's spiritual home of Vrindaban in Uttar Pradesh, India.

If you've not heard it for a while or you are unfamiliar with it, definitely check out "Germfree Adolescents" a truly remarkable LP which seems to get more relevant as the years go by. I'm so happy to have welcomed it back into the fold. I'm going to have to check out "Translucence" now!

Tubular Bells

 

I wholeheartedly recommend this documentary from 2014 which I stumbled across on YouTube.

A diehard classical music aficionado, "Tubular Bells" (1973) was one of the very few rock LPs my father owned. Others in his collection were albums by guitarist John Williams'  Sky, and Dory Previn's "Mythical Kings and Iguanas" - an unusual batch of records connected by the promise of superior musicianship and extended composition. Those were my dad's criteria.

The LP has never been on my radar. It's harder to get affectionate towards an album like this which is so ubiquitous, like perhaps, I dunno, "Saturday Night Fever" or "Thriller". It is supposed to have sold 17.5 million copies. However, it does emerge from a musical milieu that I am heavily invested in.

The LP was the first release on Virgin - catalog number V2001. Coming directly after it was Gong's "Flying Teapot" TV2002 - followed quickly by Faust's "IV" TV004 - LPs by Henry Cow and Kevin Coyne. Robert Wyatt's "Rock Bottom" (1974) and Hatfield and the North's debut (1974) followed shortly thereafter.

Oldfield had been a sideman on Kevin Ayers' "Shooting at the Moon" and Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band served as a compere on "Tubular Bells."

The idea of rock music being arranged into a pseudo-classical music suite was new and especially how Oldfield did it without vocals being the centrepiece. The music was balanced more like the orchestral Emerson, Lake, and Palmer than the vaudeville Genesis - and with no drums. By subtly weaving in repetitive motifs inspired by Terry Riley's "Rainbow in Curved Air" (1969) "Tubular Bells" never descends to Rick Wakeman-like symphonic stodge. It could justifiably be called the first Post-Rock album.

You'll never see it in any greatest albums lists, but "Tubular Bells" has many lovely sections which are very deserving of attention. The opening sequence used in "The Exorcist" is exquisitely evocative and the second half of side one stacked upon on a repetitive bass riff, with Vivian Stanshall introducing the instruments, conjures the zeit with remarkable power. I've even grown fond of Oldfield's angry caveman ululations on side B. Perhaps this is the advantage of coming to the album with fresh ears - of never having heard it before?

However, with regards to my interest in the album, this musical detail is mainly a footnote to Oldfield's intense personal story. His mother gave birth to a frail fourth child, David, who had Down syndrome and, presumably at their father's instigation, she was whisked away from the family home. In due course she returned home on a barbiturate prescription and the children retreated to their own rooms where his sister describes Mike as starting to "...hone his craft."

When he was seventeen, whilst living at 1 Victoria Square in Pimlico, Mike took LSD and had a truly terrible trip. He remembers one "truly disturbing evening" when people resembled biological machines. Shades of Gurdjieff. Apparently it felt like the end of the world, like he was "going to cease to exist." His siblings said that it changed him forever and that he worked to transform the negative experience. Mike says he retreated further into his music, which became "more real to me than normal reality." 

At the recording sessions at Richard Branson's Manor studios in Oxfordshire, producer Tom Newman describes Oldfield as being a "mental wreck". "He would walk round with his eyes wet with tears nearly all the time. He was in a terrible state." But nevertheless working obsessively... The tubular bells themselves had apparently been used before on a John Cale album.

Obviously with my interest in the psychic counterculture which I explored in "Retreat" (2020), with the lore of terrible acid trips, and with what R.D. Laing refers to as "breakthrough" as opposed to "breakdown", I found the story of the album completely fascinating. It was especially interesting to hear that Mike, like many a cosmic voyager adrift, and to the consternation of his colleagues, eventually got caught up in the Exegesis cult which I had a brush with once.

Oldfield's subsequent move to the countryside evident on the "Hergest Ridge" (1974) and "Ommadawn" (1975) albums is shadowed by my more recent book "The Garden" (2025).

If you have a moment check out the excellent documentary.

Eno on Technology and Politics

A friend went to a recent event "Resistance is Existence" and told me all about it. She shared a clip with me of Brian Eno talking about how the counterculture got swept up in optimism about technology - and forgot politics. Eno reminisced about attending the International Poetry Incarnation at the Albert Hall in June 1965 when "The Underground" coalesced. He compared it to the Gorton and Denton win for the Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer. As he described it both were moments when there was a feeling that "the freaks" came out from under their rocks and were surprised by their strength.

When did Brian Eno become so political? The last time I saw him was in the street at the first peaceful XR event which I went to - another political moment. I suppose the answer has to do with his assertion that the counterculture got swept up in techno-optimism. The bellweather of that must be the Mondo 2000 magazine. Its editor R.U Sirius is especially significant to me for penning the book "Counterculture through the Ages" [2004].

Eno was a card-carrying Techno-optimist. It affected many lesser mortals like me too. For my part, even though I placed my first vote for the Green Party in 1987, I was NEVER especially political. I've been doggedly centrist (I'm perfectly happy with Keir Starmer in truth...) and for a while, goaded, even a little bit right-leaning. But that Techno utopianism still had a huge impact on my thinking. That's why we played Detroit Techno and Chicago House music in West Africa. And ultimately why I blogged so intensely in 2003 and set up the forum in 2004.

When did everything change? It became obvious very quickly with the ascendancy of Facebook in 2005 and Twitter in 2007 - twenty years ago now - that - oops - Technology was not the answer. I was never comfortable on any of the social media platforms - they felt like like strip malls. Presumably Eno came to a similar conclusion? And perhaps that's when he started to become more political?

There is, however, an elephant in the room. And I'm not surprised Eno doesn't mention it - because it cuts against his own cultural contribution. As much as Technology betrayed "the revolution" (ha!) - the biggest betrayal of that countercultural impulse was the music scene. The cut-off with music, when it was evident that the rhetoric was empty and the potential for transformation it hinted at was illusory, was 1996. That's when all the cultural heat went out of dance music, and it became entertainment. Indeed, with Ambient music, Eno was guilty of shaving the scruffy whiskers off Minimalism, and defusing its radical potential.

Unlike Eno, as much as I respect The Green Party (I'm a member), I have little faith in politics. Sure, the signalling is fine, it's OK, but what I understood from researching "Retreat" and "The Garden" was that what really matters is one's own actions - however insignificant they might feel.

AI Music

AI in image-making, video production, and animation has turned my world upside down. Consequently I have given the matter a lot of thought in that context. However, it's only dimly entered my consciousness that AI in music is also a thing.

My reflex reaction to AI in music is why would anyone want to listen to it? This is more-or-less Rick Rubin's useful hot-take, "What I will say is... What I find interesting about art is the point-of-view of the person making it. And I don't know that AI has a point of view of its own. So I don't know how interesting it would be..." Elsewhere Rubin says completely the opposite so it's not clear to me he has his head together on the topic.

And certainly to be fair to him, once one gives it a little thought, it is a more difficult question. The dilemma which confronted us as a generation when Acid House first broke was, on the face of it, not dissimilar. It's easy to forget that pre-existing music fans thought that Acid House wasn't music. "Turn off that bloody fax machine!" - went the gag in the office. Sample-based music had the same charge leveled at it - Hip-hop wasn't real music because the people couldn't play instruments. And just like AI, Hip-hop was theft! The only difference was that its theft was framed as larceny, re-appropriation, or recycling - all of which were interesting perspectives when viewed against the politics of the Black community.

Although I think my (ahem...) classic sampling LPs "Moanad" and "Chunks" are a cut above any AI music by virtue of their ragged personality, deep musical knowledge, and the sonic ideas I bought to them; I have to admit that if one squints one's ears, they are kinda Proto-AI...

Anyone making a purely musical argument about the merits or otherwise of AI music is wasting their time. Yes, I do cling to the belief that some musics are better than others. That personal judgement of my own has nothing to do with the music's technical virtuosity or the performer's intrinsic musical skill, because some of the most ugly and primitive things touch me. I would claim that those sounds communicated some philosophical truth to me.

However, although it's painful to admit, the music I love has also acquired meaning to me by merit of it belonging to a whole framework of personal memories, associations, its perceived critical worth, through its historical context and that meaning, and its place in the history of ideas. Those beliefs are intrinsic to its musical value and impossible to subtract from my appreciation. But in a listening test would I be able to distinguish between a lost Kraftwerk LP and some artfully reconstructed AI offering purporting to be the same? I'd like to think so of course, but really? And which of the two would I welcome into my music collection? Obviously the authentic one!

The perception of AI music is going to take a little while to settle down. Speaking personally I'm relieved that I'm not going to need to bother with it. I've come to terms with my own mortality, and accordingly my music taste froze a decade ago. I have no need, as I was once compelled, to listen to the latest music.

However, I predict that for AI music to take off artists will need to find some way to personalise their offering, wrest it from large corporate music models like SUNO, perhaps by writing their own software, or training their own algorithm locally on their own material. Then you will have the seed of a situation where an educated audience will give it creedence, and will invest in it emotionally. This is what happened with Detroit Techno most obviously - the output of unusually selected machines (FM synths, Kurzweil keyboards etc) was imbued with a philosophical approach, and a specifically local aesthetic to create a music in which an audience could make a religious investment. This is likely to be happening at the avant-garde cutting edge already - and these will be the AI music auteurs of the future - The Aphex Twins of the coming generation.