skip to main |
skip to sidebar
It's always a good idea to get in the breeze on a sunny afternoon and journey the mental highways to Point Reyes Station to fire up a 'fat one' and blur space and time with the stereo record player for a couple of elongated hours, hours spent in the company of the first two Youngbloods albums, with added niceness from a gig at the Avalon relayed over the trusty FM waves of Hippyville with a rounding up from 'Rock Festival'. Can't be beat.Jazzbo hep country folkniks with a medicated rock'n'roll brew kicking the gong around for a few years bringing arcane vibes into the Vietnam fearing hippie conciousness to perculate and levitate the heads on the way to better tomorrow.
SMiLE, the rock'n'roll worlds greatest unfinished masterpiece? the record that never was, the unreleased waxy genius of Brian Wilson was originally going to be unleashed to the public sometime in the early days of flower power but as most now know that was not the case, the whole project was shelved and left to molder in the forgotten annals of rocking history, the Beach Boys as an entity went downhill to the pop commercial dump, into the trash as fallen heroes of yesterday, striped surfing squares from the plastic city, not at all relevant in the modern 1967 world after Monterey Pop high-jacked popular thinking with 'lefty' social conscience for the young draft dodging college kids and the Beach Boys were definitely now 'out of time' in both senses of the phrase (ironically the Boys were all set to headline Saturday at the Monterey bash but pulled out due to unsound thinking, just another mess up in the strange saga of the Hotshots from Hawthorne C.A)...Smiley Smile was released late '67 to a largely disinterested public with the actual SMiLE project all but forgotten as Brian collapsed somewhere near the outskirts of infinity, diving headlong into paranoiac LSD madness for the last time, this time it was as 'serious as a heart attack', Brian stood at the gates of Chaos Central without a floor plan, the layout of his mind warped and wobbled on an hourly basis, nothing was the same anymore, the changes just kept changing too fast in Brians nervous system...Into the seventies and a few heads were starting to look back to the sixties and 'discover' the lesser known bands, the more demented, eccentric and esoteric artists of the preceding decade were being looked upon with fresh eyes and listened to with more open ears. This is where the SMiLE mystery returned to the thoughts of a few wondrous types who wished to hear this supposed treasure trove of lost grooves that could equal the Fab4s mid 60s output, Brians equivalent of the Revolver/Pepper discs...Somewhere around 1973 Al Jardine spoke to European music press saying SMiLE was being readied for release as a double disc set with a twelve minute version of 'Heroes & Villians', though that was Al making the most of an interview and of course nothing happened...Nick Kent wrote a long long piece on Brian and his tribulations in a two part story in the English music paper NME about 1975 and SMilE was at the core of the piece along with tales of sandboxes in the living room, Brians health food store the Radiant Radish and his reluctance to take of his dressing gown...Into the late 80's and a few books on Brian and the Beach Boys were popping up in stores and further interest was being aroused in more and more cats who just wanted to hear the original album, not remakes of SMiLE tunes that had drifted onto the market over the years on various B.B albums, SMiLE as a stand alone entity just had to be heard, someone must have the tapes, if only it could be released...The nineties arrived and with them the first fully fledged bootlegs of SMiLE, at last it was here for all who could find it to savour the mysteries of this ancient supposed masterpiece. By 1995 some thirteen different boots were available, all full of varying tunes/takes/works in progress that made up SMiLE...With the advent of home computers turning everyone and his dog into 'rock'n'roll scientists' the making of different SMiLEs erupted all over the globe with cats taking SMiLE apart and rejigging the various components to give a different feel to the sound of SMiLing...SMiLE was a very personal project that Brian felt strongly about and the drugged paranoia he was suffering decided him to abandon it for what now seems a myriad of differing reasons (the usual harping from fellow BBs about the songs being difficult / fires breaking out in the vicinity of the studios / Fab4 making easy headway with their own 'New Pop', the list can become endless as the rumour mongers are still spreading stories) but it has turned into a personal project for all who care to 'have a go' at SMiLing. On offer here are five different mixes for audio perusal, you pays your money and take your choice...
So here's a fine look at Jac Holzmans Elektra Records during those turbulent times known as the Sixties, swinging or otherwise, from 1963 onto the end which in this case is 1973 (when the great unwashed haddock started their sixties, or what they thought that decade was about), from intellectual folk strumming beatniks to singer songwriters with personal concerns, plus a goodly dose of acid rock in between...Five discs trawl the ten years picking up choice niceties by the likes of Judy Collins, Judy Henske, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton on the first disc mingling with lesser known names such as Phil Borof, Kathy & Carol and Oliver Smith all getting busy with some cool strumming and warbling...Disc two is where the secretive Greenwich Village marijuana haze of the preceding disc is supplemented with chemical experimentation as the like of Love, The Doors and Clear Light gaze into the white light rush of STP induced punk pummel and the Incredible String Band bring their own form of intoxication to the folk strum...Disc three continues the drug induced folkniking, some with a more 'arty' orchestration popping up to decorate the tunes, also tomorrows madness is on the prowl from Detroit as the Stooges and MC5 tear up the ballad book and kick up a ruckus of screaming, guitar blazing protest suitable for their city and the wider world in general...The forth disc starts to calm down with introspection from Paul Siebel, Carly Simon and Harry Chapin along with David Ackles angst and Cyrus Faryars hippy spirit on board for the ride into the seventies ending with Queen who made their US debut on the label...The last disc is like a bonus with a more left field look at some of the weirdos on the roster, not that any of these people could be considered right wing squares, but disc five is the resting ground for crazed hipsters Simon Stokes and David Peel, with not so well remembered artistes as Rainbow Band, Show of Hands and Aztec Two Step whose ode to Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassidy kept the original beats within sight and listening...Other flipped out heads populating the set with something to say are Dave Ray/Fred Neil/Pat Kilroy/Tim Buckley/Holy Modal Rounders/David Stoughton, arty acid rock coming from Ars Nova and to a degree Earth Opera, pop rocking with Wackers and Crabby Appleton plus some rural rocking roots from Delaney and Bonnie and Lonnie Mack and last but surely and certainly not least, Jobraith working up some fine glam future rocking and that's only to mention some of these fine practitioners of authentic and stirring ditties and grooves...All in all a great earfull of top grist with really no dud tracks in evidence, something of an achievement with monumental undertakings of this nature which in itself shows the strength of players concerned and for once the vision of record company execs. and employees who all contributed to the towering efforts of the once mighty 'when it mattered' Elektra...
Wheeze and whirl, clank and bang with oodles of brain popping doodles spreading itself over some pretty nifty west coast acid folk rocking, psyched hippies and electrical boffins spraying outta-space vibes from their mind liquefying paisley attachments.Cork Marcheschi was/is the head honcho of the combo and back in the early 60s he was playing the rock'n'roll /R&B noise in North Beach, San Francisco plus at the same time discovering older hipsters like Edgar Varese and began setting about joining together these seemingly different strands of music whilst also digging poetic ideas that had first been put forth by the Dadaist movement two generations and a continent away.After playing gigs at the Fillmore Auditorium during the nascent flower power days the 50 Footers managed to sign with Mercury Records subsidiary Limelight and recorded Cauldron, only to have it released just before years end of 1967 enabling the record to promptly disappear from view and journey into the 'netherworld of strange wax' where it remained for 30 years until it was released again in the mid nineties.The easiest way for the uninitiated to get a handle on this first LP is to imagine a heavier more tripped out version of the 'United States of America' album, plenty of electrification FX over beaty acid rock blare with female vocals wailing the songs, still sounding fresh today thanks to the nouveaux hippy 'noise/folk/weird' practioners making this sort of bleat more acceptable /accessable in the post modern hyper real age of todays listening habits.The other album up for consideration is 'Sing Like Scaffold', a nineties disc with a 'reformed' band which by all laws of rock'n'roll should have been 'not too hot' as is usually the way with reformation of old hippy combos, but no, its a mighty fine and worthy blast of 'kosmichemusik' style madness, Euro-avant grooves hooking up with 50s B-movie soundtrack blabber and smoke.Both albums add up to more than a wonderful time spent idling away in the smoked up spaces of a sunny afternoon with nary a care for the outside 'square dadz of normality'.
...Issued on the Youngbloods Racoon imprint (via those 'hip capitalists' at Warner Bros), Crab Tunes/Noggins was not ever likely to set the woods on fire with its weird 'out-of-time' rural jazzbo grooves, its playful avant slant on rustic mystic wobbliness ain't going to settle on too many hippies record decks for long, it's just going to derail the vibe and the reason is the sheer apparent repetitiveness going down. ...Basically what Banana/Joe Bauer/Michael Kane are doing is getting busy with a couple of tunes (crab and noggin) and just having a blast trying to get the right groove on the move. A few takes and attempts to get them the way they want, the listener is eaves dropping on an afternoon spent in a marijuana fog at the Youngbloods backwoods studio as the tunes evolve/devolve in frothy muggament, the fragments appearing and reappearing dislodging the time continuum whilst the unsuspecting stoned listener imagines the record is scratched and ponders the thoughts of offloading offending disc at the 'second hand store', but its cool, its only some hippy prank with pretensions to Thelonious Monk at Big Pink jamming with Zimmy. ...As with all Youngbloods related endeavours there's a cheery good nature floating around woozily on a pot cloud of optimistic nicety, to live life in the Youngblood universe is to be savoured and valued for it don't get much cooler than time spent at Point Reyes on a sunny afternoon. ...This surely is a most worthy piece of 'left field' grist thats strangely addictive and if this had been made by three unknown stoners it would be going for a heavy amount of change on the collector circuit and thats a fact. Well worth an earful and watch out for that pesky cyclist...
...From the belly of San Francisco, deep within the 'New Society' where everyone is 'equal' came the percussion heavy Santana band filling the air with conga-riffic jams of sky reaching intensity, keyboards slamming out monumental Hammond vibes with the guitar sending mystic strings to capture the hippies in a psychedelic boogaloon...the early Santana noise was a melting down of Latin musics into one acid washed frying pan of blues wailing funk, high stepping in the back room of mainstream culture where only the initiated will find themselves....To be digging this band in the late 60s Ameikkkan environment was to be standing in the ancient future, where time opens out into infinity, there is no longer any feelings of 'then or when' for 'everything is everything' in the ever present NOW, an ongoing Afreekadelia of the mind....The percussionation continuously sends barbs of organic electricity into the marijuana haze of the Fillmore auditorium to zap the draft dodging hippies and bay area greasers with the secrets of fried neck bones and freedom, the freedom to lay in the funk and soak up the cosmic slop to invigorate the soul....And so it was back in December 1968 when this show was taped with ideas of it supplying tunes their first long playing release, surely a good thinking move to have the band recorded live, in the flux of the action but it was vetoed in favour of some other recordings not yet known...
...what's going on in pop land these days?, the ugly noise mongers and 'hipster' alternate avant rockers are just going in a nowhere direction floundering about in the ghettos of their own making, metal thrashers and punk detritus are constantly upping the volume whilst diluting the content, yet bubblegum popettes are rocking the house with vengeance...LadyGaga is playing the game by her rules and seems to be winning on her own terms, all the naysayers being proved idiotically muddle headed when it comes to the records, Gagas mature bubble pop is streets ahead of any rivals parading in the myriad of offshoots that make up the modern entertainment industry, be it Merzbow or Hannah Montana, with all shades in between, Gaga is knocking back the boundaries of 21ST CENTURY pop philosophy by upsetting the status quo through thinly disguised mimicking of the hyper reality thrown down by TEEVEEland, whilst at the same time being wooed by the very people she aims her Ziggy ray at, the paparazzi and the consumers who all need a daily dose of Gagaism at the moment...so if Gaga is the re-manifestation of Ziggy as 'the Lady Sane' then Ke$ha is overspill from Rodneys English Disco, a slutty waif with the heart of tarnished gold rolling drunk on a suburban Sunset Strip and loving the fleeting moment, sneering gutter mouth poems of messed up teenage normality, stoned in the noonday glare of last nights hangover Ke$ha oozes and moans the trivialities of youth in despair, youth caught in the collapse of yet another capitalist dream, trapped in the new depression that surely looms large for all and sundry of the western world...Ke$has 'so what' sneer is couched in a tired reservedness, she's resigned to the dual realities of the outlaw rock'n'roll life, the 'life' that only exists in the fans dream, her 'outlaw life' gets her thrown out of Paris Hiltons party, prompting media speculation about Hiltons stamina in the fast lane of Papsville, and breaking into Princes house to deliver a CD demo to his Purpleness, hence giving the diminutive one a name check in the new pop, a modern pop that is an engaging jolt of Radio Disney playing out the radiation burn of Radio Clash from three decades ago, a throw down of Zappa / Dead Kennedys / Shangri-Las mixed and filtered over a Bambaataa electro explosion, a psychedelic aural strobe light firing disco mirror ball shards of white light into the inner minds of teenage trash locked away in squaresville who desire a way out from endless parental pressure to do good in an ever contracting overcrowded marketplace...again as with Gaga the naysayers and liberal pop pundits have entered the media fray hoping to get noticed as thinkers with accusations that she has to use 'auto tune' to get the voice right, but this is neglecting the fact that it's the whole effect of the sound that's important, not individual aspects, if filtering gives the right vehicle for the sneer, then filter away, who cares, the fans sure don't...Rock snobs are bleating that the lyrics are banal but when 'awop bop a loobop' and 'surfing bird' are the beginning and end of rock poetics it's hard to see the critics stand point if they are true to themselves (pigs are flying tonight), but the truth is the New York Dolls wished they'd come up with this wordy trash and that's about as accurate a statement as can be read at this moment...recommended to all who ride the bus to the strange parts of town after dark looking for the excitement dished out by this aural injection of crack cocaine, happiness in three minute doses...
...back in the day a young gun going by the epithet Schoolly D along with DJ Code Money threw down some cheba enhanced jams of street strutting, party tugging urban regeneration grooves with Schoolly kicking in with rudimentary but oh so effective beat box and keyboard washes with scratch ups from the dark side, scraping the edges of dust encrusted reality (the echoed doomy thuds of the first LP are something to behold, this couldn't be made in a 'professional' enviroment, this is cats with a vision and an urgency to lay down the beat)...there's a feeling of panic fuelled claustrophobia permeating some of the cuts on the first two discs (not so much on the third, this could be down to any number of factors, most likely just moving on unconsciously to the next step which is just the next step, there is no grand plan in Schoollys early three joints)but really, when settling in with the sounds we see the panic is just induced by heavy weed abuse and will subside as soon as the piggy patrol car has gone by on its way to the donut shop...the claustrophobia induced is real when these discs are blasting the air, a heavy, heavy basement vibe is in full effect shaking the very soul of the housing projects of Philly in the Reaganomic 80s, a bad time for cash strapped inner cities with welfare hardly covering the cost of frosted cookies and a 40 ounce...Schoolly raps about what he knows, the street life, leaning on the corner playing the games of the projects, the game of existence for all who care to indulge in the wilder side of the suckers world, because suckers surely do populate the avenues and streets of AmeriKKKa...due to Schoollys subject matter he's picked up the reputation as 'inventor of gangsta rap' which may or may not be true, it all depends on the perspective of the onlooker and their knowledge/experience of project life, it's no good checking this from a 'middle class' position, this isn't for nerds to thrill and tremble to, it's just a cat laying down some words about what's going on, real or imaginary in his neck of the woods, no 'O-T-T' boasting, just chatting about the way it is (was) over the primitive mixology of himself and Code Moneys backdrops...Schoollys first three albums were not for suckers who think they're major players in the underworld, it's more for homeys in the hood, cats who surf the project elevators, smoke weed on the rooftops and whistle to the fly girls going through the buildings, the honeys in turn just laugh at such foolishness and keep on moving...there is plenty of humour in these grooves, not forced, just the light amusement of everyday existence, the funny/weird situations that crop up on the streets, in the burger bars and pizza joints...dig a real cat who played the game on his own terms and created some HOT blasts for all to grab and savor forever more, a cool buzz for when it's needed...
...right from the start, in fact way, way before the J.A.Ms got their beatbox groove on everyone wanted a piece of 'King Boy D' and 'Rockman Rock', two abstract thinkers lost in the rock'n'roll vibe looking for a way out of the torpid stupor that was the mid eighties...it all began over a thousand years ago when the peace loving denizens of 'Mu Mu Land' foresaw their own extinction and started to send out mind waves that were so intense in their force they sailed through the known physical laws of earth science, enduring through a millennium of time and were picked up by two scallies who proceeded to put into action the ancients ideas of disruptive harmony, to throw the karma in the air and mess with the squares to bring about a time for love...kicking off their campaign for some common sense to prevail in the world run by bean counting scum, 'king boy' and 'rockman' decided to form a band that did not exist and to play instruments that were not their own, but were instruments of re-construction of the past times, colloquially known as samplers with an all prevailing beat supplied by a machine known as a 'roland 808', a filtered robotic drummer that did not drink and could pound the groove all night, the 808 could ride the midnight train to endsville without derailing at the first tempo change, with out losing 'it' in drink fuelled pandemonium...their first surrey into right thinking mode came with a one sided disc called 'all you need is love' which would expose the media hypocrisy over the aids epidemic that was causing some distress for more than a few harried cultural experimenters and 'normal' citizens alike...starting with the FAB4 tune of the same name followed by the MC5s plead to 'kick out the jams' the 'Justified Ancients of Mu Mu' collided gay disco torch and hetero phantasy object singer Sam Fox with 700 hundred year plague chanting interspersed with the self referential and reverential shouts of 'justified' all rolling on the 808 beat blasts and swirling acid flurries...it's right at this moment that the outside forces of accountancy fraudsters saw their chance to get some publicity for the beatles catalogue reissue on the new compact disc form with a forcible writ demanding the J.A.Ms destroy their work as it somehow belonged to others (the first few seconds of the world peace anthem from the fabs was sacrosanct and not for consumption until it had been paid for)...the J.A.Ms took some pity on the FAB4 plight with poverty and caused a media fuss so everyone could hear the name Beatles one more time and its here that everything blew up with all sorts of busy bodies getting in the mix from ABBA to Whitney to police force haddock all wanting some publicity for their cause (actually its unfair to lump Whitney with the others but more on that later)...on the first long play album titled after the year 1987 'rock and d' vainly tried to disrupt the karmic harm done by EMI accounting meanies by giving Scandinavian popsters Abba some street cred and use one of their songs for effect but Abba saw things differently, credibility did not pay the bills and they took the ugly root of lawyers and unreasonable demands to have the disc destroyed...Rockman and King went off to see the ungalant Swedes in an effort to enlighten them to the times in which real people lived but the northern ones could not bring themselves to grant an audience to two fans from across the seas who only wanted to help fellow musicians and kept to their lofty demands of disc destruction and nothing less would do...so it was the J.A.Ms destroyed the remaining copies and released a version with the offending tunes plus sundry others (BBC pop coundown) ommitted leaving gaps in the sound lasting up to about 13 minutes all told showing how the capitalist condition of consumerism was run by dark forces from behind the leather topped desk of mesmerism razing all that does not conform...a third go at acting as street level saviours came when Rockman and D sought to save Whitney Houston from a life of drug addiction by getting her to join the J.A.Ms and smoke only weed and drink some beer, to keep away from designer narcotic haze and live life as the ancient muians would wish though to Whitneys misfortune she somehow missed the opportunity offered to ride the 808 to tranceville and dance the ancient dance...others that have unwittingly helped the J.A.Ms cause of saving mankind from credit card oblivion have been Petula Clark/shaft/ Schooly D/Dr.Who/Shangri Las/Hendrix/Led Zep/Monkees/Pistols/Dave Brubeck/Gary Glitter and others who have been more gracious and forth coming with their time, most famously country diva Tammy Wynette who had no hesitation to stand by the J.A.Ms...when D and Rock were not cruising in their polite force JAMmobile they constructed a second LP self mockingly called 'who killed the jams', a half hour tour of rocking exotic house blasts, more coherent than the first but not as disorientatingly engaging, more transitional from serious art prankster to 'political pop hedonism', talking straight talk riddles for all who would and could listen...also on offer here is the incredible double disc boot 'stand by the J.A.Ms', a fantastic trawl through the Kingboy and Rocks oeuvres as both Jamsters and Kopyright Liberation Front spokesmen starting quite rightly with the disruptive first 12inch white label and ending in the chill out zone staring down the wide eyed ones, over two and half hours of mind numbing honesty within a frame work of existential pan globic bliss showing it's still time for love...one thing that does become clear sitting through these trips is the undeniable fact the J.A.Ms create an all encompassing tribal feel with their junk yard of audio audacity that sucks the listener in so deep its hard to beleive the outside world ever existed a few hours before the take off to other dimensions...all these discs are whole heartedly recommended, they still pack the punch as they first intended, listen now and by internally mended, nicely nice...
...lizzy mercier first got busy in paris in 1975 helping to get the primitive nascent leather jack iggy rock/punk scene going by starting a zine called somewhat uninviting 'rock news' but it got the relevant players in the ensuing french new wave a more public profile so a few trips to new york for interviews scored her some time hanging out and working with such flipped out poets as patti smith/richard hell/tom verlaine the following year...living in both paris and NYC got her to dig the funky sounds that could be heard in each locale without too much effort, the funk groove playing itself in record shops/radio/street corners infiltrating and mixing in with any number of permutations calculable to have a positive affect on any situation...when she moved full time to 'hick city central' she put out a couple of discs on the newly created 'Ze' imprint, the first under the name 'rosa yemen' and the second under her own appellation, both exquisite delicacies of 'NO Wave' angular spazz with discoid persuasions on the 'press color' joint and on investigation one is struck by the accessibility of the sound, clean shapes are thrown in a conforming randomness of cluttered disorder landing like small pellets of mind piercing psychic shrapnel upon the discerning aural attendee...mutant reggae and scraping guitar runs mix in with TV themes (mission impossible) and strangled high life string bending, all kept to the correct length (short) for maximum impact...thunky bass under pins other attacks of repetitive one note joviality's, keeping the party bouncing for a 'dislocation of the norm', getting groovy in a downtown art enclave with 'out of town' bohemians looking for the next thrill...these first two discs are lizzy in her purest form, all ideas are worked through her assemblage of local urban input to spring out in (then) unfamiliar forms of communication, the later discs have lizzy moving outer national with influences and musos from africa and south america as well as the usual arty smear all her work has to some degree...the third joint 'mambo nassau' was financed by 'island records' who were looking for a commercial hook on the new sounds/new styles happening in the post punk whirl wind of chaotic creativity then raging across the western world and its a much fuller sound still built on lizzy's understanding of the funky rock vibe but with more complex interplay, hosing themselves with a jazz shower dancing on their receptors (think of a less pretentious and infinitely more groovy version of tom tom club) with some 60s retro vibes like sleazy crime jazz weaving and bobbing with aplomb and lizzy chirping her pipes in exaltation of the mind dance...lizzys forth outing simply self titled was a full trip to shanty town soweto with a full on indigenous sound kicking up a storm and gaining lizzy a hit record in her native land and upping her profile as a serious artiste...due to the timing it must be seen as part of the 'dreaded' world music scene then taking place but this is one instance where a western musician took the host pop sound and blended themselves into the surroundings and not try to alter the original to a more homogeneous sound, lizzy took on the soweto pop groove and melt right in, swimming in the vibes from the southern land and becoming one with the whole, a magnificent self effacing achievement...the mid eighties saw lizzy making her fifth album, this time in brazil getting grooved up with the tropical sound in a laid back jazzy mood with trumpet blower supreme chet baker helping out on a few tunes lending the whole proceedings a sense of historical serenity...at this point it may be pertinent to mention the production does have that sterile eighties sound and feel on some tracks which could lead to some disappointment so it really is down to a matter of personal preference and general tolerance of the antiseptic atmosphere generated from the discs of that decade...this might be her worst record when put alongside the others but a few spins brings the cool numbers to the surface and the program button into play so all is not lost, it just shows what happens when record co. A&R doofus get in the driving seat and think they know whats best...her last album came about in 1988 and this time lizzys back on form with some punchy pop rock partly produced by mark cunningham from early NO Wavers 'mars' bringing everything back to a nice starting point which should have propelled lizzy into the nineties but this did not happen, her recording career came to an end which is a drag for all concerned but we must be thankful for the cool sounds she left behind...
...lady g. has on the face of things got to be the culmination of the last forty years of pop, a modern ziggy stardust in hyper reality pulling from the past such grooves as bubble gum cheekiness, up front and roaring glam glare, synth pop and euro disco in a darkwave shimmer plus electro filtered piano pop with excellent song writing, it's the campness of jobraith caught in the dazzle of the universal mirror ball of the partisan discotheque, you either love/hate her or ignore with intencity, it matters not to the gaga one, it's all grist to her fun fare mill...other bowie showbiz shenanigans crop up with her mutated 'aladdin sane' flash morphing her into 'a lady sane' in an insane world, twisting perceptible reality into a 'touchable' unreality, a mime theatre with sound (the moderne appproach appropriate to the 21st century attention span and understanding), a kim fowley hollywood dream sequence set on the world stage through a camera lens as a never ending performance art piece, with or without a script saying, via the first album cover 'i'm not here' ala zimmerman back in the day (also dig the magical alignment of the aleister crowley angular shape of the fame monster cover)...the square press love the seemingly infinite mileage they can get with juxtaposing her name with any other word in the dictionary, the latest being 'hermaphrodite' since everyone who does not matter now knows she's not a man as earlier 'rumours' were supposing (amanda lear all over again)...all of this would not mean much if the music was not up to standard in a pop sense at least but the truth is this goes way beyond the necessary call of duty in the pop hemisphere, colliding riffs and hooks to create instantly memorable intelligent but not condescending sky ripping bubble pop with muscle, working on more than one level with ample bundles of cutting humour laced throughout the framework of three minute tunes...samples and beats from the last four decades are given the gaga seal of approval and sent back onto the airwaves for a fresh outing and they've not sounded this fresh for many a moon (bonus points can be earned by spotting 'give peace a chance' rearing up for another go round)...worthwhile and then some, recommended for any one with a pop head and a fancy for the more rarified electric gum that don't lose its flavour overnight...
...a few years back the celebrated miss hilton put out a dance pop album that drew media attention from all comers for all of five minutes, everyone getting in some frenzied accusations about the tunes not being so good, miss hilton not being an accomplished singer, it was seen as a vanity release by an air headed rich girl who had nothing to contribute to modern society that could be considered worthwhile...to help promote her disc art prankster and philosopher banksy, along with studio boffin dangermouse constructed a tribute album to miss hilton consisting of a repeated techno guitar sound riff with cut up comments from la hilton liberally thrown around with punctuation inserts of paris' 'that's hot' catchphrase...a limited run of five hundred copies were surreptitiously placed in the would be relevant racks of two UK chain stores (HMV / virgin) and a small commotion was stirred up in the press, both mainstream haddock and 'trendy' dimwits, (we all know the relevant readership, square and squarer), when the offending discs were discovered by an irate paris fan and the alert was raised with the discs being taken away for forensic investigation to find the perpetrators of such an outrage...it does not take the astute listener long to deduce that the soundbites coming from the mouth of miss hilton are fairly on the mark for twenty first century thinking rich people, nothing actually new comes to light through this art statement except the reversal of roles within the entertainment industry, the 'alternative' camp riding on the coat tails of the rich (not that banksy and dangermouse are skint proles on their uppers)...complimenting as it does the original hilton release it actually is not as good as the paris disc which is itself a nice slice of electro bubble pop, harmless fun for kids, that's hot...
...the bronx erupts with good natured turbo boasting and flipping the bird to the uptight adult world of workaday squares and welfare haddock, this is the zulu nations 6th anniversary blowout with cosmic force, jazzy 5 mcs and soul sonic with bam at the controls, throwing down the joints for the gathered teens who groove on the sounds and generally dig the scene....it's 1981 and the river center plays host to this occasion and all guns have been left at home and the scent of cheba thickly hangs in the air boosting the good vibes and spreading 'the word' for all to go with the flow...shout outs and choatic moments along with the breaks are captured live and direct on cheap ten cent tapes and make for exciting listening with the whole evening telescoping into some 90 minutes of bragadocious turntable manipulation mayhem...this is rough and ready cut ups of tripping in the midnight hour, all the home boys and fly girls having a buzz as the mcs chat and chitter rocking the mic while the wheels of steel turn ever onward, rewinding and bouncing the grooves into the night, the joint is rocking and sure shocking...this is far removed from the sterile world of todays 'live' entertainment of preplanned tapes and miming, this is kids doing it for themselves before the sharks move in and clean up the excess, so without futher ado, everyone throw their hands in the air and rock like you just don't care...
...this lightly tasty confection made up from the invictus joints ruth cut in the early 70's sure got a lot of grooves and styles hitting on all 4 burners...this hep young miss from merrie olde england got herself hooked up with the parliamentfunkadelic crew and knocked out two funk-folk-gospel-rock platters represented herein...the simple fact of seemingly covering too many styles undoubtedly stopped the discs from finding a willing audience, falling between too many stools she slipped through the cracks in public perception as the great unwashed would not handle a multi various stew like this, a kaleidoscopic overflow of assured penship and musicality...as for the more tuned in cats, funk heads wouldn't go for the quieter moments, folk fans if there were any left wouldn't know this from a hole in the ground and as for the dolt brained rockers, it's got to be said, one way or another like to put on blinkers when they got to figure out what it is they might be listening to...some nice screeching guitar from the 'delic crew, courtesy of eddie hazel on some tracks and a couple of glimmer twin tunes crop up to finish up the disc...it's a nice trip to long ago when artists were allowed to collide a few styles and moods, though it's pertinent to say that it may be needful to hear more than once before listening, and the racket box turned up for maximum enjoyment...2nd joint is probably the stronger as the noise button has been flicked to the right though both are agreeably fine and make for some elated late night grooving...
...we'll take it as read that everyone perusing this is somewhat familiar with sandies sixties joints, the pop/lounge/R&B ditties that constitute a mostly cool but fun listen when the mood takes one in that direction, but what may not be remembered by so many is her 'rock' outing that came about in 1969, an album of covers by artists such as dylan/donovan/stones/beatles and the newly emerging led zeppelin, all produced by sandie herself which must be considered a radical move for the times......the original 'essex girl' had broken loose from the mold that had kept her in check during the earlier six years of pop stardom and came out rocking (relatively speaking), ready for the new decade of 'new sounds', moving away from 'puppets and duponts'...the grooves are filled with a mixture of updated NOW SOUNDS courtesy of some funky keyboards and euro-prog saxaphones with some heavy clear drums underpining the whole shebang, the whole record is one finger popping experience from beginning to end......all the tunes come off top notch and for the time it certainly sounded different to her usual fare and it was surely different from the heavy slabs of sound that was happening, the blues rock bashers that were taking up space in the varying airwaves around the globe...speaking of heavy blues bashers, attention should be paid to sandies take on zeps 'your time is gonna come' and the stones 'sympathy...' for some existential bliss, and her version of the FAB4s 'love me do' is way HEP, plus the rest is just so good it's unproductive to single out tracks, lets just dig it for what it is, nothing less than brilliant...
...anyone with any reservations about hits that are re-recorded by the original stars for whatever purpose, be it for a cheap knock off exploitational supermarket release or some other way of grabbing the customers cash need to be aware that some of the hits featured on this sandie 'best of' from about the mid nineties contains some reworkings of a few 60s numbers though this time under sandies control and they sound fairly similar in content if not in spirit...after a few spins it all falls into place as the tunes both old and 'modern' (80s joints) jiggle and juggle in no particular chronological order, but it must be said that some of the eighties sounds and production do come off more cornball than ever these days but sandies incredible 'girl next door' vocals get through the songs with plenty of aplomb...looking back from this vantage point we see that sandie is the proto type for a good few singers of todays age, the carefree innocent / aware yin yang style and range make way for future warblings from many a songbird, both mainstream and indie (same thing) (a certain chrissie hinds from ohio via the NME comes immdiately to mind)...lulu and dusty were top belters in their day of R&B/soul rock but when it came to everydayness, a realness in the inflection of sound, a connection of touch its sandie who comes away with the honors that mark her out as a supreme being of POPness......recommended to all who need a fix from distant shaws...
...rock'n'roll, both underground and mainstream have been plagued with accusations of artists not being real, that they are fake and don't mean what their art supposedly says, they are only in it for the money, their heart and soul belong to the bank manager (or crack dealer)...some 'rockers' are accused of being puppets working for a record company, their sole purpose is to separate the mugs from their cash. nothing more, nothing less...pop, again mainstream and 'alternate' is rife with complaints from naysayers and snobs that certain singers and groups are not the authentic article, just manipulated entities owing allegiance to hopeful svengalis and not the fans...we're not talking about obvious 'cash in' discs that cheap labels throw out to capitalise on a trend or the old 'can you tell the difference' from this record and the original artist version (of course we can), we're talking about artists who become the trend for one reason or another...the sex pistols were immediately accused by the older hippy burnout generation of being fake, they could not play and were just being obnoxious for the publicity that could generate...after the pistols proved they could play well enough to make a kind of tuneful attacking noise it was the turn of others to suffer from pomposity's thrown their way, the damned suddenly were now the 'fakes' ripping off the pistols and so it goes on and on...further back was the monkees who actually were put together to capitalise on the fact the fab4 were no longer touring and moving away from teeny audiences, the monkees were created to tour the country via the TV set, coming to town once a week in a cathode ray tube...the monkees were hyper real in their 'fakeness' and soon gave teenage amerikkka a reason to live, to dig the monkees and all they stand for, living rent free and grooving through the day in the monkee-mobile getting wigged with 'wild adventures', more far out than the velvets sitting in hick town NYC being mopey and miserable, the monkees were tearing up the TV with the certainties that they were right and the squares were wrong (dig the monkees head movie or 33 1/3 TV special plus any number of shows where the amerikkkan way in soundly squashed into the ground, not bad for a long haired weirdo as mickey once remarked to the watching millions)...back in 1994 shampoo soon got accused of being pop bimbos just ripping off the latest trend which was the 'riot grrrl' version energy pop punk (pop punk?real or fake?) but just one listen to the lyrics and we soon find urban poetry detailing the lives of teenagers from estates both prole and the more 'refined' middle class enclaves from the provinces...set to machined aged computer rock rhythms shampoo discuss being drunk in unfamiliar parts of town, shoplifting as a way of life, parental (non)control and other such real life anxieties as make up problems and no spending money...all done with great humour and satire shampoo ridicule the hypocrisy rife in society (at least the society they know about) and this leads to the question - is this real or is it fake, what's the difference in art if fake is of a higher standard than real and real is just a distortion that exists to justify a certain perspective held by certain parties at specific times in the societal continuum, shampoo rustle up a picture of existence that quite a few can identify with...
...dream scape's of angular propulsion populate the grooves on this 1979 japanese wax of some considerable weight when weighed against some other new/NO wave joints that were making themselves known to the trendy hip world of post punk endeavours...to get a handle on the sound here one must think in terms of northern english angst mixed in and stirred with bursts of smiling sun shiney jiggery pokery coming from the likes of L.A.F.M.S roundabout the same time...the tunes drift along while forever striving forward pulled by imaginary but real strings woven from the need to express a new way of imparting their thoughts and postulations, then collapsing to return for fresh engagements with the unfurling curiosities that spring to the surface moments later...after a few spins the ancient folk melodies that had been hiding behind a sheen of bohemian gauziness appear and beg forgiveness for any intrusion and proceed to guide the listener into that always close but somehow fragmentary illusive parallel universe, the place where IT all goes in a does not have to come out, the end zone where all is known to the ones that need to know, the chosen anointed beatnik free from the hassles of mankind...
...listening to joy division in the here and now most if not all of their contemporaries and the myriad of copyists and journeymen seem to pale into a vast expanse of nothingness, it's like they actually didn't exist, they were just distorted echoes of earlier division noise, a psychic babble that broke down peoples will to think for themselves, hipsters and trendoids went along with the sisters/nephs/cult/(your selection here) in the goth pantheon and who knows what was happening with the post punk funk shenanigans from every 'with it' nightclub denizen out after dark...joy division sound and textures spread throughout the world via blitz club dandies, one note synth ditherers, goth purveyors from the provinces and just to mention the effect this beautiful doom noise had on the black metal brigade is to acknowledge the tentacles of mancunian angst is forever mutating and diluting and it's this dilution that brings it all back home, all back to the weird years in northern england when the whole area was closing down financially and spiritually, back home to four young lads with time on their hands, time to get some grooves going to alleviate the thought that tomorrow may in all probability be the same as yesterday with not too much happening in rock now that punk had been usurped by the record companies and the bands working to codified programs of weak rama-lama thrashing...the bleak surrounding visions of the countryside and the cities crumbling from within are all fed into the division sound with nary a thought of it happening, they just seemed to do it because it was right, their music was them and all that they encountered on a daily basis, with ians lyrics coming from deep within the darkside of his persistent daylight nightmare world...outside of the studio ambiance and production niceties joy division show how much of a full on attack squad they were, vibrating with sheer unspoken curiosity, a great summing up of the clatter from such forward thinkers such as the velvets/bowie/kraftwerk/glitter/ultravox/saints and the hotrodpistolclash explosion of '76 all channeled through a folkloric attitude of natural reinvention and rejuvenation of cultural (un)desire...true that joy division inhabit a league very much of their own command they were accompanied by earlier players on the rocking fields of noise with such underworld luminaries as doctors of madness/cabaret voltaire and for a split second subway sect but these cats all fell away from frontline duty for varying reasons...these division cats are progressive in a regressive environment and curtis is the lounge crooner from the nightclub at the end of town, the place where everyone is cool because everyone knows its futile to exert negative energy in an imaginary place, this nightclub is the nightclub of the mind, a collective individualisation of teenage brain rage digging the last sounds from the end times...thirty years down the line these boots ably show joy division as emissaries from another country, a desolate land of failed capitalism now forgotten by all (apart from the proles who still live there on crack filled time warped estates) except for populist 'cultural' historians who populate the lovie media with case loads of 'worthy' time wasting clutter...so one and all step inside the heart and soul of the interzone...
It's always a good idea to get in the breeze on a sunny afternoon and journey the mental highways to Point Reyes Station to fire up a 'fat one' and blur space and time with the stereo record player for a couple of elongated hours, hours spent in the company of the first two Youngbloods albums, with added niceness from a gig at the Avalon relayed over the trusty FM waves of Hippyville with a rounding up from 'Rock Festival'. Can't be beat.
