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...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...
...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...
