Various Rubbish From 2008

Dear reader(s?),
Here is a small selection from my vast collection of important work…which I never got round to posting.

Pop Music’s Holy Cows

If reports are true, a lovely elderly silver haired Canadian gentleman is trying out the funfair rides, and surveying the zoo at his recently purchased retirement home, The Neverland Ranch. http://www.welt.de/english-news/article2731240/Michael-Jackson-has-sold-his-Neverland-Ranch.html Pop’s hottest septuagenarian, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNu8m6212YM somewhat bemused by this late turn of good fortune, and well out of earshot of the braying musical librarians claiming Hallelujah has become Halitosis, can sleep easy tonight – and all his future nights, knowing that he has achieved what all songwriters dream of; creating a song that transcends all genres and styles, and can not be murdered – however hard the world might try – and it has tried.
Amazingly, I think Alexandra Burke has done a fantastic version of Hallelujah, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t-wrtwe69I achieving the very special quality of actually getting inside the song – every bit as convincingly as John Cale http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckbdLVX736U or Jeff Buckley ever did, and now it belongs to everyone, from the highest brow musical aesthetes, to the people whose next musical purchase will be Grandma We Love You by O-win K-Wig vs Dizzee Rascal’s Baseball Bat. http://www.nme.com/news/dizzee-rascal/41631 ( Note to musical librarians – the horde have caught up – don’t begrudge them – you had him for forty years…think in historical terms now – the next thousand years.)
It will keep A Fairy Tale in New York from the top spot yet again, which to my mind is a good thing – The British public got it right first time round with The Pet Shop Boys’ fabulous Presley cover, and no amount of nostalgic hand-wringing will change that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLDcQbe5GO8
I hadn’t intended to spray vitriol when I came home from the Colony Room’s 60th and final birthday celebration tonight, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRBfPCDgjvk but what can you do? Oxford Street, violent drunks, office parties, vomiting teenagers, sweaty drug dealers, last minute shopping…it puts one in a bad mood. What I had been pondering though, was, what other sacred cows are there in the pop canon whose covering would evoke such hostile reactions from their supposed custodians? Rolf Harris’s A Stairway To Heaven http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayzhJKy8H_A&feature=related didn’t sit well with Zeppelin fans – for obvious reasons, although there is – to my mind, a certain naive integrity to it – which I think would have amused Plant – if not Page. Madonna murdered American Pie, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6uEjifqTaI but I imagine Don McLean wasn’t complaining too much. My own musical outfit aren’t entirely innocent when it comes to re-imagining the works of others, having improved on Althea and Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iD_qZ3hTDo and Brel/Terry Jacks’ Seasons In The Sun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS1jrTNJRMA Our Reggae classic was recently used on BBC2’s History Of Fashion documentary – and my phone rang with congratulatory calls – I was delighted until I realized that poor old BBR wouldn’t receive a thin dime – and quite rightly so – I suppose.
Not meaning to get maudlin again, but the one cover version that does bring a tear to my eyes is another X-Factor classic -Without You by Badfinger – Mariah Carey’s piece de resistance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyBS_1vGwpU Pete Ham and Tom Evans’s doomed love classic, destined to rake in billions, after both its writers were dead – both by their own hand, having suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – in the shape of bent manager, Mafiosi bag-man Stan Polley. To me, this song now reeks of death, desperation and awful aching sadness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badfinger The comfort with Hallelujah is that its writer is still – very much alive…and judging by the performances witnessed this year, just this-side of early middle age.
Unless Leonard Cohen has been royally diddled once again, his coffers are going to swell substantially thanks to the wonderfully Stax-like named Alexandra Burke. http://www.soulsvilleusa.com/ He might even be kicking himself that he needn’t have trawled round the other-side of intimacy circuit quite so much this year – surely a man who either lived a life of simplicity on a Greek island, http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/hydra2.html or up a hill in California doesn’t need that much – unless he’s got more dependents than Screaming Jay Hawkins of course… http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/WolfFiles/Story?id=94216&page=1 which if the women I know are anything to go by, he’d certainly be capable of quite quickly.
Happy Hanukkah Leonard- it’s been your year.
Now, shall we give Simon Cowell a list of the songs for next year – that he’s not allowed within a thousand feet of…in the hope that he’ll do one – and get us all bitching again?

Squat Rock

As winter starts to bite, I’ve been noticing some non-seasonal changes to my leafy London neighbourhood. With Robert Peston’s grim predictions fast becoming reality, boards and security grills are going up over the doors and windows of the no longer ‘soon-to-be redeveloped’ millionaire pads, and the chintzy shops set to cater for them, leaving hermetically sealed tombs of affluence – which I hope will soon be opened. Now that slump singed-snouts have temporarily abandoned the trough – there is a lot of prime real-estate suddenly re-available in London – a golden opportunity for a return to bohemia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting

The laws on squatting are complicated, http://www.squatter.org.uk/ but the basic premise is that if a building is unoccupied and you can get in without a forced entry, you can stay there as long as you don’t wreck it, and as long as you push off pronto once an eviction notice is served. Often this doesn’t happen for months, even years. Occasionally the owners agree to let the squatters stay as free caretakers. In a few middle-England horrifying cases, squatters have become the legal owners of properties because nobody ever bothered to challenge them. Whether they went on to expand their portfolios and become property magnates in the Dragon’s Den is less well known.
The Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1023513/Councils-squatters-break-in.html would have us believe that squatters would occupy your pebble-dashed semi the minute you nipped out for a copy of Country Life. It once occupied the suburbia-terrifying role now taken by asylum seekers – my school friend’s mum wouldn’t let him come out collecting for Shelter with me because they supported squatting…he came anyway – coz we woz punks maaan! Anyway, now that asylum seekers are seeking asylum away from this land of bugger-all opportunity, it’s time for the squatters to make a return – otherwise the Daily Mail could go bust.

Before wealth and fame caterpaulted me onto the property ladder that poverty and obscurity have since caterpaulted me off, I lived in squats for several years. These were soon to be demolished flats near Vauxhall, and the legendary Bonnington Square
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20030817/ai_n12742210 ; vibrant communities inhabited by artists, writers, bands, alternative types, and occasionally people with real jobs. The common perception of acres of feckless hippies, junkies and escaped murderers is only partly true. Many co-squattees may well now read – or write for The Guardian. My neighbours at the time, were members of Wire http://www.pinkflag.com/ , The Band Of Holy Joy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7mws1Xb_yQ , even the dreaded U2 had a connection to the area. Without the squats of central London, it is unlikely that any of the great Antipodean bands – The Birthday Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birthday_Party_(band) , The Scientists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scientists or The Triffids http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triffids would have hung around the capital for more than a few days…they weren’t your Earl’s Court types. The Sex Pistols spent much of their ascendance squatting in Hampstead http://www.retrotogo.com/2007/10/for-sale-hampst.html –a blue plaque is now in the offing. The only band to really ruffle the establishment – Crass, used to play in abandoned buildings and plough any profits back into anarchist organizations…imagine not being in it for the money? Terrifying. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crass
Without encouraging anybody to break the law, I’d like to see a return to organized squatting – it’s like property developing on a budget. Abandoned Woolworth’s MFIs, and Foxtons, would make fabulous high street community centres, youth clubs, music venues or art galleries – because left empty they’ll become crack dens.
Anyway, I hope I’m not being too flippant – that’s not the intention. What’s happening now to people’s homes and jobs…except bankers and speculators, is appalling, and I am only focusing on a tiny part of the situation. There is some toughening up to be done, that’s inescapable, but so far, everybody I know seems strangely energized by the prospect…even me. The gentrification of whole postal areas, http://members.lycos.co.uk/gentrification/whatisgent.html and the pricing out of all but the most fortunate, looks set to reverse. Mind you, at the first site of a didgeridoo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QyL1O6141g I’ll arrest the buggers myself.

Back in the days of free-ish rail travel, a young man in Berkshire could tell his mother that he was nipping out for a few hours on a Friday evening, board a train to Reading using his one-stop school travel-card, bunk an HST to Paddington, http://www.whitstablepier.com/smr/pictures/hst_ready_to_go.jpg and be at the University of London student union to witness the finest bands known to humanity, before reversing the journey and returning home just around midnight, reeking of beer, cigarettes, and musical enlightenment.

Rough Trade Records, who are celebrating thirty years, put on fantastic gigs practically from birth. My favourite band at the time was The Swell Maps, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGlIki2vq5w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YweKU8ckalk&feature=related and it was primarily to see them that I made the Friday dash to ULU. Their first three singles – Read About Seymour, Dresden Style and Let’s Build A Car more than made up for having been too young to catch The Sex Pistols. The fact that band members Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks ( RIP ) served behind the counter at the Rough Trade shop was a revelation as well. Pop stars didn’t have to be rich…and they worked during the day – something I still find shocking. I had a bit of a thing for The Raincoats – I believe it’s called a crush. They worked at the shop as well, and I bought Fairytale In The Supermarket more than once..

While waiting at ULU for the Swell Maps, Cult Figures or Raincoats to take the stage, I stood patiently, open-mindedly absorbing exotic new music. I was a bit confused by the white men with dreadlocks and robes playing heavy dub, but their name Scritti Politti sounded promising. Dr Mix And The Remix – French Teddy Boys playing sheet metal Stooges covers over a drum machine and rolling on the ground, was right up my street.
Perhaps these days, Rough Trade is best known as the home of The Smiths, The Libertines and The Strokes, successful acts which by themselves could give the impression of a cunning business plan, but it’s the label’s idiosyncrasies, minor gems and one-offs which makes Rough Trade so special. Stuff without a cat in hell’s chance of making money, but containing strange brilliance – remember the Kleenex ep, or the mighty Disco Inferno? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkoB6tPygv0 For every Long Blondes, there’ll be a Hidden Cameras – Canadian gay folk church music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6pwnRYcn1Y&feature=related
Where else would British Sea Power be at home, or Jarvis Cocker get to change his name to Darren Spooner and release an electro record called A Heavy Nite with Relaxed Muscle?
For a label started on a shoestring, which has often held on by a thread, Rough Trade has made it to thirty, and provided great musical entertainment and education – an unlikely British Institution. People have got gongs for less. http://www.royalinsight.gov.uk/output/Page4877.asp
Let’s Face The

Male Stripper – Man To Man

Having missed out on the wonderfully vibrant, utterly debauched and musically thrilling gay scene of New York in the late nineteen seventies and early eighties http://www.bitterqueen.typepad.com/ – by dint of age, location, and a rather parochial heterosexual streak which has dogged me ever since, I didn’t come across Male Stripper by Man to Man until hearing it at The Limelight Club in London in 1986, just prior to its UK release in the spring on 1987.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP4tj7mdLdU

Produced by the genius electro and hip hop pioneer Man Parrish, http://www.manparrish.com/biography/ it is three and a half minutes of hi-energy perfection ( the seven inch version ), made at the cutting edge of technology, when drum machines and sequencing were still a dark art, yet it is strangely, to me at least, one of the finest rock’n’roll songs of all time. Miki and Paul Zone – Man to Man, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_To_Man were straight out of Brooklyn, two poster boys – one a Tom of Finland Adonis http://www.tomoffinlandfoundation.org/ – check the video, when he sings “ Built like a truck, I’d bump for a buck” he’s not boasting, the other, perfect in seedy S and M leathers and mirror shades – like Lou Reed at his finest. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMsGvYzedjA&feature=related
When I first heard it, and saw them perform, it really was a eureka moment. Addicted to the past greats of New York bohemian art sleaze – The Velvets, The New York Dolls, Man To Man were a revelation. Like a gay Suicide http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WqOMPakGCg&feature=related – even though Alan Vega and Martin Rev were fairly homo-erotic anyway, and no slouches in the electronics department, Male Stripper was completely on the money and up to date. The main loop of the song is a sequenced vocoder’d voice repeating “ I was a male stripper in a go-go bar”, the verses are wry confessionals, delivered with perfect Noo Yawk twang, and the chorus explodes like a head full of poppers.
Anyway, the reason for this blog is that this week’s Guardian pick a song section is about nightclubs, and not one person – so far, has mentioned this wonderful record. It’s a classic – THE classic. You don’t have to be an amyl-nitrate soaked handle-bar moustached leather cruiser to know it, it was a huge hit. Man Parrish started as a DJ at Studio 54, and worked with the greats – Klaus Nomi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2_mPkV4Ri8 and Cherry Vanilla, then went on to work with Michael Jackson, Chrystal Waters – La da di la da da – She’s Homeless, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaIGPlfH_rs Boy George, and almost me…
When I signed to Polydor in 1988, my plan was to record with him in New York, a Hi NRG and noise guitar album. My A and R man wasn’t overly keen, but Man Parrish was contacted and seemed up for the task. A trans-Atlantic phone call from the Polydor office was scheduled so we could talk it through. Sadly, the great man was out – although his answering machine message was hysterical. The A and R man, sensing that it was more the recording location than the producer I was after, offered three months at Electric Lady Studios http://www.electricladystudios.com/ – if I went with the bloke who’d just done the Birmingham Heavy metal band Magnum. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D4IM56SZh0&feature=related Well what would you do?
The record I ended up making was rather different to a wild electro hi-energy masterpiece I had in mind, but very well produced.
Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge now, but as this site is for the more discerning and open-minded musical explorer, check out Male Stripper by Man To Man…then vote for it. Long before Xenomania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenomania tamed the dancefloor, long before Kylie became the soft gay sweetheart who could charm old and young alike, leather men and muscle men who had an awful lot of sex, took immense quantities of drugs http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/07/meth-and-gay-se.html , and could make the most fantastic records with sequenced beats ruled the earth.

Let’s Face The Music and Dance

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that things are looking distinctly shaky in money land, and to quote the great Irving Berlin -There May be Trouble Ahead. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM_oku87vso
Perhaps now is the time – while there is still an internet, and we’re not too busy putting our backs to the land growing potatoes, to rediscover some of the songs from the last Great Depression, and speculate about the music that could see us through our own unfolding disaster.
The most famous of all Depression era songs is Bing Crosby’s
Brother Can You Spare A Dime http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eih67rlGNhU
“They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?”
NB. George Michael has covered this song.

However, not all popular music from the era of poverty, mass unemployment, starvation, forced migration and hunger marches was this bleak, – quite the opposite in fact. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG-wjkB7gXM&feature=related
Faced with a set of circumstances anathema to most people, the Great Depression was an ideal environment for songwriters to work in. The brief was simple, to create magical little respites from the awfulness of reality that allowed people to laugh and dream – none of this existential angst and keeping it real nonsense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xTTWHMCXdg

Of course, with the collapse of the economy – or as analysts were so recently calling it – the correction in the markets, there is almost certain to be a correction in pop music as well. For better or worse, many bands will go to the wall as the bubble bursts and public appetites change. Who do you think will survive, and who will crash? Which bands have enough substance, and which are destined to become toxic, sub-prime footnotes from the roaring-noughties?