Jail House Rock
Number 47 said to number 3
You’re cutest jailbird I ever did see
I sure would be delighted with your company
This is so, so wrong – it’s absolutely right. As you read this, members of The Jesus And Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Nine Inch Nails, Sonic Youth and every other band that wore black leather and kicked a fuzz pedal in the pursuance of Healter Skelter will be reaching for their oxygen cylinders and defibrillaters to calm the paroxysms of ecstasy that have thrown them out of their bath chairs. The ultimate rock and roll dream has come true. Charles Manson has asked fellow inmate at Corcoran State Prison, Phil Spector to collaborate with him. So far Spector isn’t playing ball – somewhat disingenuously saying that he finds Manson creepy, but when the offers of a free pardon and a fifty night residency at the O2 centre come crashing into the exercise yard in a puff of green smoke like a scene from Batman and Robin, every body in the whole cell block will be dancing to the jailhouse rock.
This rather naive attitude to a couple of sleazy murderers making a record was my first reaction to hearing this news. As one whose youthful interest in Charles Manson and the Family’s bad vibes destruction of the peace and love generation went as far as visiting Cielo Avenue – the scene of the Tate slayings, tracking down pre CD reissue Manson recordings, naming his debut album Expressway Rising in tribute to Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising which starred family member Bobby Beausoleil, and whose alcohol and substance fuelled musical conversations from 1985 to 1991 normally concluded that the greatest record it would ever be possible to make would be Charles Manson with the Wall Of Sound – I was a bit of a tit, I find the prospect horrible but fascinating.
Of course, like the good middle-class home-counties boy that I am, I have renounced violence and embraced pacifism in all but the most trying of circumstances, and think that any body who has referenced Charles Manson since 1990 – Marilyn, Mansun, Kasabian etc deserve a good slap. I realize that however good somebody is at making records, they can not go about murdering people. One human life should be worth more than every record ever made..and it is but…did I mention my personality disorder? Can you imagine how it would sound? Can you imagine the reverb you’d get in a prison block? The slap back off the walls, the spring of the suicide nets?
Manson-Spector has a ring to it – that strange blurry Californian shimmer, like Wilson Phillips. There would be no shortage of willing accomplices either to provide the musical backing – I just hope that the man from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers would not be allowed to add slap bass.
Perhaps Manson thinks that he will be paroled soon, he’s been in clink pretty much since Neil Armstrong took one giant leap for mankind, and a hit record under his belt could rebrand him and set him up for a comfortable retirement. Spector on the other hand is just beginning his stretch so he’s hardly going to jeopardize any early release by helping fellow inmates…and there is the little matter of Starsailor to make amends for. You never know, perhaps like a Pet Shop Boys from Hell, they’ll appear on an all-new Top Of The Pops. Come the moment, come the men, this unlikely pairing may just be the ones to save the music industry.
AND LASTLY. While we’re on about Crazy Charles, here’s a good clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5IrRe2F7qY
Thank goodness for warm spring days, school holidays and things that go bang
Thank goodness for warm spring days, school holidays and things that go bang. The boys in the garden next door have just detonated a bomb. I’ve checked through the window – it wasn’t a large explosion and there still are windows, and they don’t appear to be injured, or dressed for acts of terror – unless you count Arsenal shirts. They are engaged in nothing more sinister than making a bang, and as long as the bomb squad and News 24 don’t turn up, they’ll get away with it. It’s rather nice to think that these schoolboy incendiarists have just reclaimed the small garden explosion as a piece of school holiday fun; a potentially dangerous chemistry lesson perhaps, but one that shouldn’t result in anything worse than a telling off if they’re caught.
Of course, in today’s climate of fear, with evil enemy scientists able to blend the most innocuous household substances into lethal explosives, it’s easy to forget that not so long ago, anybody without
an Irish accent could walk into their local gardening shop and purchase enough Potassium Nitrate to blow up a bridge. This was a nice reminder of more innocent – if less lawful times. It felt exactly like being ten years old. It’s gone a bit quiet next door now. Hopefully the boys are just having their tea, and are not beginning forty-two day detentions.
The Bog Hogs
The Bog Hogs
Warning sign – Subjective opinions coming up.
Move over Glasvegas, get a job The Grants and your brethren, there’s a new best band in Britain –best by a mile in fact – so you all might as well give up now and go back to grave digging.
In the great tradition of hailing the new greatest bands in Britain, The Bog Hogs have yet to record a note, set foot on a stage – or even finalize the line up and musical direction – but that isn’t stopping them…Come on NME, front cover now – see your circulation rocket. http://www.darlingbudsskullfkcrew.freeserve.co.uk/JJ72%20NME%20Janu%202001%20.jpg The Bog Hogs have top management, their own office signs, a box for secret Bog Hogs messages, and special Bog Hogs tea – collected from used teabags, placed in a plastic bottle and labelled ‘Bog Hogs’ Tea Dust – to share’. It looks exactly like some early seventies hippy band’s pot stash…memo to self – do not mention Hawkwind or The Pink Fairies to them. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=128134856 The first Bog Hogs bust can’t be far away – but rather than breaking these butterflies on the wheel, it’ll be the making of them – and there won’t be any Mars Bar innuendos – The Bog Hogs are allowed nothing more tooth-rotting than A Chomp – very reasonably priced at 15 pence, http://www.ciao.co.uk/Cadbury_Chomp__Review_5309437 or for special occasions, a Curly Whirly priced at upwards of 25p.
Before legions of drooling A and R men flood The Guardian offices, desperate to stave off their inevitable redundancy, professional ruin, alcoholism, prostitution, glue sniffing, ebaying and death, http://www.adnax.com/views/viewsoflondoncharacters02.htm let me just say that The Bog Hogs are not for sale – and if they were – you couldn’t afford them – Universal, Warner Bros and the thing that calls itself EMI…They are out of your grasp….for many years to come
The music – for it is this that ultimately they will be judged on…as well as this piece of hype, is an effervescent blend of Shampoo, Daphne and Celeste, http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vgGLSJrj7AM Tchaikovsky Ballet Suites and Crass anarcho punk seditious incendiarism – in other words, the absolute Bee’s Bollocks. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GCF460eTEv0 Blue Kangaroo – set to the tune of The Star Spangled Banner – is more subversive than anything the Woodstock generation could come up with…well more scatological at least. In fact, add Derek And Clive to the Bog Hogs’ influence list – all the songs are scatological – except for a faithful and gorgeous cover of Eden and Catherine’s song from Barbie’s Christmas Carol. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=S3NRQfeNDt4 – sorry about that clip.
Except for a rather unfortunate admiration for Cheryl Cole – whom they believe lives in a swamp and exists on a diet of wasps – wonder who told them that? The Bog Hogs are perfect. Yes of course I have a personal stake in the group…but my dealings are transparent. The band is my seven year old daughter Ava and her best friend Emma-Lee – I’m supposed to be in them too, although I might be their Ian Stewart – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stewart_(musician) relegated by some sharp as shit manager to side of stage for coming up short in the looks department. At the time of writing, I am that sharp as shit manager…as well as guitarist, roadie, and responsible adult, but by the time you read this, I may have been replaced by Irving Azoff, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Azoff and languishing in the line up of Ava’s nanny’s band – The Rocking Monkeys….which A and R men, you are more than welcome to wave your chequebooks at – three bus-pass aged ladies hammering the piano, ukelele and swanny whistle…Hinge, Bracket, and the lady from Mouldy Old Dough. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3bFGfIAJRvo
In these uncertain times, we’ve all got to do what we can.
Lux Interior R.I.P
“Well I don’t know about art but I know what I like
I’ll be a-surfin’ in the swamp on a Saturday Night
I’ve been to the mountain but it’s just a big hill
I go crazier and crazier ‘til I get my fill
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust
Easy come easy go ain’t no big bust”
Like this morning’s grey sleet and drizzle, wiping out what’s left of London’s beautiful snow, news of Lux Interior’s untimely death robs the world of yet more precious magic.
Lux Interior, gone at sixty, from a ‘pre-existing hearth condition’ – whatever that means. To me – at least, his age does not seem relevant, because he always seemed ageless – like something from Edgar Allan Poe.
For those of you not familiar with Lux Interior – can there be anybody? he was the singer, writer and high priest of The Cramps – a popular musical combo from America who specialized in trashy rock’n’roll music, but did it with such style, wit and panache that they elevated it to a whole new art form. Along with his partner and high priestess, Poison Ivy, they formed rock’n’roll’s greatest couple. Anybody who witnessed a Cramps show – she, unimpeachably, gum chewingly cool, looking nonchalantly on while her husband exposed himself, thrust his genitalia at the audience while swallowing the microphone and imitating an ape, cannot have failed to be moved by this object lesson in marital harmony. It might have seemed a tad rude I suppose -had the music not been so bloody wonderful.
Well I’m a Human Fly – I spell F.L.Y
I say buzz buzz buzz and it’s just because
I’m an unzipped fly and I don’t know why
I’ve got 96 tears in 96 eyes
Is there a better lyric than this? Try this:
When the sun goes down and the moon comes up
I turn into a teenage – Goo-Goo Muck
I could go on – and will all day. Next up is The Cramps DVD – Live at The Napa State Mental Hospital – note to young people attracted to a career in music – Watch this and weep.
I was fortunate enough to witness The Cramps many times – memory blurs on exact numbers, but Hammersmith Palais seems to crop up quite a bit on my corrupted data disk. I last saw them at the Astoria in 2006 and they were still superb. Recently I came back to them in a big way, playing them to my child in an attempt to cleanse her X-Factor poisoned brain, and it worked a treat – especially The Cramps version of Hazil Adkins She Said – a back woodsman’s tale of getting loaded on moonshine and waking up with a monster in the bed – the chorus goes ‘ Oo ee aa aa’ -Faced with Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, Cheryl Cole was toast – a perfect argument as to why the Cramps should be taught in schools
But, enough maudlin early morning mourning…Let’s send our sympathy and love to Poison Ivy and celebrate the life and times of Erick Lee Purkisher – Lux Interior, as he flies off through the mist aboard the twin engine Cessna with that’s come for him, with Buddy, Richie and The Big Bopper. Lux Interior RIP – I spell R.I. P
Old Moore’s Almanac
Old Moore’s Almanac
A very Happy New Year to you all. As we leave 2008 – the year of the Rat, 2009, according to the Chinese Zodiac is the year of the Ox and specializes in producing people who are eccentric, bigoted, and easy to anger. My own predictions for the coming year – and before you scoff, remember that I forecast the economic meltdown at this time last year while Robert Peston was still blowing a party whistle and wearing a paper hat, are as follows:
Fashion will see a return to popularity of the Donkey jacket http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_jacket . Once favoured by labour leaders, the unemployed, and students, these eminently practical garments are going to fly off the shelves. Many will be adorned with the logo ‘Community Payback’ and may be given free by local councils as a reward to their young for acts of bravery.
The blanket will become a popular item – you’ll see a lot of people wrapped in these, sleeping in doorways.
Hirsuteness will make a comeback, for both ladies and gentlemen. Finicky personal grooming will re replaced by rough beards, sideburns and comb-overs for the gents, http://www.holytaco.com/combover-awesomely-bad-photo-gallery and a more natural look for the ladies. Brazilians and Hollywoods will be consigned to the dustbin of history, and nail and spray-on tanning parlours will soon seem as quaint as barbershop surgeons and pick ‘n’ mix counters.
Culturally, community singing is heading for a town square near you. A perfect way to pass an impoverished evening, adorned in the very latest donkey jacket fashions, warmed by a burning brazier and fed with potatoes from the public purse.
The smoking ban will be lifted in a futile attempt to get people back into pubs, but it will be to no avail. Temperance movements will rule the day, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REtemperance.htm and those unable to abandon the booze will make their own – all that’s required is water, sugar, yeast and some nettles. http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/
The Grey squirrel will become extinct by the autumn, following Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s popularization of squirrel stew. This will lead to a return of the red squirrel, and a brief swell of national pride…until people start eating them as well.
The economy will fragment into regional currencies, almost worthless against the euro, but up on the dollar. House builders will become ever more creative in their attempts to re-ignite the property market, offering alluring incentives such as visits to prostitutes for life…which will fail.
Vince Cable will, once again, be the man to watch in politics, until a newspaper accidentally prints his picture next to one of Bernard Madoff and their resemblance leads to an investigation showing them to be brothers who cooked up the whole economic crisis between them. http://www.finfacts.ie/artman/uploads/2/madoff_SEC_dec122008.jpg
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Politics/Pix/pictures/2007/12/20/CableMARTINARGLES192.jpg
The death of Margaret Thatcher will be greeted with wild celebrations, but lead to the unfortunate lynching of a man in Newcastle for putting a handbag and a giant blue M and S suit on the Angel of the North http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2006/12/05/angel460.jpg and calling it the Iron Lady. Her fun-filled funeral will be marked by a national holiday, which due to enormous unemployment will be rather unnecessary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOEq-ImGWJ0
Natural Disasters. Nothing specific in the tea-leaves, just more of the same on-going global calamity. Carbon conscience will quietly recede as people are forced to burn anything they can get their hands on.
Boris Johnson will accidentally dye his hair raven-black.
Music will see the resurgence of the comedy record, Salvation Army bands, and the Wurlitzer Organ http://www.atos-london.freeserve.co.uk/ . Audiences will be less demanding, and will respond well to whistles, funny accents and rude noises; the X-Factor will be won by a priest.
Black Box Recorder will enjoy a very brief return to popularity, cut tragically short by the band being blown to pieces on stage by a cell of ex Brit-Poppers – aggrieved at their portrayal in Luke Haines’s excellent forthcoming book Bad Vibes http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Vibes-Britpop-Part-Downfall/dp/0434018465 – with a device intended only for him, but sadly over-estimating the size of the venue…Hyde Park it aint.
Finally, and I know I predicted this last year, spiritualism looks set to return to polite parlours up and down the country. Receiving advice from the dead will be seen as no more insane than seeking guidance from a financial advisor. http://www.heritagecentermuseum.com/exhibitions/permanent/images/QTMuseumSample.jpg Really finally, Jonathan Ross will be back in January.
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..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZJt56z5Ywc&feature=related
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?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHijqKBWAFw
I-Tunes Therefore I Am
Having discovered that the rights to my early major-label recordings have reverted back to me, I have been pondering what to do about it – to exploit or suppress once and for all. The songs I wrote and recorded as a priapic poseur more than twenty years ago could at best be described as uneven. It’s not that what I’ve done since has been uniformly good either, and the future is almost certainly strewn with banana skins and custard pies ( the very near future actually), however, the early stuff
Is ‘approach with caution.’
My first two albums were massive budget, shareholders’ nightmares, recorded at Electric Ladyland Studio in New York – when I was still based in England, and at Air Studios in London – when I’d moved to New York. I would have had to sell millions just to recoup the hotel bills. I had the same backing singers as the Rolling Stones, top of the range session players, a string quartet, and Polygram executives flying in and out to check on progress and swoon at playbacks. Somewhere amongst this perfect boys own rock’n’roll fantasy, there were supposed to be some hit songs – great big smashes that would justify the expense and propel me into the super-league. Well there weren’t. Not one. Not even a sniff. Acid house swept the nation, and a man dressed like Edward Scissorhands, sounding like a prototype Robbie Williams impersonating Alan Vega was surplus to requirements.
When I die, I might have to explain to St Peter, why it was that I developed an American accent. This was all part of the madness. At times I wish I could re-enter the mindset, the insane self-belief that convinced me that in next to no time I would become a global brand, and the sooner I knocked being exclusively English on the head the better. Using American producers who didn’t help matters.
Hey ho – so what to do with these…um…documents? Bin them and hope nobody ever mentions them again…or re-visit the past like a time traveller, post them on i-Tunes and perch upon the village fete ducking stool for any curious late-night drunks to knock me into the water…at 79p a throw. ( Like the consummate whore I am) I’ve plumped for the i-Tunes option. Even though many of the songs are cringe-worthy, there are a few diamonds among the car crashes, and perhaps the odd semi-precious stone… I’d certainly advise you to keep a bucket handy.
Anyway, for anybody with a strong stomach and your mum’s i-Tunes password, you could do worse than downloading my early back catalogue…not sure how much worse though. It’s available from 26th November. There won’t be any more reminders.
Ivory Towers
Amongst my assortment of possessions, I have an Ivory pencil case – a gift from the elderly lady who lived next door to me as a child, in recognition for nipping around each evening at twilight to switch the lights on. My daughter has taken a shine to this beautiful cursed object, and has promised to steal it if I don’t relent and give it to her. Bedtime reading took on a surreal edge as she abandoned the story and stated her case, countering every argument I could come up with.
I thought that explaining where Ivory comes from would do the trick. Nope, she knew it already. Apparently elephants are dangerous because they might step on you. The ‘by the time you have children, elephants will be as distant as dinosaurs’ argument fell flat. “ It’s a good thing they’re extinct, otherwise they eat you”. Explaining illegal poaching took us to another realm altogether, involving giant saucepans and hot water.
A potted history of the savage white hunter with his over-sized shorts, fat bottom and pasty legs, strutting into the bush behind his beaters and servants, sneaking up on the majestic beasts of the jungle, then blasting them to bits almost worked – until I over-egged it by mentioning tiger skin rugs and umbrella stands made from elephant legs – her eyes lit up…At least now I’m pleased to see wretched Disney Princess dolls and crap dvds on her Christmas list.
“How would you like it if it suddenly became fashionable for scrubbing brushes to be made from little girls’ arms, and hunters chased you?” She considered this for a moment.
“I’d keep my door shut”.
Exhausted by her argument I told her that if she felt the same way in four years – when she’s ten, she could have it, but I was sure that by then she would feel better disposed towards the animal kingdom, and ashamed for ever having coveted it.
“But that’s why you should give it to me now daddy. I’ll hate it then and I won’t want it.”
Penny For The Guy
Penny for the Guy?
I am the victim of a hoax – a gullible buffoon, taken in and played by a master of chicanery. A couple of weeks ago, I was accosted in the street by a young man whose face was a bloody mess; somebody had obviously beaten the crap out of him. His eyes were swollen and the bridge of his nose was flattened and oozing an alarming amount of blood. Although drunk, baseball cap wearing, and almost certainly a pain in the arse, even in the innocence of sleep, he commanded the benefit of the doubt, and a degree of sympathy because of the gravity of his injuries – and I’m a sucker for people crying. Needless to say he required money, but this was to get home. Street instinct made me certain that he was a horrible little shit who’d visited this misfortune upon himself – a nuisance who had fallen foul of even nastier people whose shit-patch he’d trespassed onto, but even so – he was quite badly hurt, apparently vulnerable – and just possibly, if he got home in one piece, capable of mending his ways. Some humanity was called for, along with some cash. Luckily, I was returning from the….oh alright then – off-license, and had little left to give. I did offer to drive him to hospital or call the police and wait with him until they arrived. Pathetic as he was, he rejected my Good Samaritan offers and staggered off in search of richer pickings.
A week ago, the same whining voice beseeched me for financial assistance – he’d been in the wars again. Actually, he’d yanked off the money-scab so he could leak some more horrorshow cash-inducing krovvy – I’ve come over all Clockwork Orange I’m afraid. file:///Users/johnmoore/Desktop/A%20Clockwork%20Orange%20-%20Glossary%20of%20NADSAT%20Language.webarchive
I should have given this stinking pretend-leper – weeping like a devotchka, a good tolchock in the yarbles for his troubles, but humanity – and the ever-present fear of a good stabbing stood in the way. He was at it again last night – horrifying passers-by with his cunning stunt and making fools of us all. I don’t know how much he’s making from mutilating his face on a regular basis, or what reality-negating, bum-smuggled panacea he’s frittering his blood money on – although I could make an educated guess.
Perhaps he’s making a fortune, like The Man With The Twisted Lip (a Sherlock Holmes story) and on retirement will hire plastic surgeons to remodel his features at a Swiss clinic before entering the world of legitimate commerce.
As November’s 24/7 blitz bursts above the city’s rooftops and brown-field sites – once referred to as back gardens, I can’t help thinking – If crack could speak…