Month: February 2020

Black Angels

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #239 : THE BLACK ANGELS

A GUEST POSTING by HYBRID SOC PROF,
our Michigan Correspondent

One night after a party, around 1:30am, I walked by Clothier Hall – the beautiful old theater and convocation hall on campus – and heard someone playing Pink Floyd’s LP, Meddle, over the at what seemed like infinity decibels. I walked in, sat in the back, in the pitch black and let the sound wash over me… The closest I ever came to replicating that experience was an even later night, at the college radio station playing Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain” underneath two huge speakers hanging from the ceiling as loud as I could stand it. Who needs drugs when you’ve got volume?

Ever since then, I’ve had a thing for explosive peels of shimmering guitar teetering on feedback pulsing with wah. I still love Gang of Four’s “Anthrax” and the whole of Televison’s Marquee Moon give me music-gasms… but neither is psychedelic. When the so-called Paisely Underground grew up out of Davis, Los Angeles and Tucson, there were some close call’s – True West’s version of “Lucifer Sam” is pretty awesome and “Creeping Coastline of Lights” by the Leaving Trains is fried but too quiet. Psychocandy is one hell of a record but it presaged drone more than anything else. I only really got my fix again with Spacemen 3…. And then they broke up. I liked The Darkside and Spiritualized – even saw Spiritualized with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and they each came close without claiming the prize.

I had to wait almost another decade for The Black Angels to fill the gap. The ear-to-ear – what in my youth we called the shit-eating – grin on my face the first time I heard the five songs that start off Passover (2006) lasted for days. I couldn’t listen to the album often enough. The Doors meet the MC5 by way of The 13th Floor Elevators. Or maybe it was more like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce bringing Dick Dale over to David Gilmore’s place. The band’s name clearly references the Velvet Underground’s “Black Angel’s Death Song” – does anyone but me love Clock DVA’s version of that tune? – but I don’t hear a lot of VU in the band’s work.

Most folks have deep affection – or no tolerance – for (neo-)psychedelia and I’d imagine this is going to be a love it or hate it ICA. If you give it a shot, play it loud. Reverse delay, creamy fuzz, gritty reverb, buzzing vibrato, hairy feedback, and liquid echoes wash over leftish anti-war, indigeneity-supporting, environmentally consciousness lyrics… and Alex Maas’ voice is perfect for the often three-guitar roar. And when they’re quieter, you can all-but feel the monster straining at the chain.

This ICA works pretty well imagined as an LP, consider a pause between Half Believing and Holland, as if you were flipping the record…

1. The Black Angels – Currency – from Death Song (2017)
2. The Black Angels – Entrance Song (Rain Dance version) – from Phosphene Nightmare EP (2011)
3. The Black Angels – The Flop – from Clear Lake Forest EP (2014)
4. The Black Angels – Young Men Dead – from Passover (2006)
5. The Black Angels – Half Believing – from Death Song (2017)
6. The Black Angels – Holland – from Indigo Meadow (2013)
7. The Black Angels – Soul Kitchen (Doors cover) – from A Psych Tribute to the Doors (2014)
8. The Black Angels – You on the Run – from Directions to See a Ghost (2008)
9. The Black Angels – Prodigal Sun – from Passover (2006)
10. The Black Angels – Life Song – from Death Song (2017)

Bonus: Clock DVA – Black Angel’s Death Song (Velvet Underground cover) – from Advantage (1983)

HSP

Luke Haines

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF LUKE HAINES (18)

I’m guessing, that even if he said otherwise, Luke Haines would have been more than a bit peeved at the lack of attention given to Off My School At The Art School Bop and the Leeds United EP. Less than 15 years after The Auteurs had sparked into life, he was more or less a forgotten figure while a number of his Britpop peers remained very much in the limelight despite the fact that much of their music was fourth or fifth rate and would never have seen the light of day if it wasn’t for their history.

The next thing of significance to happen was that Black Box Recorder came together with Art Brut to release a one-off single in December 2007:-

mp3 : The Black Arts – Christmas Number One
mp3 : The Black Arts – Glam Casual

The a-side was written by Haines and Luke Moore, while the b-side was the work of Eddie Argos of Art Brut, although members of both bands performed on both tracks, all under assumed names, some of which were linked to those who had enjoyed Christmas Number One singles.

The a-side is every bit the pisstake/back-handed complement to the genre as you’d expect by now.  Don’t imagine, despite the tune being tailor-made for festive radio, that it got much airtime.

The following year proved to be a very quiet one in terms of new material. The only newsworthy item was the unexpected reformation of Black Box Recorder in October 2008 to perform at a benefit gig for the familt of the late Nick Sanderson (of the band Earl Brutus) – the others on the bill were the Jesus And Mary Chain and British Sea Power. Before the year was out, BBR announced two more gigs of their own for February 2009, both of which sold out very quickly.

In January 2009, Bad Vibes was published, and all of a sudden, Luke Haines was back in the limelight thanks to the universal acclaim for his first volume of memoirs. It somewhat overshadowed the BBR reunion with Haines very much the only one really in demand among the media, almost all of whom just wanted to talk about the book and his current thoughts and views on the state of modern pop music, to which he replied that he no longer read the music press, listened only to Radio 4 (the spoken word station) and as such he knew nothing about contemporary rock & roll. He also told everyone he was happy.

The anticipated new material from BBR never arrived and instead we were treated to new solo material, the first in more than two years…..but that’s for next week.

JC

 

Mackenzies

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #198 : MACKENZIES

Today’s featured band have nothing to do with Billy or with Goodbye Mister…….but they were one of the 22 acts to feature on C86, the cassette compilation released by the NME, aimed at highlighting new bands on the UK indie scene.

Mackenzies were a short-lived band from Glasgow, and aside from the one track that was contributed to C86, there were just two releases for the Manchester-based Ron Johnson Records and a legendary Peel Session which was repeated on numerous occasions, thanks to it being loved by the Radio 1 DJ.

There’s next to no information on the band on the sleeves of their two singles, with everything being credited collectively and no names provided for who sang or played what instrument. I’m indebted to Martin Strong’s epic tome, The Great Scottish Musicography, which was published in 2002, for the info that there were originally seven members – Gary Weir (vocals), Iain Beveridge (guitar), David Allen (guitar), Pete Gilmour (bass), Paul Turnbull (drums), Peter Ellen (saxophone) and Scott Brown (percussion). In due course, there would be personnel changes, while some folk left not to be replaced, meaning that they were a four-piece by the time they got round to releasing their second and final single, including bassist Graham Lironi and drummer Paul Turnbull who, in the company of Katy McCullers of The Fizzbombs (as featured here previously in this series) went on to form The Secret Goldfish (who will be subject a later entry in this series).

As it turns out, I’ve three songs by The Mackenzies on the hard drive, all courtesy of them being included on compilations many years later. I may as well offer up all of them so that you can hear for yourselves that there ain’t nobody else from Scotland who sounded quite like them, albeit I will offer up some comparisons to Fire Engines:-

mp3 : Mackenzies – Big Jim (There’s No Pubs In Heaven) : from C86 cassette
mp3 : Mackenzies – New Breed : a-side of 1986 debut 7” single
mp3 : Mackenzies – Mealy Mouths : lead track on follow-up 12” EP, A Sensual Assualt

JC

Beta Band

45 45s @ 45 : SWC STYLE (Part 5)

A GUEST SERIES

41. Dry the Rain – The Beta Band (1997 Regal Records)

Released in July 1997 as 12” only release, and limited to 1000 copies.

Some songs I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard a song. For example ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ I first heard in the Waterloo Station branch of Our Price. I know this because on the counter there was a sign telling me so (I was buying a Shamen single at the time).

I first heard ‘Sex on Fire’ driving down the A303 on the way back to Devon from Heathrow airport – I know this because the car in front caught fire about three minutes later and my wife and I joked all the way home about what might have been going on inside that car – after we made sure that the couple inside were ok of course.

I first heard ‘Dry the Rain’ sat in a police station in the City of London. Which, depending on your viewpoint sounds either cool, dodgy, edgy or a mixture of all three. The reason is not so exciting to be honest.

I was sat in a police station in the City of London waiting to make a statement after witnessing a minor car crash on Cheapside. A white Audi had mounted the kerb to avoid a van and had narrowly avoided a pedestrian and then driven straight into a post office van. There’s a lot of car action today, sorry.

The small office that I sat outside had Radio One playing – it was the Jo Whiley show, obviously, and I remember being really annoying with the officer when he came to get me before Jo had told me what song it was and who it was by.

But I remembered it.

A couple of hours later, back home I made a phone call – I phoned a record shop that I knew and I literally sang the song down the phone to them and said ‘what is it?’.

As I warbled “If there’s something inside that you want to say…” badly, the guy on the end of the phone in between his laughter, somehow knew what the record was!

I mean I could have just listened to Jo Whiley’s show the next day because unbeknownst to me she had made it Record of the Week and played it every day regardless. Regardless I placed my order on the spot.

A week or so later my 12” version of ‘Champion Versions’ dropped through the letterbox. Twenty years or so later, whilst going through another pointless space saving exercise, I sold it to an American in Illinois for £105. He sent me a personal email telling me how delighted he was to finally own it. Which was nice. ‘Dry The Rain’ is that kind of track.

‘Dry The Rain’ has this terrifically lopsided brilliance to it, and I loved the way the chorus becomes a kind of mantra about positivity, something which you get a lot of with the earlier Beta Band tracks. The rest of the ‘Champion Versions’ is also pretty brilliant and contains

I Know

B + A

Dog Got a Bone

SWC

 

Yazoo

WHAT IS THE PERFECT SITUATION?

I originally had a thought to having this feature in the great debut singles series:-

mp3 : Yazoo – Only You

In some ways, it was a fluke that it all came together.

Vince Clarke had unexpectedly left the electronic band Depeche Mode, not terribly happy or comfortable with what life was like as a bona-fide pop star. He continued to write songs, one of which was a ballad called Only You which he felt could be his calling card to Mute Records in terms of being offered some sort of solo contract, possibly as a composer whose work would be performed by guest singers. He happened upon Alison Moyet, via having seen her perform with various bands around the London pub circuit, and persuaded her to record a vocal of Only You for a demo to give to Daniel Miller, the boss of Mute.

Neither the singer or performer had any great wish to make the working relationship a permanent one, but Daniel Miller felt there was real potential and more or less said he wouldn’t release it as a 45 unless there was a band or group to which it could be attributed. Thus was born Yazoo.

Only You turned out to be a bit of a slow burner, creeping into the charts at a lowly #72 on its release in mid-April 1982 , but after six weeks it had reached its peak of #2. It only dropped out of the Top 75 in mid-July and on the very same week the follow-up 45, Don’t Go, entered the Top 30. It took until the end of September 1982 before Don’t Go fell out of the charts, bringing an end to a quite incredible 27-week run of Yazoo have a single in The UK Top 75.

I hadn’t realised until doing the research that Yazoo only released four singles in the lifetime of the group – The Other Side of Love (November 1982) and Nobody’s Diary (May 1983). The fact that both of these singles also hung around the charts for an extended period is probably the reason why I thought there had been many more.

One of other great things about the debut single is it’s b-side. The fact that something so catchy and danceable was more or less thrown away is an indication that neither Vince or Alison perhaps felt Yazoo had much legs. The duo only had two songs when they went into the studio for the first time, but they wanted to hold Don’t Go back as a potential follow-up 45, and so very quickly they composed this:-

mp3 : Yazoo – Situation (7” version)
mp3 : Yazoo – Situation (12” version)

Only You was the same length on both the 7″ and 12″ releases

The best known version of the song, however, emerged when it was released as a stand-alone single in North America when what was called a dub version was created, courtesy of the French-born but NYC-based producer François Kevorkian, who became better-known the following year among the indie kids here in the UK when he turned his attention to This Charming Man.

mp3 : Yazoo – Situation (12” dub version)

It’s this version which really made stars of Yaz, as they were known in the States, getting to the top of the Billboard Hot Dance Play chart and crossing over into the same publication’s Black Singles chart for a number of weeks. Vince and Alison may have made for a very odd couple but there’s no disputing that they knew how to go about filling a dance floor.

JC

Wilco

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #238 : WILCO

A GUEST POSTING by JONNY THE FRIENDLY LAWYER

Our friend Hybrid Soc Prof recently posted two stellar ICAs, one featuring Son Volt (#207) and the other Uncle Tupelo (#211). You will have read from those literate missives that Uncle Tupelo had two principal songwriters, high school friends Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy, and that Farrar split and formed Son Volt, while Tweedy took the rest of the band and renamed it Wilco. A quick search shows that not too much has been written about Wilco here on TVV. This surprises me as the band have been making terrific records for the past 25 years!

There are actually a few Wilcos. There’s the alt-country band they started out as. Then came the indie-rock crusader version (which is ironic as Wilco has always been on a major label). Tweedy has had his confessional, introspective moments, too, as well as a guitar hero turn. The band briefly moved in an experimental direction when adventurous guitarist Nels Cline came aboard. Eventually, Wilco settled in and just kept on making good rock songs.

I’m not even going to attempt an erudite study in the style of HSP. Instead, mine’s a chronological survey ICA for the uninitiated. Just picking my favorites, which tend to be the up tempo rockier numbers. Curious to see whether the Wilco fans on this blessed site would have picked 10 different ones altogether.

1. Box Full of Letters. From A.M. (1995).

Wilco were very much still an alt-country act at this point, not too far removed from Uncle Tupelo. The album is full of pedal steel, dobro, fiddle and mandolin.

2. Outtasite (Outta Mind). From Being There (1996).

Wilco’s second LP was a double-album and most every song on it was a killer. A sort of Americana Exile on Main Street, if you will. Critics loved it, it sold well, and Wilco were on the map. By rights I should get to pick another song but, you know, the rules. (It would have been ‘Forget The Flowers.’)

3. Can’t Stand It. From Summerteeth (1999).

My personal favorite Wilco album. On the previous two Tweedy wrote all the songs. This time out he shared the writing credits with multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett, who came on board for Being There. Don’t know if Bennett was the magic ingredient but the LP is superb. This tune as well as ‘I’m Always In Love,’ ‘She’s a Jar’, ‘ELT, ‘A Shot In the Arm’ are all winners. Synthesizers entering the mix now, while the fiddles and dobro are in the rear view mirror.

4. Heavy Metal Drummer. From Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001).

This is probably everyone else’s favorite Wilco record. It’s their highest charting album, for what that’s worth. The band went through a record label nightmare over it and ended up dropped from Reprise. Tensions with Tweedy led to Bennett leaving the band, too. A lot of this stress was caught in a contemporaneous documentary about the band, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.

5. I’m A Wheel. From A Ghost Is Born (2004).

Ghost was quite a departure from the earlier catalog. Tweedy flexed his lead guitar muscles for the first time, trying to emulate his heroes Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlaine of Television. The album featured longer songs, including a couple clocking in at over 10 minutes. If you’re new to the band this is not the place to start. If you already like them consider this a worthwhile headphones LP.

After Ghost Wilco released Sky Blue Sky (2007), the first album to feature Los Angeles hero Nels Cline. But I don’t really like that album so I’m skipping it. Sorry.

6. Wilco (the Song). From Wilco (The Album) (2009).

Somehow Tweedy and the band got over the weirdness of Ghost and the bummer that was Sky Blue Sky and made a fun record. It was recorded in New Zealand, so maybe that had something to do with it.

7. I Might. From The Whole Love (2011).

Another solid album that, like all its predecessors, made a lot of year-end best lists.

8. Random Name Generator. From Star Wars (2015).

A crowd favorite, lots of good YouTube videos of the band performing this one. I probably should have said earlier that Wilco are a great live act.

9. Someone To Lose. From Schmilco (2016).

The band sounds really comfortable by now, no doubt from having a stable lineup for over 10 years. Some of my favorite lyrics, too: “I keep it rolling/Considering no one/Punching a path/Facing the blast and the moon and the math/But you still never know where your soul is attached.” The LP title is a nod to Harry Nilsson’s Nilsson Schmilsson.

10. Everyone Hides. From Ode to Joy (2019).

Nothing new here, to be honest, but it’s become the classic Wilco sound. Smart lyrics, bouncy melody, interesting guitar work by Cline, pretty but unobtrusive keys, all supporting Tweedy’s good-natured midwestern voice.

Wilco are, in a word, solid. As mentioned, I prefer their livelier numbers but the band’s catalog has something for everyone: 4/4 rock, alt-country, ballads, experiments, love songs, party songs, anthems—with every sort of instrumentation along the way. Tweedy is seriously underrated as a lyricist and singer. I especially like that the band are all outstanding musicians but there’s never any showing off. Simply one of America’s best bands since before the millennium. If you get a chance to see them live don’t miss it.

Bonus Track: California Stars. From Mermaid Avenue (1998).

The story goes that folk legend Woody Guthrie’s daughter contacted our man Billy Bragg with a trove of her dad’s lyrics. Billy connected with Wilco about recording songs featuring the words set to new music, resulting in a number of records over the years. This track was co-written by Tweedy and Bennett.

JTFL

The Affectionate Punch

STUFF BOUGHT IN 2019 (2)

Here’s my second look back at stuff bought and enjoyed immensely in 2019, featuring a Glasgow-based musician, and his friends, whom I gave a couple of mentions to last year, one of which came via a wonderfully composed guest contribution, courtesy of strangeways.

As was explained, The Affectionate Punch is a Glasgow-based ‘thing’ – yes, they’re a band, but no, they don’t tour – and probably they’re best described, really, as ‘a project’. All sorts of music influence the songs that eventually emerge – indie, twee and shoegaze are, perhaps, the biggest influences – with guitars, keyboards, loops and samples all deployed to great effect along with guest vocal contributions from friends in Scotland, England and the USA.

All the songs are released digitally on bandcamp, with one full-length album and three EPs available right here.

One of my favourite bits of music throughout 2019 appeared on the Bittersweet Me EP, which TAP released at the beginning of December, something that is wonderfully multi-layered and finds our project leader channeling his inner Robin Guthrie.

mp3 : The Affectionate Punch – Betwixt and Between

The other three tracks are equally good. Don’t take my word for it….visit the bandcamp page and listen for yourself.

JC

 

Longpigs

45 45s @ 45 : SWC STYLE (Part 4)

A GUEST SERIES

42. On and On – Longpigs (1996 Mother Records)

Released as a single in March 1996 (reached number 16)

Although this was released in 1996 I’m going to talk about 1997. Well in a bit anyway. ‘On and On’ is if you ask me one of the finest moments of the Britpop era. It is one of the more tender tracks associated with that era. A track that sees chiselled cheekboned singer Cripsin Hunt howling like a Britpop version of an 18th century romantic poet about ‘wishing someone would leave him’. It quite rightly provided the band with their biggest hit (well joint with the re-release of ‘She Said’).

It was the fourth track to be released off of their excellent and often overlooked debut album ‘The Sun Is Often Out’

It came backed with another track taken from that which was

‘A Dozen Wicked Words’

Now let’s skip on to 1997 by this time I was in my final year as a student and I was in a relationship with the lady who would later become Mrs SWC. We were happy (the same kind of happy that I mentioned last time) but things were heading to a crunch point. In about six months’ time, we would be graduating and we needed to make a decision, what do we do next? I was sort of trying to be a music journalist at the time, she was doing her thing and looking at the future but she had made it quite clear that she wanted to move back to her native Devon. In fact she already had a position lined up. I had nothing permanent lined up and if I wanted to be a music journalist that would have meant living in London, Shoreditch probably, which would invariably lead me to becoming an even bigger twat that I am already am.

One November evening we went to the cinema, we had a lovely meal before, the only thing I can remember about that was the ice cream at the end. A huge multi-flavoured affair lined with sweets and this sauce that tasted like jelly laces.

We then ambled across the way to the cinema, only to find the film we wanted to see wasn’t showing. I genuinely can’t even remember what film it was that we tried to see, but we instead decided to see the film ‘Face’. A British gangster film about a team of criminals lead by Robert Carlyle who do a big job which doesn’t go strictly to plan and there are dire consequences.

Its alright, the film. I mean you need to ignore the fact that Damon Albarn is in it, playing a nearly mute member of the gang but otherwise its ok. The reason why I’m going down this road is because ‘On and On’ features in it and for some reason it really got to me.

I sat there as the aforementioned Crispin Hunt wailed away and I glanced across at my beloved (who was probably gazing at Mr Carlyle) and I had this odd feeling inside me, and it slowly dawned upon me that she was more important than anything else that mattered. Anything else that has ever mattered come to think of it and without getting too gushy about it, this was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and it didn’t matter where I did that. Its odd place to have an epiphany, in a cinema, listening to Britpop’s most tender moment, but that’s what happened. In the space of about four minutes, I decided to abandon my dreams for, well, the woman of my dreams, sorry that’s a naff way of putting of it but it’s late and I’ve had a glass of rum and ginger.

I was pretty silent for the walk home, and as we got back to her flat. I told her that I wanted to move to Devon (actually I said a lot more, but I won’t go into that) with her and that I was going to start looking for work down there. The rest is kind of history.

SWC

 

Gang Of Four

AS A TRIBUTE TO THE LATE ANDY GILL….

…..I want to re-post one of the best and most innovative guest postings there’s ever been.  It’s courtesy of Dave Glickmann and it was originally posted on 17 December 2015:-

The Cultural Revolution – Broadway Edition

mamma-mia-1_450_20130517

This story starts back around the turn of the century, when my pre-teenage daughter, a self-professed theatre geek, spent many an evening downtown going to see whatever Broadway show was playing and waiting at stage doors in dark back alleyways for her favorite actors to emerge. Needless to say, Mrs. G and I weren’t about to let her do this alone or with similarly aged friends, so over the years each of us attended many shows with her. To be honest, I actually didn’t mind going and ended up seeing many entertaining productions. However, the average ten year old child doesn’t make for the most discerning critic, and thus I occasionally spent a couple hours crammed into a seat with little legroom, cringing at what I was watching.

The worst of these experiences occurred at what is generally considered to be one of the more popular, crowd pleasing shows in the history of musical theatre. Nominated for five Tony awards, this show has been seen by over 54 million people worldwide and has grossed over $2B since its debut in 1999. According to the wiki, “On any given day, there are at least seven performances of [this musical] being performed around the globe.” The original Broadway production, which just ended on September 12th after almost fourteen years, is now the 8th longest-running Broadway musical of all time. All these awards, accolades and success aside, I’m sorry to say, that the show is simply a piece of garbage.

By now, theatre aficionados surely know what production I’m talking about. However, I’m guessing that there aren’t too many of those around this fine music blog. So, I’ll use a paragraph from the wiki for the reveal:

Mamma Mia! is a jukebox musical written by British playwright Catherine Johnson, based on the songs of ABBA, composed by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, former members of the band. The title of the musical is taken from the group’s 1975 chart-topper “Mamma Mia”. Ulvaeus and Andersson, who composed the original music for ABBA, were involved in the development of the show from the beginning. Anni-Frid Lyngstad has been involved financially in the production and she has also been present at many of the premieres around the world. The musical includes such hits as “Super Trouper”, “Lay All Your Love on Me”, “Dancing Queen”, “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, “Take a Chance on Me”, “Thank You for the Music”, “Money, Money, Money”, “The Winner Takes It All”, “Voulez Vous”, “SOS” and the title track.

Well, of course I didn’t like it. I mean, what post-punk, indie kid has a soft spot for the music of ABBA? But actually, that wasn’t it all. In fact, I thought the songs themselves were the best thing in the show. My complaints were fundamentally about the writing – a plot as thin as gruel, no consistent themes or messages across the book and music, song lyrics forced into the scenes whether they made any sense at all in the context of what little story there was and finally, just complete capitulation as the show devolves into a greatest hits sing-along which has no connection whatsoever to the first two hours of the production.

I’m no playwright of course, but as I suffered through this experience, I thought to myself that I could surely create something better than this. After all, the bar was set so awfully low. It wouldn’t need to be a masterpiece, maybe just some semblance of a plot, songs whose lyrics actually made some sense in the context of the action on the stage, and perhaps a theme or two to run through the show from beginning to end. All I needed was a band or musician with a set of songs which had a clear and consistent perspective on the human condition around which to write a story.

There are, undoubtedly, many good options among the types of music that feature here at T(n)VV and it wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve already thought of a few. Even before the show was over, I had mine – Gang of Four, and most especially their 1979 debut album Entertainment! with its themes of the futility of love, work, marriage and distraction.

Now, on the off chance that we actually have a non-indie music listening, theatre buff reading, I’ll defer to the wiki again for some background:

Gang of Four are an English post-punk group, formed in 1977 in Leeds. The original members were singer Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bass guitarist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham. There have been many different line-ups including, among other notable musicians, Sara Lee and Gail Ann Dorsey.

The band plays a stripped-down mix of punk rock, funk and dub, with an emphasis on the social and political ills of society. Gang of Four [is] widely considered one of the leading bands of the late 1970s/early 1980s post-punk movement. Their later albums [of that period] (Songs of the Free and Hard) found them softening some of their more jarring qualities, and drifting towards dance-punk and disco. Their debut album, Entertainment!, ranked at Number 483 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and is listed by Pitchfork Media as the 8th best album of the 1970s. David Fricke of Rolling Stone described Gang of Four as “probably the best politically motivated band in rock & roll.”

Let’s be perfectly honest, who in their right mind would put up real money for a musical written by a non-writer with no track record containing popular crowd pleasers and sing-a-longs like “Love is like Anthrax.” It’s certainly not a marketer’s dream. So, only in my imagination did I ever run home, write the book, get permission to use the songs, find a producer, do a series of regional previews and then triumphantly open up on the Great White Way. Instead, over many years, I would frequently listen to the songs and think about how they might be ordered and structured into a coherent storyline – which songs to use and which to lose, and perhaps other tunes from their discography, at least a few. While the ideas evolved, nothing ever made it onto paper … until now. How else to avoid yet another deathbed regret?

What follows is a rough, bare bones outline of a show, nothing more, nor will it ever be. My advice is to listen to each song before moving on to the next scene as the story is contained in the lyrics as much as in my quick synopses. As a reminder, my objective was to create something that could be better than the god-awful Mama Mia!. Such a low bar, that I hope you won’t be too critical of the obvious flaws in what is to come.

One more thing – several Gang of Four songs cover the topic of sex, as does this imaginary musical, right off the top and several times thereafter. If you think you might be offended by my awkwardly written prose describing sexual activity, then this might be a good time to take your leave. E. L. James has nothing to worry about from me.

And now, without further ado, Entertainment! – The Musical, a show never coming to a theatre near you.

**********
Setting: The late 20th century, any urban/suburban location in a first world country

Cast:

K. – Our protagonist, a Kafkaesque character whose life to date has followed the traditional, established norms of modern western society

Mrs. K. – K.’s wife

Michael – K.’s friend and co-worker

Jane – Mrs. K.’s friend

Susan – One of the girls at the bar who spend their evenings hoping to snag a husband on his way up the corporate ladder

Music: All songs by Gang of Four, from their 1979 debut album Entertainment!, unless otherwise noted

**********
ACT I

Scene 1 – Contract

Key lyrics:

The same again, another disappointment
We couldn’t perform in the way the other wanted
Is this really the way it is or a contract in our mutual interest?

As the show opens, it is early morning. K. and Mrs. K are in bed having less than impassioned sex. The kind long time married people might have on occasion, where he closes his eyes trying to imagine that he is sleeping with the attractive woman he saw on yesterday’s train, while she desperately tries to think about what she could whisper in his ear to bring things to a merciful end. They finish and shoot each other disappointing glances as Mrs. K. heads to the shower. K. sits at the end of the bed and vacantly staring out, he begins to sing.

mp3 : Gang Of Four – Contract

Scene 2 – Glass

Key lyrics:

I’m so restless
I’m as bored as a cat
We talk about this and we talk about that

As K. gets in the shower, Mrs. K. gets dressed and heads to the kitchen to start breakfast. She looks out the window pondering the morning’s events, lights herself up a cigarette (naturally!) and begins to sing.

mp3 : Gang Of Four – Glass

Scene 3 – At Home He’s A Tourist

Key lyrics:

At home he feels like a tourist
At home she’s looking for interest
She said she was ambitious
So she accepts the process

Michael and Jane are walking towards the K.’s house and notice Mrs. K. staring out the window. Jane mentions her concern that Mrs. K. seems particularly unhappy as of late and that the K.’s marriage may be in trouble. Michael mentions that K. feels that the two have been growing distant as well. While outwardly they seem to be living successful lives, it doesn’t seem to be making either one of them happy. Michael sings about how K. feels like a tourist at home, while Jane interjects that Mrs. K. is looking for interest.

mp3 : Gang Of Four – At Home He’s A Tourist

They even find a way to turn “two steps forward (six steps back)” into a short dance number as the song ends and they enter the K.’s house.

Scene 4 – It’s Her Factory (from the untitled Yellow EP, 1980)

Key lyrics:

Housewife heroines, addicts to their homes
It’s her factory, it’s her duty
In a man’s world because they’re not men

The guys leave for work. Mrs. K. and Jane remain at the house and engage in some inconsequential chit chat – they talk about this; they talk about that. Mrs. K. then says she has a few quick things to get done before they head out and she heads to the kitchen. Jane sings the song with Mrs. K. looking back to interject with the backing vocals.

mp3 : Gang Of Four – It’s Her Factory

Scene 5 – Outside The Trains Don’t Run On Time (from the untitled Yellow EP, 1980)

Key lyrics:

Discipline is his passion
Order his obsession

K. and Michael arrive at the factory where they work. K.’s secretary tells K. that the boss wants to see him first thing. Michael makes an offhand remark about what a stickler the boss is and K. says that the guy has always been on his ass since K. was promoted to his executive job. Cue the music.

mp3 : Gang Of Four – Outside The Trains Don’t Run On Time

As K. and Michael sing the song, the workers get up from their stations and turn this into a big production number (Ok, I know this is kind of a rip-off from a scene in The Producers). At the end of the song, K. heads off to see the boss.

Scene 6 – Natural’s Not In It

Key lyrics:

The problem of leisure, what to do for pleasure?
This heaven gives me migraine

Now out shopping, Mrs. K. is talking with her friend Jane and discussing how she bought into marriage with a successful man and the trappings of money and status. But honestly, she’s now just a bored housewife with a husband who treats her as a sex object more than anything else. As the music starts, she says, “I’m just getting a headache thinking about it.”

mp3 : Gang Of Four – Natural’s Not In It

Scene 7 – What We All Want (from the album Solid Gold, 1981)

Key lyrics:

Could I be happy with something else?
I need something to fill my time
Could I be happy with something else?
I need someone to fill my time

K. and Michael meet in K.’s office later that day, after K.’s talk with the boss. “Can you believe he fired me?! I’m gone at the end of the week. A small drop in production last month and that’s it, after everything I’ve done for this company. What am I going to do now? Start over from the bottom at another firm? And, oh god, my wife is probably going to throw me out of the house.” Cue the music; K. sings “This wheel spins letting me off…”

mp3 : Gang Of Four – What We All Want

After the song finishes, Michael tries to console K. They agree to go out for drinks with everyone else and talk more.

Scene 8 – Return The Gift

Key lyrics:

Please send me evenings and weekends

K. and Michael meet up with the boys from work to head over to the local club. While K. is subdued, the rest are having the usual male testosterone-driven banter about how drunk they plan to get and who’s going to get laid tonight. As they head out, you can hear them singing “Please send me evenings and weekends.”

mp3 : Gang Of Four – Return The Gift

INTERMISSION
**********
ACT II

Scene 9 – I Love A Man In A Uniform (from the album Songs Of The Free, 1982)

Key lyrics:

I love a man in a uniform
The girls they love to see you shoot
To have ambitions was my ambition
But I had nothing to show for my dreams

K., Michael and the boys enter the local watering hole each wearing similar blue suits, white shirts and red ties (dare I call them corporate “uniforms”). They head to the bar, get drinks and start chatting it up with a group of gold digging girls. Susan, the queen bee of the group, is showing particular interest in K. and Michael. Susan tells them that the girls really like hanging out with the up and coming business executives – the whole money, power, status thing. While Michael soaks up the adoration and pulls Susan closer to him, K. laments that he himself isn’t much of a catch, “being married and recently unemployed, after all.” Cue the music.

mp3 : Gang Of Four – I Love A Man In Uniform

K. sings “Time with my girl…” with all the girls jumping in for “You must be joking…” Michael interjects with “The girls they love to see you shoot” and then the girls form a dance line for the title chorus. By the end of the song, all the guys and girls are dancing together and singing the repeating choruses of “I love a man in the uniform. The girls they love to see you shoot…” And, as the number ends, Susan falls into Michael’s arms, whispers in his ear and they begin to head for the door. “See you tomorrow?” Michael smiles at K. “Guess it’s time for me to head home and face the music,” K. replies.

Scene 10 – Is It Love? (from the album Hard, 1983)

Key lyrics:

Is it love?
Love that’s on your mind
Is it love?
Not just of a certain kind

Back at Susan’s apartment – As the music starts, Michael and Susan are in bed having sex, both on their knees looking straight out into the audience (use your imagination). Their lovemaking is everything that the K.’s weren’t – hot, passionate, sweaty and loud. “Is it love?” Susan asks (hopes). The song plays out as a duet, the same as the album track. At 4:03 of the song, Susan and the scene come to a climax. Both she and Michael fall to the bed in exhaustion.

mp3 : Gang Of Four – Is It Love?

Scene 11 – Not Great Men

Key lyrics:

No weak men in the books at home
The strong men who have made the world
The poor still weak, the rich still rule

K. returns home, a bit disheveled and clearly depressed. He whispers something to Mrs. K. at which point she collapses into a nearby chair crying softly. “Not everyone is destined to be a winner in our economy,” he says, “But I thought for sure, that I could be one.” K. sits on the couch, across from his wife and begins to sing. When the song finishes, Mrs. K., now in better control of her emotions, takes his hand and leads him to the bedroom.

mp3 : Gang Of Four – Not Great Men

Scene 12 – Anthrax

Key lyrics:

Love’ll get you like a case of anthrax
And that’s something I don’t want to catch

Back at Susan’s apartment, it is a few hours later as Michael, hung over, begins to stir. The feedback at the beginning of the song, along with rapid bright white strobe lights, simulates Michael’s pounding headache and general disorientation.

mp3 : Gang Of Four – Anthrax

As he starts to regain his senses, he sees Susan, still sleeping, recalls the earlier events and remembers her desperate plea, “Is it Love?” This song is his response, “Love is like Anthrax”. As the song ends, Michael gets dressed and leaves.

Scene 13 – Damaged Goods

Key lyrics:

Sometimes I’m thinking that I love you, but I know it’s only lust
The change will do you good
Damaged goods
Send them back
I can’t work
I can’t achieve
Send me back
I’m kissing you goodbye

Back at the K.’s house, in the bedroom, Mrs. K. tries to help K. drown his sorrows in sex. She’s on top, working hard to make him happy and there does seem to be some cooperative passion initially. She starts singing the first verse. He takes over at the first repeat of “The kiss so sweet” and she takes over the next time that line is sung. Then suddenly he rolls her off him and the music stops.

mp3 : Gang Of Four – Damaged Goods

K. says he just can’t do it anymore, he knows he is a failure at work and pretending that there is still love in their marriage isn’t good for either of them. Mrs. K. acknowledges that everything he said is true and honestly she has had it with him as well. The music restarts with K. singing “Damaged Goods, Send Them Back”; she takes over at “The kiss so sweet” and with K sitting on the bed, head in his hands, she gets up, stands over him and finishes with the “I’m kissing you goodbye” chorus.

Scene 14 – Paralysed (from the album Solid Gold, 1981)

Key lyrics:

My ambitions come to nothing
What I wanted now just seems a waste of time
I can’t make out what has gone wrong

It is the next morning and with K. sitting on the couch in the living room looking forlorn and defeated, Mrs. K. walks by with her luggage, kisses him goodbye and leaves. Devastated and in complete despair, K. gets a bed sheet, fashions a noose and hangs it from a beam in the house. He stands on a chair, puts the noose around his neck, but then just stands there for several moments doing nothing. He’s unable to summon up the energy for this final act. Cue the music as K. sings “Blinkered. Paralysed. Flat on my back…”

mp3 : Gang Of Four – Paralysed

When the song ends, Mrs. K. re-enters the house and halfway through saying, “I forgot to take my…”, she sees K., walks over to him and exclaims, “Oh god! Can’t you do anything right!” She kicks the chair out from beneath his legs just as the stage goes completely dark.

END
**********

Last January, I was talking with a friend. While our conversations are usually restricted to politics, legal matters (his business) or the financial markets (mine), for whatever reason we found ourselves on the topic of theatre. He mentioned that he had recently seen a show, Mama Mia!.

“Really,” I said, “I have a great story about that.”

He then went on to tell me that while he’d never had much interest in musical theatre, this show – Mama Mia! – had been a transformative experience for him. He loved every minute of it, gained a new found appreciation for musicals, and thought that it must represent a pinnacle for the genre.

“What was your story?” he asked.

“Oh, never mind.”

DG

 

Luke Haines

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF LUKE HAINES (Part 16)

A GUEST POSTING by chaval

JC writes……

I know what you’re thinking…..wasn’t Part 16 of this series featured last week with the look at Off My Head… and Leeds United?  Indeed it was, but this is what should have been posted except technology let us down.  chaval sent it over in early December – twice – but on each occasion the contents ended up in cyberspace.  We both think the various files that were attached made it too large but neither of us got any notification about things.  Anyways, take this a Part 16…..last week’s as Part 17 and next week’s as Part 18.   Here’s chaval:-

VALA career curmudgeon whose innovative work was widely admired by his fellow artists while only occasionally flirting with the mainstream. A man with a scathing sense of humour, a habit of getting drunk and abusive in company and a wide ranging contempt for those contemporaries who had found success. His disdain for the people running his industry ran in parallel with a surprising ability to get them to stump up cash for projects with limited commercial appeal, including a work devoted to 70s terrorism. Yep, the English writer B.S Johnson really was a piece of work.

When film director Paul Tickell, rashly filming Johnson’s tricksy, post-modern terrorism novel Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry, happened to hear How I Learned To Love The Bootboys, he realised that if you needed a soundtrack for a film about a clerk who takes a grudge way too far, Luke Haines really was the man.

Happily the commission coincided with a period when Haines was feeling inspired, although not necessarily by the subject matter. He spent an intense ten days in an East London recording studio completing the bulk of the album in the winter of 2000. At that point, he admits, “I have still not seen a single frame of film footage”.

Probably wise. Tickell’s film was a mess, unable to decide whether it wanted to be a 21st-century take on the terrorist mindset, a homage to 60s kitchen-sink realism or a 50s-style Carry On spoof. These things are subjective of course, but I didn’t like the book, hated the film, but rather enjoyed the soundtrack.

Haines was inspired by a completely different story, the true tale of June and Jennifer Gibbons, disturbed twins who grew up on an RAF base in the 70s, suffered severe bullying and abuse and ended up in a Broadmoor psychiatric wing. Their story fuelled Discomania, a song that Haines rated so highly that he returned to it four times on the soundtrack, including a sparse funk version similar to the sound he had explored on Baader Meinhof

mp3: Luke Haines – Discomania
mp3: Luke Haines – Discomaniax

Johnson’s book was partly inspired by the Angry Brigade terrorist scares of the early 70s, subject matter close to Haines’s own fascinations although not really explored in the film. No matter, Haines scatters lyrical references to King Mob and Amherst Road (the Angry Brigade’s HQ address) and offers up a scathing slice of 70s underground social history in a track he describes as “prole-baiting”

mp3: Luke Haines  – How To Hate The Working Classes

The other standout on the album is a relentless assault on Nick Lowe’s classic. Lowe is a great songwriter but suffers the curse of usually sounding very affable on record. It’s not a problem Haines shares.

mp3: Luke Haines  – I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass

On the album insert, Haines emulates Malry’s habit of listing his grudges at society in the debit column. Number one is “Princes William and Harry not being in the Merc’.

The accompanying picture of Haines channelling a malevolent Johnson at his typewriter looks like a still from a superior 70s horror movie.

chaval

Mackenzie Sings Orbidoig

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #197 : MACKENZIE SINGS ORBIDOIG

Repeat posting from January 2014….and I’m not apologising for it!!

Today’s words are courtesy of Whippet at The Wheel, a wonderful former blog dedicated to the life and work of Billy Mackenzie:-

The guitarist Steve Reid was a long time friend of Billy’s.

“Orbidoig” had been a name used by Mr Reid and Christine Beveridge for their musical project formed some time after Christine had taken on vocal duties with Strange News in 1980. Billy had managed to help get Orbidoig a deal with Situation Two back in 1981, which had resulted in a single “Nocturnal Operations”/ “Up Periscopes”. Billy MacKenzie is credited with playing tubular bells on “Nocturnal Operations”. It was recorded around the time Christine Beveridge briefly joined Billy and Alan to form 39 Lyon Street and record one track “Kites”. The Orbidoig single sleeve photo is actually a publicity photo of 39 Lyon Street which has been severely cropped – leaving only Christine.

In the wake of the Rankine split, 1982 saw Billy team up with old pal and fellow Dundonian Mr Reid once more for a one-off single “Ice Cream Factory” released neither as a Billy MacKenzie solo single nor as an Orbidoig release… but as “MacKenzie Sings Orbidoig”! A rich musical creation spawned under the watchful eye of producer Mark Arthurworrey and written by Stevie Reid, the outcome made for a spot of uneasy, easy-listening. Released in 12″ and 7″ versions, the single received scant airplay and bombed. The B-sides were a dub version of the A side called “Cream Of Ice Cream Factory” and another track “Excursion Ecosse En Route Koblenz Via Hawkhill” a melodic but rather twisted, gnashing bit of guitar wrangling from Mr Reid. Hawkhill, for those who have no experience of Dundee is a pleasant cosmopolitan road which stretches from the big roundabout at The Marketgait, past the end of Blackness Road and down onto the Perth Road.

The 7″ has a place in the cupboard and I’m happy to, again, offer up both sides:-

mp3 : Mackenzie Sings Orbidoig – Ice Cream Factory
mp3 : Mackenzie Sings Orbidoig – Excursion Ecosse En Route Koblenz Via Hawkhill

JC