ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #111

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

# 111: Young Marble Giants – ‘Final Day’ (Rough Trade Records ’80)

Dear friends,

probably I shouldn’t even begin trying to explain the merits of Welsh outfit Young Marble Giants and/or how groundbreaking their only album, ‘Colossal Youth’, was for so many listeners back in 1980. Because, you see, for some it’s an absolute masterpiece, others will tell me to bugger off, as to them it’s just minimalistic nonsense with a severe lack of melody. I mean, those people do have a point: ‘Colossal Youth’ in its entirety certainly isn’t ‘easy listening’ and whether this chap out of Nirvana, Cobain, wasn’t pushing a bit too hard when constantly praising the album as the best thing since sliced bread, remains debatable.

In Germany we even had a band who named themselves after this album, ‘Kolossale Jugend’, pioneers of the Hamburger Schule in 1989 and led by the wonderful Kristof Schreuf, who, alas, died three years ago. Listen to their song ‘Bessere Zeiten’ and you have at least one thing to thank Young Marble Giants for!

But enough of the album, because today’s song isn’t even on it! It was a single, well, one song on a four-track-EP, also from 1980, but what the band managed to come up with within the 100 seconds the tune lasts, is remarkable! The combination of guitar and electronic rumble and Alison Statton’s (who later found fame with Working Week) naïve, genuinely artless vocals make the song so damned special. All of this, plus what she was singing about: ‘the final day’, as the title suggests. Applicable somehow, as this is the ultimate post in this series on TVV, but no, the lyrics were not written for this occasion nor are they about the end of a relationship: the end of the world they are about, not more, not less!

You see, in the early and mid-80s this was rather a hot topic – and back then I would never have thought that I’d have similar fears again some 40 years later. But to my great dismay this is the case: every morning in the bathroom when I open Google News on my mobile, I expect to be confronted with one – or both – of our two genius world leaders on either side of the Pacific having done something (to quote The Primitives) really stupid, something irreversible! Therefore I lately often find myself humming along to below song whilst shaving a few minutes later:

mp3: Young Marble Giants – Final Day

Sheer class, right?

Now, when I started this nonsense (with the Akrylykz – in November ’22, remember?), I thought to myself: ‘well, let’s wait and see what people think, perhaps there will be one or two comments. If not, then you can decide whether to continue or not.’ Well, I continued, as you can tell, and this is purely because of you and your nice words. I enjoyed every single comment, regardless of their length: there were short ones, there were essays (this is to you, FFF!) – I was happy about each and every one, and this is what kept me going, by and large.

So please let me use this opportunity to say ‘thank you’ for everything you commented (I know I didn’t thank you for any comments at the time, deliberately so, I thought this would take things too far perhaps) from the bottom of my heart, friends – I mean it! In equal measure of course: thanks to our host JC for having given me the opportunity to occasionally ‘borrow’ TVV for this series: highly appreciated, mate – because I think we all know that I’d never had such a great audience over @ sexyloser, right?

And that’s it then, friends. Hope you enjoyed the majority of it, perhaps there even was someone who heard something new – and didn’t totally dislike it. As I said before: in this case I’d have fully accomplished my mission …

JC has asked me if I might contemplate to continue with something else, he says he would support it. In addition to this there are of course contractual obligations between him and me, and I think it’s fair to say that presumably you’d rather get out of the French Foreign Legion than out of this contract. So you wait and see, perhaps I’ll crop up again here in due course … I might even already have a clever idea, who knows?

Until then, take good care – and enjoy!

Peace,

Dirk

 

JC adds…………..

This series of 111 singles has been an absolute joy to post on the blog over the past two years.  Dirk is one of my oldest ‘imaginary friends’ (as Rachel used to call the blogging fraternity) and who, through his determination a few years ago to meet up in the flesh, instigated a memorable weekend in Glasgow during which a number of imaginary friends became flesh and blood, and so I’ll always owe him a great deal.

He’s also, as this series has demonstrated, a very astute and knowledgeable purveyor of the music scene, with his tastes being as wide and diverse as anyone I know.  He’s also a superbly entertaining writer, and given he does so in his second language, he puts many of us who rely solely on English very much to shame.  I can’t thank him enough.

And, as ever, his timing is impeccable.  The 111 singles series may have come to an end, but as it happens, a brand new occasional series is about to get underway immediately, courtesy of another long-standing friend of the blog, one that should be as enjoyable as that which has been delivered by Dirk.  Hope to see you all again tomorrow.