Where Once There Was Chaos...

Phew! That's better.

Testing For Buzz XXXIX 1968 And All That XIV

“With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office--the Presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”

Although I had little grasp of world politics in 1968 I knew who LBJ was because of my interest in the space race and the fact that my morbid obsession with the assassination of JFK had reached fever pitch around this time.

Seeing the photograph of Johnson taking the oath of office on Airforce One alongside the First Lady fuelled my juvenile conspiracy theory that LBJ must have had a hand in the killing of the President. I mean, it’s obvious isn’t it. Isn’t it? Well no, not all but of course there are a thousand books and websites that’ll tell you that and a whole lot more.

All I knew at the time was that LBJ’s announcement (along with the partial cessation of the bombing in Vietnam) was exercising the TV and the daily newspapers that came through our house at the time.

Looking back on it now, I have quite a soft spot for the old codger though I can’t quite decide whether it was something noble or whether his political nerve had cracked.

Chaos In Theory And Practice

Help my world has exploded! What was meant to be a quick tidy up has burgeoned into an all-out attack on personal detritus. Discard the superfluous indeed.

The reason for this burst of unSid-like activity is that our guestroom is soon to be occupied on a regular basis by my niece, Verity, who needs office space as part of her relocation from London to the north-east. It’s a temporary measure but in order for her to move in, I’ve had to move my junk out of there.

Two boxes of stuff came up to the yellow room and have taken over as I’ve attempted to sort through it all. I found old hand-written diaries, badges, old poems, bills, letters from old employers, various certificates and instruction manuals for items of electronic gadgetry that I no longer have. And so on.

But…

In order to make room for the stuff I do need to keep, I’ve had to address some of the outstanding junk on my desks here in the main control room. So tons of review copies have to be addressed, binned or filed; magazines and cuttings, ditto.

In the interim period just about every available surface is occupied. Actually not so much occupied but more like under siege.

Street Life CXV

Street Life CXIV

Nominations For God XXXIV

Jacques Brel

Words And Music VI

There are some songs that stop you dead in your tracks, which scramble senses and catch our breath. These are the songs of innocence and experience, our lives, our loves and our deaths.

“If You Go Away”, written by Jacques Brel and translated into English by Rod McKuen, captures the grim moments where the thought of losing someone is too much to bear. Though it's been covered by everybody under the sun, my favourite version of this song for years has been Scott Walker’s rendition from 1969s Scott 3. It’s not only that magnificent voice but the sparse, mournful simplicity of the arrangements that gets to me.

I didn't think it could get any better than that but last year I came upon the original version sung by its composer. Here the implicit hope in McKuen’s translation and repositioning of the emotional argument is absent. McKuen talks about “if” – “if you go”, “if you stay”, but in Brel’s world the deed has already been done.

We join the narrator of the song as his love is about to walk away. The words here are brutal, messy, ridiculous and laughable. It is the desperate rambling of a man reduced to an almost incoherent state transfixed by the totality of loss, self-pity, abject supplication, pleading for his life, begging "don't leave me".

He's trying to make his love laugh, creating a diversion, spouting anything simply in order to keep the conversation alive, scrabbling around in the dirt attempting to delay that unthinkable moment when he knows his love will leave for the last time.

By the time he's reduced to begging to simply be in the presence of his love's shadow, or even absurdly, the shadow of her dog, both singer and audience know its over. For good.

Howlin Rain Magnificent Fiend

Back to the future…

Magnificent Fiend
Howlin Rain
Birdman Records

The first impression of Magnificent Fiend was that it was merely a smirking irony-laden parody of all those Vanilla Fudge, Stoneground, and Steppenwolf records that used to clutter the album collections of serious rock-heads back in the day. There was so much to dislike about this record. Every track on it reminded me of something else, every visitor who heard it agreed that you’d never have guessed it’d been recorded in the 21^st Century.

Relegating it to the “do nothing” pile, I moved on. That should have been that except that I found myself retrieving it on an increasingly regular basis, regarding it warily as something of a furtive, guilty pleasure.

The brainchild of Ethan Miller, whose vocals evoke vintage Rod Stewart or Steve Marriot (with maybe a twist of Terry Reid), Magnificent Fiend erupts from a melodramatic jazzy blur of blaring trumpet and rolling piano to abruptly jerk the listener into a full-blown early 70s Hammond-led rock convention.

“Lord Have Mercy” forensically recreates the moment when straight rock started branching out. Within the space of one six minute song we move through a series of moods and movements; bluesy, Clapton-like reveries, hard-rock gospel and then a Hammond-led lurch into a turbo-charged prog-rock crescendo that could have come straight off The Yes Album

“El Ray” gets all Curtis Mayfield, “Goodbye Ruby” has flashes of Chicago’s brass-rock adventures whilst “Riverboat” enjoys the dizzying, sun-kissed harmonies gracing CSN’s debut.

The energy is high but happily so is the quality control. By taking the best features of the period and ditching the sappy indulgent excesses (there are no sprawling solos anywhere), it bristles with a righteously tight organisation, shifting thoughtful arrangements and carefully chosen timbral highlights (vintage synths, over-driven electric piano, brassy underscores) which will win the hearts and minds of even the most dubious listener.

There must be something in the water or in the air over there in San Francisco for all these retro-future acts to keep appearing with such good material. Ethan Miller hails from psych-rockers Comets of Fire (who contain Ben Chasney - see Six Organs of Admittance) and then there's also Wooden Shjips operating somewhere near the Bay as well. All are doing something genuinely interesting and expressive.

Despite the constant echoes of another time, somehow Howlin Rain emerge very much themselves, with songs that stand up to scrutiny and repeated listening. Arguably the best album I never heard in my teens it really is magnificent stuff.

Street Life CXIII

The Apprentice

“I’m a winner not a quitter”

“With me you get 110 % commitment”

“I don’t know the meaning of the word failure”

“I’m simply the best“

“I push the boundaries”

“I don’t ever take no for an answer”

“I’m a natural leader”

“I can’t contemplate defeat of any kind”

“I can sell anything”

“Nothing stops me from achieving”

“I’m a world-class talent”

“I am totally goal-orientated”

“I take no prisoners when it comes to getting ahead of the competition”

“People tell me I’m brilliant all the time”

“I always have my eyes on the prize”

“What you get with me is a winner”

At some point over the next fifteen weeks we are going to hear all of the self-anointing homilies mentioned above, spouting from the mouths of young dashing men and women hoping to worm their into the affections of Sir Alan Sugar or if not, then maybe the commissioning editors of day-time property-porn shows.

The Apprentice has once again trawled the length and breadth of the United Kingdom to come up with another set of self-obsessed go-getters.

Tonight’s episode was the usual ugly-pageant, testosterone-addled pissing contest (and that was just the women’s team), as the two groups ran around London trying to flog as much wet fish as they could, out-do each other and pass the buck when anything went wrong. Shoving lobster out at a fiver apiece was as wrong as you could get as the incredulous look on the punter’s faces should have told them.

These opening skirmishes are probably the least interesting part of the series and it was obvious that the unfortunate Nicholas de Lacy-Brown had was the “You’re fired” fodder from the off. I had hoped I’d got over The Apprentice after last year’s disappointing series but I hung grimly on through the set pieces enjoying the misfortune of others which they so richly deserve.

It’s too early to say who might be a contender but the cocky Alex Wotherspoon held up well against Sir Alan’s boardroom barrage. Certainly one to watch.

No Country For Old Buildings

Today I had a date with Debra over in Gateshead to see No Country For Old Men at the Tyneside Cinema. Whilst its home in Newcastle is being refurbished the operation of the cinema has been transferred to the old Town Hall.

Gateshead is a strange place that always feels in a state of flux whenever I visit. The town centre seems as though it is forever being redeveloped, pedestrianised, re-contoured and regenerated. As soon as you step out of the concrete and glass box Metro station, you're confronted with the 19^th, 20^th and 21^st Century competing for attention.

Just around the corner, a stroll past what used to be the old Jackson Street Co-operative Society (where I once worked in the early 70's). Though now a dismembered hulk - a far cry from its once-swish department store modernity, it is still breathing but only just.

to another "centre" that is now cordoned off and waiting demolition...

One famous denizen waiting for the chop is the multi-story car park, featured in Get Carter, with which I have a historical performance art connection.

On the other side of the road we get a glimpse of what made the civic planners bristle with pride back in the mid-80s, when this frankly plug-ugly lump of public art was deposited upon the populace.
In a way these two civic homunculus deserve each other, slugging it out for the possession of hearts and minds, but in reality alienating those they come into contact with.

In Gateshead, even the skies seem tired today, heavy and lumbering toward dusk...

The approach to the old town hall is interesting. What was once quite literally the civic centre of the town has been relegated to an island surrounded by lanes of traffic.






And now, the main feature...

Julian’s Treatment A Time Before This

The albums that time (thankfully) forgot
A Time Before This /Julian’s Treatment
Waiters on the Dance /Julian Jay Savarin
Esoteric

One can only imagine that the execs at the Youngblood label in 1970 were persuaded to record and release a double album whose titles and characters included Altarra, Princess of the Blue Women, Twin Suns of Centauri and Alda, Dark Lady of the Outer Worlds, in the hope of cashing in on the then burgeoning space-age zeitgeist.

Whilst echoes of Floyd’s Ummagumma can be detected (and obliquely inspired by the success of In The Court of the Crimson King), this sprawling mess of a double album was the brainchild of sci-fi author and keyboardist, Julian Jay Savarin. What it has in the way of organ-driven motifs, stodgy riffs and histrionic vocals belting out preachy message of doom, gloom and space travel, it lacks in sophistication, vitality, and perhaps most important of all, a modicum of credibility.

The second album by Savarin, Waiters on the Dance released in 1973, continues with yet more leaden, portentous themes although ultimately all were destined for black-hole of obscurity.

Still, obscurity is the lifeblood of the reissue market and these days it seems the “lost classic of progressive era” tag is applied to just about anything that was recorded in the early 70s with a Mellotron or Hammond organ on it. Whilst these admirably lavish reissues (remastered from original tapes) earn their curiosity status, they’re far from being classics - lost or otherwise.

Mike Oldfield Music of the Spheres

This will ring a bell…

Music of the Spheres
Mike Oldfield
UCJ

If you’re going to prove your detractors wrong better to do it in grand style. In his autobiography (Changeling 2007) Mike Oldfield describes how, after being the butt of patronising attitudes whilst a member of Kevin Ayers’ band, he wanted to come up with something that would make everyone sit up and take him seriously. Well, it doesn’t get much grander than Tubular Bells and more or less the whole wide world (give or take a few million sales here and there) sat up and took notice.

The phenomenal success didn’t necessarily make him happy. Several times in his book he talks of being grateful for the abiding interest in TB whilst simultaneously resentful about having everything he does compared to that first record.

Despite such stylistically diverse pieces such Ommadawn, the catchy pop and rock of “Moonlight Shadow” , “Family Man”, or even the techno-tinged moods of 2005’s Light And Shade, he’s never quite escaped the gilded cage which his debut album has constructed around him.

It’s no great surprise therefore that the dancing string motif of the opening track “Harbinger” is clearly drawn from the same gene pool as the first fruit of his loins. Similarly the stirring bass figures which stoke the engines of “Musica Universalis” bear a striking resemblance to those underpinning the Stansall-narrated coda of Tubular Bells.

Back then the guitar was pretty much the star. Here, it’s the tunes that he wants us to focus upon but only after they’ve been threaded into Karl Jenkins’ opulent orchestral embroidery class. The pair first worked together when a Soft Machine-era Jenkins played the oboe and keyboards on the BBC’s Full House performance of TB, and it’s interesting to see the way in which their very separate subsequent career paths have crossed once again, losing their distinctive qualities and becoming interchangeable.

Perhaps understandably, Jenkins has taken Oldfield’s melodies and come up with something that sounds an awful lot like one of his Adiemus albums. “Shabda” in particular has those shrill choral voices to the fore which was a feature of the Adiemus aura, though mercifully they aren’t lumbered here with all that ridiculous invented “ethnic” language malarkey.

Possibly because Oldfield’s playing presence is limited to a few fairly anonymous cameo appearances on the classical acoustic, the album lacks the personality and tension which he achieved with side one of Tubular Bells. And if the constant comparison to his former glories seems unfair then bear in mind that so much of Music Of The Spheres sounds like an old arrival rather than a new departure.

Another Postcard From The Blue Room

A couple of years ago, (August 16th 2005 to be exact) Tom was thrilled to move into his very own bedroom after a lifetime of sharing with his brother, Joe. It was the smallest room in the house but to Tom it was a palace.

After a swap around caused by Sam leaving the nest to get his own place in Heaton a few months ago, Tom has now inherited Alys' old room. When I asked him what colour he wanted to paint it, Tom immediately said "blue!"

So, today being a bank holiday, Tom and Joe spent the morning slapping the blue about the place. I called in to help out but was really surplus to requirements.

It's So Nice To Travel But It's Oh So Nicer To Come Home

It's always nice when your work gets noticed. I've been asked to contribute a few words about what a wonderful place Whitley Bay is. This is for a publication which may or may not be called the Whitley Bay Guide.

The publication is being designed by Chris Wilson, the designer who did such a spiffing job with the King Crimson biography, and he suggested to the great and good who are funding the guide that my modest snaps be included.

Hurrah for Chris who sent me a rough draft of what it may look like. I'm not sure when the finished version is being published but I was very pleased and flattered to be asked along for the ride.

Street Life CXII

Street Life CXI

Well it's been quite a night. I got soaked to the skin in torrential gales last night and this morning I was woken up before 6.00 a.m. by the roar of the wind. So of course I headed out into the teeth of a wind that threw me off balance as it hit me. I wasn't the only thing that was knocked over in our street.
The news reports that the wind speed hitting Whitley Bay was 50 miles per hour. Within a minute of being outside my hands were cold and so painful that I had to keep stopping taking photographs and shove them in my checkie. I managed to do about ten minutes out there and it took me about an hour to warm up afterwards.

Nominations For God XXXIII

Barre Phillips

Words And Music V

Pedaltone Pedaltone

Not just a pretty face…
Pedaltone
Pedaltone
Burning Shed
Comprising of Swiss looping guitarist Bernard Wagner and Henry Fool/Samuel Smiles guitarist, Michael Bearpark, we have nearly an hour of luminous effects, scintillating pulses and swooning embellishments shimmering before us in a ghostly heat-haze.

Yet this manages not to be some passive ambient exercise but something rather more intensive and rigorous in nature. Just when you think things are settling down, a dissident edge will be introduced.

Consisting of two multi-part suites divided into separate ‘sides’ the first piece “Overwritten” can be characterised as belonging to the more introspective school of looping, occasionally reminiscent of Steve Hillage’s cyclical interventions. Not unlike Raphael Torel’s angular explorations, side two (“Doppelganger”), is brighter and more mercurial in nature.

Recorded in 2004 and released in 2005, the sheer numbers involved in ambient looping these days means it’s a all too possible for its practitioners to fall into a recursive limbo of Groundhog Day-style Déjà vu. However, Pedaltone’s harmonic and timbral invention and inquisitiveness go a long way towards avoiding such a fate.

Street Life CX

Testing For Buzz XXVIII 1968 And All That XIII

Arthur C Clarke's place in posterity was guaranteed long before he got together with Stanley Kubrick to create one of the most intriguing movies of the 20th Century. Having predicated the satellite age well before the heavens were filled with our space junk, Clarke's ability to speculate and even appear prophetic was undoubtedly a factor in drawing Kubrick to the writer and having him create a paradoxically down-to-earth cosmic saga that took in the dawn of man and everything beyond.

I didn't see the picture until 1969. I had spent a year badgering my parents to take me to see it. I avidly collected anything that featured or contained any of its images, and probably spent a full year just gazing at the front covers of the paperback with the revolving circular space station and at the back end, with its spooky interior of HAL. When I did start reading it, I barely understood a single paragraph but it kept me going until finally I ended up sitting in the Queen's in Newcastle to see the movie on the only Cinerama screen in town.

After seeing the movie, I returned to the book and kept returning periodically over the years. I never read very much else by Clarke but retained a fond respect for the man who envisaged contact with other worlds and forces in such a fascinating way.

Random Penguin XIII

1972

Various Artists Sampler 3

All Together Now

Sampler 3
Various Artists
Burning Shed

There was a time when you might buy an album simply because of the label it was on. However romantic and frankly daft it might sound now in this corporate multi-national world, punters often placed their trust in labels such as Island, Charisma, Vertigo, Harvest and Virgin. They were like music clubs where the chances were that if you liked one act then you might well like another signed to the same company.

As the record industry establishment flounder any the sense of artistic empathy within their labels has long since been atomised. It has fallen to smaller independent, artist-led companies to recreate the kind of d'esprit d cor which seemed implicit in those oldie but goldie releases such as You Can All Join In, Nice Enough To Eat, et al, by releasing their very own series of sampler albums.

Established in 2001, Burning Shed has evolved from its bespoke CDR distribution origins to a comprehensive boutique encompassing an expanding base of artists and areas of interest. Sampler Three gives us a slice of the glacial ambient trickles via the poignant Harold Budd-meets- Thomas Newman territories of Pete Chilvers' “Empty Space”, A Marble Calm’s “Another World" and Roger Eno’s Satie-esque watercolour, “Angling”.

Whilst the dominant mood borders on sombre (in a post-rock kind of way) this is alleviated with glitchy electronica (UXB’s “White House Black Ash”, Pedaltone’s “”Goodbye Honeypot”), Canterbury sound stylings of Hugh Hopper (“Craig’s Distended Train Ride”) and Theo Travis (here playing with Cipher), and a surprise inclusion of singer/songwriter Terry Stamp. His bedraggled drawl on “Howling For The Highway Home”, hitches a ride in the same beat-up Buick that whisked Springsteen and Tom Waits to the company of fallen angels, low-life characters and neon glistening in the falling rain.

On the surface this countrified ballad is far removed from the electronics and classical undertows which swirl about it. Yet establishing connections that might otherwise be lost or at first glance are apparently invisible is surely the purpose of such samplers.

This Much I Know

I’ve probably heard the track “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic” by King Crimson more times than I’ve had hot dinners. Yet I’ve never failed to be gripped by a piece that seems almost ludicrously discursive in our sound-bite age.

This morning as I listened to this particular gig for the first time ahead of uploading it onto DGMLive, I was caught in the same transformative glare which I found myself in when I first encountered this line-up on stage 35 years ago.

Maybe that just makes me dull, easily pleased or terminally nostalgic, but perhaps it also says something about the special qualities existing within this seminal statement of intent from the then new Crimso, and which continue to resonate even after so many years and listenings.

Although I’m utterly familiar with every nook and cranny of the piece, the angularities and rollercoaster dynamics of its ten or so minutes never fail to challenge and suggest that whatever fads and fashions may come and go that initial shock of the new never loses its initial impact.

The excitement I feel now is born of the same fever that stirred in me back in 1972; It feels like a whole new universe opening up to swallow you whole. It’s counter-intuitive and goes against the grain out what our mainstream culture dictates and tells us music is all about.

I know Crimson are only a rock band and that it’s terribly passé to take this kind of music seriously now.

I know that I’m a dumb sap by admitting that something as ineffable as structure, texture and virtuosity speaks to me just as well as anything laid down by the three-minute golden rule of pop.

I know the accepted wisdom tells me that this period in our rocktastic history is an aberration, one that will remain forever be beyond the defining light of the uber-lists that guide and homogenise our tastes nowadays.

I know I should kow-tow to the mantra that is repeated ad nauseum that any deviation from the well-worn Indie/punky- jangle/ Black soul of authenticity is just so much swollen ego and projectile virtuosity that is inherently vulgar and unseemly.

I know that the bright young double-barrelled gunslinger journalists populating and policing our broadsheets would roll their eyes if they stumbled across it anywhere outside of a context where irony renders it safe to like.

I know that my tastes are outmoded and my opinions outdated, and I know that what I think and believe about music is irrelevant and the object of derision by folks who take their poison on the po-mo couches of the review shows and monthly columns of note.

I know above all else that for a brief moment in time rock music was allowed to be articulate, to possess ambition and be unafraid to fail, and that this Jurassic time is gone and will never come again.

I know all this and I don’t care.

I don’t care because I know that I’m lucky to have been on hand to feel this music punching my solar plexus as it came off the stage.

I know I’m lucky to have felt a visceral connection that bypasses the brain and goes straight to the heart, that sweet clear spot still untarnished by all the things they think I should know by now.

Hallelujah brother and pass the ammunition.

Cragside

An invitation to go to Cragside House with Bernard and Lesley was received and accepted. The last time Debbie and I went there was at least ten years ago (we think).

The approach to Bernardstrasse...


Bernardstrasse...

Bernardstrasse interior with Lesley...

The approach to Rothbury...

Arrival...


A trek through the trees...




The approach to the house...



Afterwards, another trek through yet more trees...

Bringing Home The Bacon

Yesterday morning the phone rang. It was Bernard suggesting we meet for lunch. I had a couple of writing jobs on but wasn't getting anywhere fast with them, a combination of being out of sorts and clean out of words. In situations like that getting away from the desk is probably the best cure.

Up our street heading toward Whitley Road...

...and the approach to Bernardstrasse ...

Chez Bernard

We headed down to North Shields. Once a lively fishing port, the place is now pretty dead on its knees. Nevertheless the place has its attractions.

The Highlight

The Lowlight


Looking out towards Knots flats...

Looking out toward the mouth of the Tyne...

And then the phone rings and Bernard obliges me by re-enacting a scene from Get Carter...


After an half and hour of wandering around admiring the 17th Century remnants of Clifford's Fort we pop into The Dolphin for what Chris Wilson would undoubtedly call, a cheeky one.

The joint wasn't exactly jumping (which is a good thing in The Dolphin believe me)...
but we knew somewhere else would be...


Inside you quickly realise they don't make shops like this any more. I ask for a pound and a half of back bacon.






The bacon secured, Bernard and I were homeward bound. The words were waiting.

Nominations For God XXXII

Lauren Bacall

The Enemy Of Productivity III: 10 Days To War

Following my recent tirade about the paucity of writing talent on UK television, I'm glad to say I've been proven totally wrong by a series of ten minute plays that examine the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

10 Days To War brings to life some of the back-room bargaining, horse-trading and outright deceit that went on in the corridors of power prior to Blair and Bush's folly. The writers, directors and actors achieve more in ten minutes than many shows achieve in sixty minutes, or as is increasingly becoming the case, an hour and a half.

The quiet desperation of General Tim Cross was portrayed to perfection by Stephen Rea, as he realises the ineptitude of post-invasion planning and the resulting chaos that will surely follow in its wake. It's easy to be wise after the event and even more galling to be have been wise before it yet powerless to do anything about it. Never mind the terse dialogue. Rea's eyes said it all.


These aren't presented as gospel accounts but are upfront about being dramatisations based on events and research. By avoiding any sensational devices the writing rings true and there's always a factual post-script at the end which lets you know what happened in the real world to the main characters portrayed. Usually, when the outcome is revealed, it's quite a sting in the tale. Real life is almost always better than fiction.

All of them have been utterly engrossing, and at ten minutes a pop it's not going to soak up too much of your valuable time is it? Highly recommended.

Episode 1. A Simple Private Matter
Episode 2. $100 Coffee
Episode 3. These things are always chaos
Episode 4. Why This Rush?





And later in the day...
The blog has been Vox-popped! Click to enlarge.

Punching Holes

In 1980 I was in a band called Punching Holes. Led by the charismatic vocalist, Brian Bond (ex-Punishment of Luxury) we offered a bruising blend of post-punk jaggedness, tricksy time signatures, brooding textures, and - I like to think - well-played, literate rock.

The band was formed when Brian came to the studio where I worked (Spectro Arts Workshop) in order to write and record songs for his post-Punilux career. I helped out by playing bass on a couple of tracks (as did nascent electronica artist Ian Boddy) and eventually when it seemed obvious a band was needed as the correct vehicle for his material, Brian and I recruited my pal (and later best man to my first marriage) Steve Cowgill on keyboards, along with Norman Emerson (brother of the cartoonist Hunt Emerson) and the phenomenally talented guitarist and writer, Tim Jones, who had made such an impact in the punky trio Neon.

We played a few gigs and because of Brian and Tim's respected lineage got a great deal of media attention with local TV and radio appearances, gigs around the country (including venues such as The Greyhound in Fulham and the Hope & Anchor) and even a wildly inappropriate mention in teen mag Jackie.

Until the other day, the only keep sake I had of my time with the band was a couple of badly recorded cassette tapes of the band in action and this cutting from Sounds.

Now thanks to an earlier blog about ace local band Penetration, photographer Rik Walton got in touch. It turned out Rik had a couple of pictures of the band in action which he very kindly emailed me.

I can't tell you how strange it is seeing this photographs after all this time. Quite bizarre. Though we recorded a few demos, and were receiving attention from a couple of labels, managers and producers, I left the band to concentrate on some performance art ventures I'd become entangled with as part of The Basement Group.

Punching Holes went on from strength to strength though never managed to break out of their big fish in a small pond status, despite their cover of Charles Trenet's magnificent "La Mer" being picked as Terry Wogan's record of the week! The A-side though enjoyable, was utterly unrepresentative of the group with the B-side "Mad Mother" (which I originally helped to arrange) being truer to the group's darker aspect.



By the time the single was recorded the line-up had altered quite a bit with the departure of Tim Jones and addition of Jonah Sharp percussion/keyboards, Richard Sharpe keyboards a guitarist called Graham and a bassist called Dave (who later joined Bronksi Beat).

Later they changed their name to Zoo Bazaar taking on a New Romantic kind of vibe. I saw the band in concert at the time and they were great (despite the dodgy leg wear!) with Brian ever the striking and the consummate showman. Despite their best efforts, the lack of commercial success sapped the energy from the group and they went their separate ways.

Steve Cowgill (who took up trumpet and keyboards with Keith Morris in Red Music) stayed in contact but I pretty much lost touch with everyone else. I saw Jonah Sharp many, many years later when he came to see ProjeKct Four in San Francisco where he'd made a name on the electronica / ambient music scene. Richard Sharpe ended up in Tokyo pursuing a career as a fashion designer; Tim Jones got involved in production work and numerous side projects; Brian eventually went into lecturing and teaching drama, and Norman as far as I know is still playing drums in various local bands on the Newcastle music scene.

Thanks to Rik for providing the impetus for this unexpected personal bout of nostalgia.

LATE NEWS:
This just in from Bernard

"I found this in a jewellery box at home (it’s amazing the bollocks you keep over the years). It’s a no expense spared (or should I say no expense incurred) rare collectable from the good old days. Actually I have fond memories of the few gigs I saw with you in that band."

Street Life CIX

The Return Of King Crimson

So there I was grappling with the washing line in gale force winds when I heard the telephone burst into life back in the orange room. Normally I would let it go answerphone mode but I dropped what I was doing and dashed inside to catch it.

A good job too. It was Robert Fripp on the line to let me know the dates for King Crimson's return to active service. The full list can be found over on DGMLive.

Family commitments and finances allowing I'm intending to be at all the shows. The decision to tour only the USA this year (and only a portion of it) is bound to be a source of ire to European fans but the way I look at it is that I've been travelling from my front door to see King Crimson in concert since 1973 when my sister Lesley and I had to travel a couple of hundred miles to Birmingham to see Cross, Fripp, Wetton and Bruford in action.

I'm not sure what to make of the new line-up which adds Porcupine Tree's Gavin Harrison on drums next to Fripp, Tony Levin, Adrian Belew and Pat Mastelotto. However, as the 2003 tour demonstrated, KC repertoire no matter how well you think you know it is nearly always capable of surprises and raising the hairs on the back of the neck. And the trick will be to go with open ears and help the band make the leap if at all possible.

The last time I saw the band play was in Italy (alongside the Kenty Kimbrini) and to be honest, I never expected to see them in concert again. See you there? I'll be the one shouting "Moonchild!".

So, I'm going to spend the rest of the day looking at travel plans: the first thing being to get my passport renewed!

It's Enough To Make You Swear

You can always tell when governments are running out of steam or have been around far too long. The tell-tale signs are an increasing amount of snouts-in-the-trough stories as individual and collective arrogance becomes the predominant mind-set, sex scandals, and hare-brained headline grabbing “initiatives”.

And if that paragraph summed up the last years of the last Tory government it also provides a short-hand account of Gordon Brown’s benighted premiership.

To be fair there’s not really been a good old-fashioned sex scandal on the son of the Manse’s watch worthy of the name but there’s ample compensation to be found when it comes to the sounds-like-a-good-idea-if-you-say-it-fast-enough department: namely Lord Goldsmith’s proposals to have school-leavers swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country.

Had this vacuous, half-baked tosh been in place when I left school I wouldn’t have been able to take such an oath.

I regarded the monarch as a mega-rich, tax-dodging landowner occupying their privileged position by virtue of an accident of birth and/or murdering their nearest rivals for the job. Why would I swear anything to an institution I held (and hold) in contempt?

True allegiance to something can’t be instilled via recitation or incantation. It’s bred in the bone of engagement, the sinews of discourse, debate and dissent; of experience – good and bad.

What’s the point in educating young people to think and question for themselves, if at the end of the process they are required to recite an oath like a mindless drone?

If the institution of monarchy is symbolic of this country then maybe they’ll let those school-leavers who don’t buy it swear to something else that is equally as resonant, such as an oath to roast beef, Fatima Whitbread or The Kinks?

Random Penguin XII

1970
Cover design by Larry Carter

Fairport Convention

The start of something big
Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention

Polydor

Though often overlooked in favour of the albums which followed, Fairport Convention’s debut release is suffused with the musical abandon of young people who didn’t know what they couldn’t do and so had a go at everything.

A kaleidoscopic adventure that takes in blues, rock, jazz, pop, bluegrass, West Coast-inspired flights of fancy and anything else they happened to have passed along the way, nevertheless coalesces into a bright energetic collection that retains its importance as part of the folk into rock experiment.

Still finding their feet, the record captures hedonistic lurches, numerous doffing of the cap to their varied influences, intriguing sidesteps and above all, the enthusiastic grasping of an opportunity to make a mark without much regard for caution or reserve.

Richard Thompson’s precocious guitar delivers the majority of the thrills and spills particularly on the proto-prog hack and slash interludes on the four minute, legend-in-its-own-lunchtime surrealistic epic, “The Lobster” and the straighter ripping rock n’ roll of “It’s Alright Ma, It’s Only Witchcraft.”

Though she often gets the short-end of the stick with invidious comparisons to Sandy Denny, the clean lines of Judy Dyble’s vocals are perfect throughout the record and peak on their frantic, exhilarating cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Chelsea Morning” and the comedown lament of “One Sure Thing”.

Though some will opine the relative lack of sophistication and stylistic coherence that would characterise the group’s later output, what we get here is a record that is entirely unselfconscious, a product of fertile (not to say febrile) times with the kind of combined chutzpah that went way beyond any of their years. Classic stuff.

Testing For Buzz XXXVI 1968 And All That XII

Every year my Gran Smith would come up from her native Birmingham to stay with us for a couple of weeks. I loved her dearly and was always excited at the prospect of meeting her in Newcastle’s Central Station as she stepped off the train and walked over the bridge.

I sometimes struggled with her heavy brummy accent and her use of strange words and phrases. For example, instead of saying “toilet”, “lavatory” or “loo”, she would say “Lah Pom”. I have no idea where it comes from and I have never heard any other living soul on this planet utter these two words when referring to the toilet. Even now, the phrase makes me smile, and I associate it with her as a unique aural signature.

Her conversation was laced with other words and phrases whose meaning was beyond my understanding, though unlike “Lah Pom”, they had a certain emphasis and gravity that made them stand out from the crowd, and also unlike "Lah Pom" I was to hear them all too frequently as I got older : “darkies”, “nigger “and “wog” were amongst the ones she usually deployed.

Growing up in an exclusively white working class suburb of Newcastle, I had never seen a black or Asian person. Aside from the BBC’s The Black And White Minstrel Show on Saturday nights, (who of course don't count), the first time I saw a black person was when my mother and I went down to visit my Gran at her house in Longbridge.

The other phrase I recall hearing a lot of in 1968 (not only from Gran Smith but my parents as well) was “Enoch’s right.” I had no idea at the time who or what Enoch was but I would find out quick enough.

Walk And Talk

Debra spent yesterday turning what used to be called the green room into the orange room. This morning she put some finishing touches to her painting before we left to meet up with Bernard and Lesley.

Despite the warnings of dreadful weather, Debra and I togged up and headed out to Bernardstrasse enjoying the unexpected sunshine.


We had been invited for coffee-time and some of Bernard and Lesley's wonderful home-baking.

We also got a chance to chin-wag with my niece, Errin who is up on a flying visit from university in Northampton.


After an hour of chin-wagging, they kindly drove us to Newcastle to visit the flea market at Shadow And Star Cinema and the cavernous space that is the Art Works gallery at the top of Stepney Bank in the city's east end.

Although I can't say I was particularly impressed by any of the work on show the range and diversity of what was on display was interesting.

We did find a glass vase we both liked though at a reasonable price and Debra plumped for that.

After our bout of art-related consumerism we took a walk over Byker bridge, pausing to look down over the Cluny arts complex (where I saw Theo Travis last year)...

...and look up at some very dramatic and very changeable skies.

The Ouseburn valley was traditionally a site for warehousing, light engineering and further in the past, chemical production. Although it has now been given over to creative industries and arts hubs, (as well as a long-standing city farm), the valley still retains some aspects of its former self - for which I feel a wierd nostalgia.


After doing a spot of shopping for this evening's meal, wejumped on a Metro and headed back to Tynemouth Station to take a peek at their flea market.



There were a couple of stalls selling CDs of which most were Russian counterfeits. After this we got the Metro back to Whitley Bay and prepared the evening meal - a picnic-style feast in honour of Sam who has just completed his first week in a new job.

Discussion at the table centred around our favourite movies. Interestingly, Alys, Debbie, and I agreed that Amelie and Withnail And I would be in our respective top ten. And everyone agreed we liked the cosy ambience of the new orange room.

Modern British TV Drama Is Rubbish

I was talking to Sean on the blower earlier today about how homespun drama and serials on British TV is generally pretty poor stuff. I’ve been watching the first season of Six Feet Under on dvd and last year spent time catching up with The West Wing in a similar manner. Though very different both benefit from tight plotting and razor-sharp scripting.

Even though it was uneven in a lot of places, the Aaron Sorkin produced Studio 60 also shared these qualities. Sean extolled the virtues of The Sopranos, The Wire as well as the running, kicking, and staking malarkey of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Although I don’t share his enthusiasm for the latter I recognise why this show works and why their nearest UK rivals, seem to be duds.

It didn’t seem to always be the case.

The BBC produced series from the 80s, The Singing Detective, bristled with imagination and a complete absence of clunky exposition. The quality bar has been so lowered in the intervening years, Sean argues, that were Dennis Potter to pitch The Singing Detective now he’d be signed up to the BBC drama mentoring course and given a job coming up with ideas for Casualty and that it would be HBO who’d be more likely to green light Potter’s groundbreaking drama rather than any of our domestic producers.

Although American TV is responsible for mucho drosso it also the place you look to for real juice when it comes to prime-time drama. Why is that? Are punters like Sean and I simply seduced by glossy production values, exotic-looking locations and Mom’s Apple Pie or has the quality of UK-made drama at an "all-time low" (and yes, that was a gratuitous reference to the utterly abysmal BBC show Ashes To Ashes).

On Writing

For me writing has always been a series of highs and lows, a rollercoaster ride of high productivity or low output. I never discovered the knack of getting onto an even road whereby a daily word count is achieved without the self indulgent crisis of confidence.

At the moment I’m in the doldrums, idling through calm waters and not getting anywhere fast.

Sometimes when I’m in this situation I get kick-started by reading how other writers (noticed how I resisted the urge to say real writers there) approach their work. Years ago a pal suggested I read Stephen King’s treatise On Writing. At the time I didn’t pick it up but the other day, when I was out shopping (also known as dodging the page) I saw a copy of the book in the window of one of the many charity shops.

Truth be told I’ve never read any of King’s novels although like most people in the sentient universe I’ve seen a bunch of movies based on or adapted from his work. Debbie has read tons of his books. “You know he’s going to tell you a story and entertain you in the process” she says when asked about why she reads him. Debbie who reads a lot of fiction tells me that I’d be surprised by the amount of authors who have a decent story but can’t actually tell it very well.

So, I’m reading On Writing and trying to see if I can gather up some scraps from the table of someone who knows what he’s doing.

King recalls being asked early on in his career how he wrote. “One word at a time”, he told his inquisitor, neatly encapsulating Edison’s 10% inspiration / 90% perspiration equation.

Nominations For God XXXI

James Robertson Justice

Baroness Thatcher Ill – Half A Nation Rejoices

I run a thread on this blog called Nominations For God. This is a personal list of those characters in the arts (and related fields) whose work has made a significant impression on me. I suppose if I believe in nominations for God then conversely there should exist a Nominations For Devil. Were I to do so then Margaret Thatcher would be at the very top of the list.

If you lived through the late 70s and early 80s in the UK it is impossible to be ambivalent about Margaret Thatcher. Depending on where you put your cross on the ballot paper, she was either the saviour of the country or a Right-wing demagogue intent on ripping apart the post-war consensus and flogging off the state to her pals in industry. As you might have guessed, for me she falls into the latter camp.

Her admission to hospital reminds us that at 82 her death can’t be too far away. When it comes the Thatcher era will be picked over for its pros and cons, the tributes will come thick and fast and there will be calls for her to be given a state funeral.

The last ex PM to be given this honour was Winston Churchill – an event which I watched as child on television. Though I would disagree with his politics (mostly) I can see why the old cove was given the 21 gun salute given his position in WW2. His premiership united a nation during grave times.

But Thatcher? Her legacy is one of polarisation, divisiveness and firing the starting pistol on rampant corporate greed.

Morrissey summed up the distaste and revulsion I feel at the prospect in his 1988 toe-tapper from the Viva Hate album, “Margaret On The Guillotine.”

The kind people
Have a wonderful dream
Margaret On The Guillotine
Cause people like you
Make me feel so tired
When will you die ?
When will you die ?
When will you die ?
When will you die ?
When will you die ?

And people like you
Make me feel so old inside
Please die

And kind people
Do not shelter this dream
Make it real
Make the dream real
Make the dream real
Make it real
Make the dream real
Make it real

Words And Music IV

System 7 Phoenix

The Beat Goes On (and on and on)...

Phoenix
System 7
A Wave

Techno hippy outfit, System 7's latest album illustrates a story that encompasses Hinotori – a bird of fire that speaks in a magical telepathic voice and is seen at the outer edges of the universe by future space travellers – and other characters populating manga artist Tezuka Osamu's sci-fi samurai worlds. These include Wolf-Head, Space Patrolman Masato Eternity and a cute-looking robot called Chihiro 61298 who appears to be blessed with a pair of pneumatic looking rabbit ears. Like, wow man…

Lest he be accused of jumping on a bandwagon, even a cursory listen to almost any part of Steve Hillage's career reveals a long-term fascination with things that make diddly-diddly noises and riffs that go round in circles. With his old outfit Gong (sampled here to appropriately comic effect on “Chihiro 61298”) the music was suffused with cartoon cosmology, astral 'oohs' and 'aahs', and although the pot-head pixies were replaced by a New Age manifesto when he went stratospherically solo in the late 70s, it pretty much amounted to the same hedonistic space trip.

Having hung up his Strat in exchange for a sequencer, Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy left behind the space rock days of yore to soar away with born-again techno-beats back in 1990 under the System 7 moniker. Hillage's credibility with the trance scene stems from 1979’s Rainbow Dome Musick, whose floating tones seemed custom-made to have a bunch of repetitive beats and uber-low basslines foisted upon it by The Orb's Alex Paterson; the man who played his augmented version of the album to the chill out crowd.

If you're a fan of ambient techno and manga then this album will probably float your boat. Should you not be blessed with such enthusiasms then it represents a curiously joyless state wherein the tyranny of the cyclical beats are quickly established and rarely (if ever) overthrown. Ornamented by a series of by-the-book synth sounds and anonymous guest appearances (including his old boss from Gong, Daevid Allen), it's frankly lacking ambition.

Occasional sparks fly as Hillage's prodigious digits connect to the fretboard (“Makimura – Space Pilot” and “Wolf-Head” locks horns with some kick-ass beats) but that's about as interesting as things get.

Random Penguin XI

1982 Cover photograph courtesy Les Films du Carrosse

Engaged

An irksome day. This morning I found myself completely derailed by Firefox updating itself but somehow casting all my bookmarks into cyberspace. In years to come the biographers of future men of letters won’t be sifting through the correspondence of a given author as a means of shedding light on the inner person. No, they’ll be raking over the bookmarks on their toolbars and the like. And I hope they have better luck than I did today.

Despite carefully following the instructions on retrieving the blighters through an automatic export (or something like that), I could not get the buggers to appear. Knowing they weren’t lost was of course of some comfort but it meant that I had to retrieve them manually which took up a ton of time that I wanted to spend on other things. Grrrr.

And if that hadn’t worked I could have always dredged up the stuff from the laptop but it’s not quite as in synch with my desktop as I had assumed. Backup before it packs up I suppose is the moral of this particular story.

Joe is currently in the Yellow Room researching biographical detail for a school project on his favourite band, Killswitch Engage. Though I can live without the horror movie growling that accompanies many or most of the songs I’ve heard, I quite like the extreme dynamics encountered in their music.

I enjoyed Mad Men on BBC4 despite feeling like I needed a trip to the dry cleaners on account of all the cigarette smoke billowing about virtually every single shot. A solid opening which introduces the players and their their unsavory habits and even more unsavoury attitudes and views.

I was sucker-punched by the bit of dialogue where they discuss giving an ad-hand to a young Presidential candidate whose good upbringing and navy hero background makes him a good prospect. Of course we're thinking Kennedy but Nixon's their man. Of course.

We look upon Donald Draper and his Madison Avenue cronies as if they were Cro-Magon brutes clawing out the good life in dank caves of instituationalised racism, endemic sexism and arrogance. The feel-good factor comes from us knowing that things are so much better now in the corporate world right? Of course they are, aren't they?

Testing For Buzz XXXV 1968 And All That XI

MAD came into my life sometime during 1968 when Storm’s bookseller in Wallsend (where I used to pick up my Marvel comics) started stocking second-hand copies. Several of these were actually the American editions rather than the UK versions and I admit to being fairly dazzled by the mixture of superb artwork and humour (sorry, humor), the bulk of which went way over my head.

In effect I was only looking at the pictures (Don Martin was especially good in this respect) but in doing so I was also absorbing the contours of another culture by osmosis. Children are much better at this than adults think. A pity then that I didn’t have my snout in permanently stuck in my school text books instead of MAD, Look & Learn, Valiant, Hurricane, and all the other ephemera of my youth.

Street Life CVIII

The Enemy Of Productivity II

Oh dear...
The Twilight Zone is available for online viewing but only in the USA. Dagnabbit!

Happy Birthday Alys

If Alys seems a little red around the eyes it's because she braved this morning's present opening extravaganza under the weight of a mighty hangover - caused by the previous evening's carousing celebrating her 21st birthday.

Spirit Jack Bruce

Thinking Outside The Box

Spirit: Live At The BBC 1971 – 1978

Jack Bruce

Polydor

Though forever preserved in amber as one third of Cream, Jack Bruce broke free of the confines of blues rock via a series of ambitious solo albums. From the brash something-to-prove eclecticism of 1969’s Songs For A Tailor, the dream-like vistas of 1971’s Harmony Row, through to the thrumming fusion of How’s Tricks in 1977, the extent to which Bruce pushed against type-casting is chronicled over these three action-packed CDs.

With the possible exception of guitarist John McLaughlin, it’s difficult to think of another UK musician emerging out of the blues boom of the 1960s so fully conversant with prog-tinged songs, free-form jazz and fusion-based rock - just some of the ground covered here.

There’s a ragged brilliance to much of the first disc showcasing the quartet he took out on the road in 1971 to support the just-released Harmony Row. That album’s crystalline beauty was roughed-up a bit to favour the punchy dynamics desired in a live setting. Nevertheless, the effect is both exotic and powerful even if Bruce sometimes struggles to nail the intricacies of Pete Brown’s wordplay.

In 1975 Bruce was on the Old Grey Whistle Test with the previous year’s Out Of The Storm and back for the In Concert strand of 1977. Both sets (albeit with different line-ups) show that although they remain basically a rock outfit the jazzy undertow of the playing is always present and occasionally given full reign in the Return To Forever style work-out of Tony Willliams’ composition, “Spirit”.

Jazz is the most definitely the name of the game on two sessions with John Surman and Jon Hiseman. Amounting to a tumultuous 40 minutes rather irritating the largely improvised tracks are scattered across all three discs, dissipating their impact somewhat.

This minor quibble aside, Spirit is an excellent example of how Bruce was never content to merely play to the crowd but rather challenged them to keep up with his restless musicality.