THROBBING GRISTLE - LIVE AT KEZAR PAVILION, SAN FRANCISCO @ 40

 

It's the 40th anniversary of the terminal performance of Throbbing Gristle, which occurred on May 29th, 1981, in San Francisco at the Kezar Pavilion. Commemorated on the LP release, Mission of Dead Souls, it was the last time TG would take to the stage until their eventual reunion, 23 years later in 2004.

At the time TG were struggling under the intense pressure of strained and fractured personal relationships which centered on Cosey's relationships with Chris and Gen. This had been a source of friction for some time, but Chris had reached a point of no longer being able to tolerate Gen's hostility and manipulations and has recently assumed responsibility for being the instigator in terminating their mission.

Though the personal relationships in the band were percolating in the toxic zone, they still managed to channel that antagonism into one of their most intense and harrowing performances. Also captured on video and released on VHS by Target Video, the live footage clearly shows the effect on the audience as evidenced during the finale of Discipline where one audience member can be seen undergoing some kind of transcendent freakout.

As a parting gift to their audience, TG's last exit from their inaugural era remained a stark reminder of their influence and power for over two decades as the ripple effect of their existence spread out into the underground of alternative music. Their eventual reformation in the 21st century's premier decade was a critical reminder of what was possible when you put four such intense personalities together and give them the keys to unlock another dimension of sound.

THROBBING GRISTLE - DISCIPLINE @ 40

 

Marking 40 years since its release in June of 1981, Throbbing Gristle’s Discipline 12” was the last official TG single released before the group disbanded after their final performance in San Francisco in May of that year. The dissolution of the project was officially announced via the mailing of the infamous “Mission is Terminated” postcard on the 23rd of June, 1981. The single was issued by Fetish Records and was their first TG release that wasn’t a reissue of material previously published by Industrial Records.

The single contains two separate recordings of Discipline, a track which was never captured in a studio recording. The A side is the debut performance of the song, which was essentially composed on the spot with Genesis inventing the lyrics based on Cosey’s suggesting the concept before the song started. It was recorded at the SO 36 Club in Berlin on the 7th of November, 1980 and is a Digital recording. The B-side was recorded live at the Illuminated 666 Club in Manchester on 4th December, 1980 and is a binaural recording.

The front cover photo is by Stan Bingo and shows TG standing outside the ex-Nazi Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin. It uses a double exposure effect to make the group look like ghosts in front of the building. The rear cover features a photo by Peter Christopherson of a shirtless Val Denham holding a Hitler Youth dagger. The text around the photo reads “Marching Music for Psychic Youth” and is a hint of where Genesis was moving with his idea of forming a cult-like organization which would eventually manifest as Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth. This organization would form the core support system for Psychic TV, Gen & Sleazy’s post TG regrouping along with Alternative TV guitarist, Alex Fergusson. The runoff groove of the B-side also features the phrase “Psykick Youth Squad”. The A-side runoff groove has the phrase, “Techno Primitive”, scratched into the surface, which would reappear as the title of a Chris & Cosey LP in 1985.

The first time I ever listened to this single was in December of 1984, one evening when a friend and I dropped some blotter LSD called “Flash”, which appropriately featured a lightning bolt print on the tab. We listened to a lot of TG that night and Discipline stood out in particular as it sounded like we were being swept up in some kind of manic cyclone that eventually turned into a human blender with nothing but the screech of spent whirling blades as the song ended and the last remains of human flesh were ground out of the metal.

The single was never re-pressed after it’s initial limited edition run of 10,000 copies was sold out. It was eventually included as bonus tracks on the Mute CD edition of 20 Jazz Funk Greats in 1991. After it’s inception in Berlin, it became a staple of TG live performances, both during the final days of their initial active period in 1980/81 and during their reunion from 2004 to 2010. Though it was never recorded in studio, it has become one of the most iconic representations of TG at their most fierce and confrontational. It’s not uncommon to see it propel audience members to transcendent states of ecstasy, as can clearly be seen in the final minutes of its performance at TG’s San Francisco show in 1981 and during the Astoria reunion show in 2004 where Jhon Balance can be seen undergoing some sort of altered state during its performance. It captures their raw intensity like nearly no other song in their repertoire.

QUEEN - A KIND OF MAGIC @ 35

 

June 2nd marks the 35th anniversary of the release of Queen’s 12th studio album, A Kind of Magic, which was issued on this day in 1986. It was the first album to be released after Queen’s groundbreaking performance at Live Aid in 1985 and the last album the band would promote with a world tour before Freddie Mercury’s health issues would make it impossible for him to perform live anymore. The album began as the soundtrack to the Highlander feature film, though it evolved beyond that constraint as it began to take shape and eventually grew into a proper album with additional material not used in the film and even the pieces that were used ended up being remixed and slightly reworked from their original cinematic versions.

With the recognition from Live Aid putting fresh wind in Queen’s sails, the album became a major hit for the band, especially in the UK where it reached the number one album slot and lingered in the charts for a whopping 63 weeks, racking up 600,000+ unit sales there alone. Though it was a commercial success, critically, it received mixed reviews. Critics found it lacking in focus and direction, though there are a number of songs on the album which have come to be viewed as essential in Queen’s canon of greatest hits. This includes songs like One Vision, which was directly inspired by Queen’s Live Aid experience, at least as far as Freddie’s interpretation of the track. While it began as a Roger Taylor composition referencing Martin Luther King, Freddie reworked a lot of the lyrics and brought in a bit of camp humor with lyrics like "one shrimp, one prawn, one clam, one chicken”. Who Wants to Live Forever would eventually take on a far more poignant tone in light of Freddie’s struggles with HIV, which would eventually take his life in 1991.

Personally, it’s an album that came along at a time when I was very far away from following the band. While they were a favorite in my teens in the late 1970s, by the mid 1980s, I was deep into some very experimental, obscure musical territory and Queen were pretty well off my radar. As such, I’ve only given this album a glancing blow in terms of paying it much attention. What better time then to give it another listen?

THE RAINCOATS - ODYSHAPE @ 40

 

Released on June 1st, 1981, The Raincoats sophomore album, Odyshape, is celebrating 40 years since its release. Though the Raincoats had already set themselves in a league of their own with their debut album, they somehow managed to step outside their own self-delineated sphere with this followup.

Just about every aspect of the record sets it outside the colouring lines of punk, post-punk, alternative or folk music, though it touches on all of these genres and more. The instrumentation, performances, compositions and arrangements all defy classification and refuse to adhere to any kind of established norms. Like The Shaggs before them, The Raincoats managed to reinvent music for their own purposes, though in this case they actually had some formal skills to build upon, albeit they pushed each and every technique to the brink of being unrecognizable.

The band were flying somewhat “without a net” when conceiving this album as original drummer, Palmolive, had departed and her replacement, Ingrid Weiss, bailed just as they began working on the album. As such, they began the compositional process mostly without a drummer and it seems that what might have been a constraint actually turned into a source of liberation as the resulting songs all manage to find their way in the most fluid manner, unhindered by concerns for strict tempos and consistent beats. Once they had their landscape somewhat laid out, they brought in a number of drummers and percussionists to ride along their roads and find their way through the organic musical countryside they’d cultivated. These included Richard Dudanski, who had played with Joe Strummer’s 101ers and contributed to PiL’s Metal Box on a few tracks, Charles Hayward (This Heat) and Robert Wyatt (Soft Machine).

The results of these unfettered efforts also opened the floodgates for the girls to express themselves vocally in a manner that exposed their fragility and intimacy in ways rarely heard on record. The honesty and vulnerability that was laid bare in these songs made them feel like listening to them was an invasion of privacy. There’s simply no holding back the emotions here and they took full advantage of their position to explore subjects and attitudes that were distinctly female, yet universally comprehensible.

The fact that the girls all swapped roles and instruments also helped to bring out the unexpected and the intangibly spontaneous in each piece. You never know where a song is going to go from one moment to another. There’s no sense of “verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus” structure here. No “beginning” or “end”. Songs and sounds manifest like a wild garden, growing up from the soil and then receding into the distance as the listener moves along in their journey.

I remember being drawn to The Raincoats after reading somewhere that they were the only band John Lydon would admit to liking. After hearing their first album with it’s raw primitiveness, I was intrigued, but when this second came along, I remember being completely blown away by it. It was an album that stood its own ground, separate from every other genre and trend happening then or since. It remains self-contained and inviolable in its uniqueness and singularity. It still has the power to fascinate and inspire on the deepest emotional levels. It refuses to be subsumed by any categorization and that is why it will remain timeless for the foreseeable future.