PARLIAMENT - FUNKENTELECHY VS. THE PLACEBO SYNDROME @ 45

Marking it’s 45th anniversary today is the 6th LP, under the Parliament banner, from George Clinton’s P-Funk collective. It's Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome, which was released on November 28th, 1977. It is arguably the most hit loaded jam to come from Parliament during their peak. While merely 6 songs take up its track listing, it still boasts some of the gang’s most infectious grooves and one of its biggest hits.

The LP is a loose concept album continuing the story of Starchild’s battle against the Placebo Syndrome and Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk. The narrative is effectively Clinton’s comment on the emergence of disco music in the late ‘70s, which he saw as a “dumb’d down” version of dance music for undiscriminating masses. The original vinyl release contained a 22″×33″ poster of the character Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk, as well as an 8-page comic book that explains the concept behind the LP. Both the poster and the comic book were illustrated by Overton Loyd.

The album is near wall to wall with foot stompin' funk, kicked off with Bop Gun (Endangered Species), about a weapon which makes anything it shoots funky, and then heading straight into another killer, Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk (Pay Attention – B3M). Side two features the singles, Funkentelechy and, what has to be the standout centerpiece of the LP, Flashlight. The latter features a booty bustin’ baseline played on Mini-Moog by Bernie Worrell, who creates an unstoppable groove that defines one of the P-Funk gang’s most iconic songs.

Flashlight was the first P-Funk related single to hit #1 on the R&B chart and peaked at #16 on the pop charts. The song’s distinctive baseline was originally intended for Bootsy, but he turned it down and opted to play drums instead. Worrell decided to take it on by reportedly chaining together three MOOG synths, which he layered to create the bass sound. The song began as a loose jam and eventually evolved through layers of recording, with up to 50 voices being overdubbed to create the complex layers of chanting and choruses.

The song ended up having a legacy far outside its original recording as various members of the P-Funk collective recycled elements of it in future recordings. Outside of the group, it seeped into the collective consciousness of hip-hop culture where it was sampled, quoted and referenced over and over again throughout the ensuing decades. Its message of light radiating from every individual makes this song shine with its own illumination as it inspires generation after generation.

The album was a significant hit, becoming the group’s fourth consecutive gold LP and second platinum, reaching #2 on the R&B charts and #13 on the Billboard top 200. It’s definitely the most consistently thumpin’ dance album from the Parliament Mothership to land on this funky planet.

THE BEATLES - MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR @ 55

 

On November 27th, 1967, 55 years ago today, The Beatles released the Magical Mystery Tour LP in the US. The double 7’ EP variation followed in the UK on December 8th. Following on from their paradigm shifting Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, it continued their exploration of psychedelic experimentation, though for some, it may have been a bit too self-indulgent.

After completing Sgt. Pepper, Paul McCartney conceived of the idea of creating a film for TV along with its accompanying soundtrack. The concept was inspired by the activities of author Ken Kesey’s “Merry Pranksters”, who had become infamous among the "hippie" generation for their roving busload of freaks on LSD, touring the country and turning people on with their “Acid Test” parties. Paul had thought of doing something similar, though giving it a Liverpudlian twist by incorporating John’s recollections of seaside holidays from his youth. It was to be an unscripted, stream of consciousness experience which would be aimed at elucidating the psychedelic experience for the program’s viewers. The band were at the peak of their dalliances with the substance at the time and were also deeply involved with Transcendental Meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The basic framework for the narrative was to have “ordinary” people having “magical” experiences.

Work on the project began in late April, but was soon sidetracked as the group became distracted by their meditation studies, launching their Apple Records imprint and working on songs for the pending Yellow Submarine animated film project. Things only refocused on on Mystery Tour after the sudden unexpected death of the band’s manager, Brian Epstein, who had given his approval to the project before his passing. Again, it was McCartney who drove the project forward, despite the resistance of the other band members. Paul’s ambitions toward film production and changing the direction of the band were fired up by the project and he soon became an unstoppable force.

Recording of the music and production of the film occurred in tandem and the entire endeavor is reported to have been rather unfocused and undisciplined. Without Epstein’s guidance, the group were largely left to their own devices to motivate themselves and the overall milieu resulting from the frequent “tripping” going on within the group encouraged a state of barely organized chaos as they sought to take advantage of happenstance and spontaneous improvisation. Work on the soundtrack was completed on November 8th and the finished film was aired in the UK on December 26th.

The response to the film was decidedly weak from both fans and critics. The film was intended to be a colorful adventure, but because BBC1 weren’t able to broadcast in color, it was aired in black & white and looked terrible. It was rebroadcast again in color a few months later, but it didn’t make much difference because so few people had color TVs. The lack of any clear story certainly didn’t help. It was the group’s first major critical failure and the poor reviews dissuaded any US networks from airing the special. Fortunately, the music fared significantly better.

In the US, it was released as an LP with the A-side containing all the soundtrack music while the B-side was filled out by all the non-LP singles which had been produced and released during the time of production. This included songs like Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane and All You Need Is Love. The UK release only included the music used in the soundtrack, so there were only 6 songs, not enough for an LP. The innovation here was to issue it as a double 7” EP, which was the first time such a format was used in the UK. Both versions included a booklet with photos and a comic strip. However, when the Beatles LP catalogue was standardized internationally, the US LP version was taken as the standard over the UK edition, the only time this was done for a Beatles LP.

Despite all the muddle from a confused production process, the group were still able to deliver some of their most important music. Though it may have been a misadventure spurred on by artists who were a bit lost in their grief, coupled with ambitions distorted by narcotic indulgences, The music created during this period is nevertheless representative of the band’s genius during one of their most creative and inventive periods.

 

Marking its tenth anniversary today is the final Throbbing Gristle product to emerge from their post-millennial reunion era (2002-2010), Desertshore | The Final Report, which was released on November 25th, 2012. Though Genesis P-Orridge had left the group before completing the project and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson died shortly after Gen’s departure, it is, effectively, the capstone to TG’s recorded output, albeit under the “X-TG” imprint.

The origin of Desertshore began with Sleazy in 2007. Several members of the group were fans of Nico, but he came up with the concept of creating a complete cover of her 1970 solo album of the same name. The notion of TG covering an entire album was novel enough, but the group also came up with the idea of doing a three day installation residency at the ICA gallery in London. Here, they would set up a mobile recording studio and hold multiple sessions each day with a small audience in attendance, observing the group creating the album. There would be two hour sessions, twice each day (afternoon & evening) over three days. Each session was recorded in its entirety via a binaural live digital recording system and the results were then issued in a 12 CD-R bespoke wallet duplicated in a limited edition of a few hundred copies. The recordings captured mostly group chatter, vocal takes from Genesis and a number of instrumental improvisations from the group. Some of the non-Nico related original “jams” ended up becoming The Third Mind Movements CD, which was released in 2009 to help promote TG’s US tour.

After the ICA installation, Sleazy took the recordings and began doing various experiments, including bringing in new, exotic electronic instruments. The bulk of the work was being overseen by him until TG were about to do a small tour of Europe at the end of 2010. However, after the first London Gig, Gen abruptly packed off back to NYC, cryptically stating S/he’d no longer be performing, but was still “a member of TG”. The remaining trio were left holding the bag for commitments for the remainder of the tour, which they managed to salvage by hastily regrouping as "X-TG". During this time, they briefly decamped to Chris & Cosey’s Norfolk studio and recorded a number of jam sessions. These would form the basis of The Final Report, included in the eventual release. Sadly, however, after completing two X-TG gigs, Sleazy returned to his home in Thailand where he suddenly died before the end of the year.

The fate of the Desertshore project was uncertain at that point. All the materials and gear Sleazy was using for the project were eventually shipped to Chris & Cosey’s Norfolk studio, but Chris had very little understanding of the strange tools Sleazy was dabbling with, nor a clear understanding of his intent. The vocals which Gen had recorded in 2007 at the ICA were deemed unusable at some point after He/r departure and the relationship with Gen was no longer amenable to recording new vocals. Thus, the concept came about to have a selection of guest vocalists come in to contribute to the project. These included people like Anthony Hegarty, Blixa Bargeld, Sasha Grey, Marc Almond and Cosey. Chris & Cosey made every effort to try to realize the project as close to what Sleazy had imagined as they were capable of doing, and before the end of 2012, they’d finally managed to put together a finished production.

Along with the Desertshore album and the jams with Sleazy, The Final Report, a third ambient remixed version of Desertshore was created by Chris and included as a bonus CD in limited editions for friends. This was eventually made available as a digital download, แฝดนรก (Faet Narok). The album was released on CD, vinyl and digital media, with physical media elegantly packaged in special embossed white & grey covers with an integrated booklet included.

Musically, the album not only pays a loving tribute to Nico’s original work, it also stands as a tribute to TG itself as that entity completed its final task. It’s a rich tapestry of atmospherics and textures, all tied together with the kind of attention to detail which had become typical for the surviving duo’s work. The Final Report offers up a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been possible if the X-TG trio had continued to work together and perform. It was somehow liberated without the internal conflicts which had underpinned their relationship with Gen before He/r departure. Yet there’s a melancholy to it as well given that failure to hold the group together long enough to complete the project with all four members still involved. Ultimately, it is an expansive and substantive monument to everything TG was capable of creating.

HAWKWIND - DOREMI FASOL LATIDO @ 50

 

Celebrating its 50th anniversary today is the third studio LP from space rock icons, Hawkwind, with Doremi Fasol Latido being released on November 24th, 1972. With the group experiencing one of its many lineup shuffles it would go through over the years, some changes in sound were afoot along with the new faces.

This album ushered in future Motorhead bassist, Lemmy Kilmister, along with new drummer Simon King. In the case of the latter, he was replacing Terry Ollis, who was more into a flowing jazz oriented drumming style while King was prone to a straight up thrusting rock approach. As for Lemmy, he original thought he was joining the band as a lead guitarist to replace Huw Lloyd-Langton, but Dave Brock had decided to take on the lead guitar bits and wanted Lemmy to play bass. Lemmy had no experience with the instrument and only really considered himself a barely competent guitarist who covered his lack of technique with volume and stagecraft. Nonetheless, Brock tossed him into the deep end and demanded he swim. The results were immediately successful with the Silver Machine single released on the previous album. Ultimately, the new rhythm section certainly gave the band a more driving proto-punk thrash that veered into Germanic "motorik" territory in some cases.

The album was recorded at the then newly opened Rockfield Studios, which proved to be somewhat detrimental to the overall sound. The facilities were in their infancy, so all the bugs weren’t quite worked out and things were a bit spartan in terms of the setup. The end result for the album was a sound that was often lacking depth and bottom end. The band tended to record with the core of bass, guitar, drums and vocals live in the studio, recording great long sessions and then going back to the tapes to hack and slash things together in the editing, using bits of synth to bridge sections along with additional overdubs of synths, sax/flute and effects.

Thematically, the group were continuing their exploration of some pretty heady themes, delving into concepts derived from hard science fiction sources. Michael Moorcock’s poem, The Black Corridor, became the basis for the lyrics in Space Is Deep. The Pythagorean concept of sound was an integral inspiration for the idea of the star-ship and “space ritual”. The title of the album is a reference to the “Sound of the Spheres” where the distance between Earth and the fixed "stars" represents the perfect harmonic interval. These spheres were believed to create a specific tone based on their vibrations as they moved through their orbits and displaced the “ether”. This is expressed thusly…

Do – Mars – red
Re – Sun – orange
Mi – Mercury – yellow
Fa – Saturn – green
Sol – Jupiter – blue
La – Venus – Indigo
Ti – Moon – violet

The cover for the original LP was silver foil printed with black in the form of a shield or crest, which became the principal symbol for the band going forward, being used on numerous future albums and singles. The back cover, inner sleeve and poster depict barbarian-type warriors in futuristic settings. The back cover includes the legend:

“The Saga of Doremi Fasol Latido is a collection of ritualistic space chants, battle hymns and stellar songs of praise as used by the family clan of Hawkwind on their epic journey to the fabled land of Thorasin.”

The legend tells of the Hawklords last and defeated stand against the "tyranny of the corrupt forces for law and evil", but the inner sleeve has redemption in the legend:

“And in the fullness of time, the prophecy must be fulfilled and the Hawklords shall return to smite the land. And the dark forces shall be scourged, the cities razed and made into parks. Peace shall come to everyone. For is it not written that the sword is key to Heaven and Hell?”

Upon its release, the album was well received by critics and peaked at #14 on the UK album charts. The raw edginess of its rhythm section would prove to be inspiration in a few years time for the burgeoning punk scene in the UK, with groups like the Sex Pistols eventually acknowledging Hawkwind as an influence. Though it may suffer slightly from weak production values, its songs and freaked out conceptual landscapes make it one of the band’s most essential albums.

LED ZEPPELIN - CODA @ 40

 

Released 40 years ago today, Led Zeppelin’s final collection of studio recordings was issued on November 19th, 1982. Created partly to satisfy record company obligations and party to thwart bootleggers, the album was a clearing house for the unreleased remnants of the group’s studio activity throughout their career.

Following the tragic death of drummer John Bonham, Led Zeppelin terminated their career, leaving their last LP, In Through the Out Door, as their inadvertent swan song. Yet there were lingering commitments with Atlantic Records, to whom the band still owed one more studio album. While the group were exceptionally economical with their studio time, creating very little that did not get used for their finished albums, there were still a few stray odds and ends which managed to slip the net over the course of their career. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to generate a healthy trade in the bootleg business as poor quality unofficial copies of these tracks circulated among the bands more ardent fans. It was enough to convince Jimmy Page that there would be some interest in curating a proper, sanctioned compilation of these recordings, which would also help him tie up loose ends regarding record label obligations.

The material on the album spans pretty much the entirety of the group’s career, though it can be broken down into two primary sets by LP side. The first side features four recordings spanning 1969 to 1972. We’re Gonna Groove, the LP opener, is actually a live recording, but the audience sounds were removed and guitar overdubs were added in order to be able to call it a “studio recording”. Poor Tom was an outtake from Led Zeppelin III, and I Can’t Quit You Baby was from a pre performance soundcheck rehearsal. Walter’s Walk was a 1972 Houses of the Holy outtake with vocal overdubs added. For the second side, most of the material comes from 1978 In Through the Out Door outtakes with the exception of the 1976 Bonzo’s Montreux drum solo. In 1993, a CD reissue included four additional tracks from various sources including the B-Side from the Immigrant Song single, a couple of live tracks and an outtake from their debut LP.

Critically, given it’s a “leftovers” package, it’s obviously not going to stand up as a cohesive collection in the same way as the groups formal albums. However, it still showcases many of the group's virtues which made them the legends they became. For any serious fan of the band, its a welcome capstone to their illustrious career. The cover graphics were again provided by the Hipgnosis design house, whom had been responsible for several other covers for the band over the years, but this would actually be the prestigious firm’s final design commission before the the company was dissolved and its partners would go their separate ways.

KEITH LEVENE (18 July 1957 – 11 November 2022)

 

Julian Keith Levene was always a challenge to pin down as a musician. He was a peg that never seemed to fit into any hole. There was always an extra angle that stuck out and that’s what made him so innovative and difficult to classify. His deconstruction of guitar playing had a monumental impact on me when I was trying to figure out if I should pursue my interest in music beyond collecting records. Before PiL came into my life early in 1980, I’d dabbled with guitar lessons and halfheartedly tried to muck about with it, but when I got my hands on Public Image Ltd’s Second Edition, the version of Metal Box which was released worldwide after the initial UK film tin pressing sold out, it pulled the plug on every preconception I’d ever had about what you could do with the guitar. 

 

PiL’s musical genius came in a two pronged attack: Wobble’s throbbing bass and Keith’s razor edged guitar. The two complimented and contrasted wildly against each other, but always in immaculate balance, with Lydon’s moaning and sneering surfing and slithering in between them. It was completely alien sounding, unlike anything I’d heard before, yet it was also compellingly inviting. It didn’t intimidate me to think about trying to play something like that. It was like they’d exposed all the plumbing and wiring inside the architecture of music and let you see how it could be put together. And you realized it didn’t have to follow the rules that were shoved down your throat by traditional music theory. The idea of “structure” suddenly had a vastly broadened scope and it wasn’t exclusionary and elitist. It plainly said to any listener willing to hear, “You can make things like this. All you have to do is give it a go!” So I took them at their word and did just that.

 

In less than a year, I got my own band going, scraped together some money from my part-time job and started recording my own music. PiL got me on that path as surely as if they’d come straight over to my house and showed me how to do it in person. But they were so much more than music. They were a whole attitude and lifestyle. They weren’t merely a “band”. The “LTD” wasn’t just for show. They were a COMPANY and they didn’t solely make music. They had plans for all sorts of things. Sure, ultimately a lot of that was unfulfilled at that time, but over the years, the individual members showed that they were willing to go as independent as they could, forming their own labels, creating their own products and pushing their individual boundaries in one way or another. Even the way they looked and dressed was part of it. Despite the Public Image being “limited”, they still managed to be style icons for the reject crowd. I desperately wanted my hair to be as ratty as Keith’s and was always on the lookout for a good ill-fitting old man suit. The “wrongness” became “rightness”, if you understood the language.

 

From 1980 until 1984, my musical world revolved around PiL. After picking up Second Edition, I moved heaven and earth to get a sanctified copy of Metal Box in its requisite tin canister. It cost me about $60 (in 1981 money) and took about 3 months to get a copy shipped over from the UK. Getting their debut LP, First Issue also took some doing as it was not released in Canada, so I had to rely on my local shop to special order the import. I remember hearing Theme for the first time and being knocked sideways by Keith’s insane guitar thrash. It felt like being in a continuous car crash with glass from the windshield constantly flying into your face. Then there was the chime of that incredible riff for the song, Public Image, the sound that launched a thousand post-punk bands. You wouldn’t have U2 without it. Getting back to Metal Box, it was the dissonant screeching of Albatross that first catches your ear as that 10 minute dirge churns away and it sounds like seagulls dying over a stagnant ocean. The other standout is Careering where the synth takes over from guitar and Keith uses his Prophet 5 to unfurl layers of queazy atmospheric drones, all shifting and mutating, never the same, throughout the entire song.

 

After that initial one-two punch of those first albums, the future of PiL became uncertain with the departure of Wobble after the 1980 US tour. He was such a fundamental component of their sound, it was hard to imagine what they’d do to regroup. I could never have guessed that they’d say “fuck it” to the bass and, instead, make the drums the star of their next album, Flowers of Romance. Here, Keith again comes to the table with a set of off the wall ideas which, somehow, manage to work. Really the whole album is an exercise in organized chaos and it’s something of a miracle that it came together at all, let alone to form something so uncompromising and idiosyncratic. Though there was a general movement towards percussion at the time, what with the double drummer format of Adam and The Ants and Bow Wow Wow, nobody saw PiL’s take on it coming. Even Phil Collins was impressed enough by the sound of PiL’s drums to hire their engineer to get him the same sound for his next album. But Keith’s standout track from this set is the instrumental, Hymies Him, a piece composed for potential use in a soundtrack using a Balinese Gamelan Richard Branson had picked up for the Townhouse studio. It’s a remarkably rich sounding piece, full of exotic flair and intrigue.

 

After the album was completed, a promotional trip to NYC resulted in an unexpected opportunity to perform at the Ritz where PiL were invited to make use of the club’s state-of-the-art video projection system. With only John and Keith available to perform, they set about hiring a local jazz drummer and concocting a sort of video installation concept. The idea was ambitious and quite ahead of its time, but Keith was always keen to explore the potential of new media, so they arranged to perform behind the screen while the live video would project them out front. It wasn’t meant to be a live gig like a regular band, but the audience weren’t in any way clued into that. Technical issues with the video resulted in the images of the band not showing up clearly on the screen, which set the whole night into a tailspin. Egged on by John and Keith taunting the audience, it all descended into a literal riot, turning it into what has become PiL’s most notorious live performance ever.

 

Though they briefly returned to the UK after that, John was fed up with the constant harassment by the police, who regularly raided his home in Gunter Grove, along with the constant nuisance of fans and freaks showing up on his doorstep at all hours. With that, John and Keith packed up and moved to NYC, taking up residency in a rented loft. With Martin Atkins on tour with Brian Brain in the US, the timing was right for him to reconnect with PiL, bringing along his bassist collaborator, Pete Jones. In 1982, the group began work on recording their next album, tentatively called “Welcome to the Commercial Zone”, a title inspired by signage they’d seen near where they had their loft. Lydon took a break to go to Italy to work on his first feature film role in Cop Killer, aka The Order of Death, while Keith, Martin and Pete were left in NYC to record the instrumental tracks for the new album. At this point, it was principally Keith who was directing the musical creations going on and the project was going in a vastly different direction from what had been done with Flowers of Romance.

 

The idea of “commercialism” was sort of seen as a challenge to make music that was both accessible while maintaining the sense of innovation which had characterized their first three LPs. In order to help fund recording, once John was done filming in Italy, the group began touring the US, traveling coast to coast to help revive the group’s fortunes and get people talking about them again. It was at this time that they came to Seattle and I had the chance to see the newly reconstituted PiL, and it was glorious! It was one of the most intense live shows I’ve ever seen and I was stoked to be able to see them back in top form again and hear some of the new songs. But the waters were troubled and would hit the boiling point early in 1983.

 

While still working on Commercial Zone, an offer came up to perform in Japan. It was a lucrative opportunity and included the release of the first material from the CZ sessions, a 12” single of This Is Not A Love Song. Somehow, wires got crossed about different mixes of the song being considered for the release and Keith found himself working on a remix while John was off meeting with reps from Japan. Keith’s efforts were, apparently, in conflict with what John wanted and the result was that John told Keith, in no uncertain terms, to immediately stop what he was doing and “get out of HIS studio”. It all blew up into a conflict which was irreconcilable and Levene found himself out of the band while Lydon hired some lounge band session musicians to go with him and Martin to Japan.

 

Keith’s response to being ousted was to take the rough mixes of Commercial Zone and, allegedly with the blessing of Branson, press them into a plainly packaged white label limited edition LP, which Keith released on his own hastily set up PiL Records Inc imprint. Keith would pile boxes of records on his skateboard and deliver them to the local record shops himself. A few copies of the LP managed to find their way to Vancouver and I snapped one up after waiting for ages to see another new PiL release after the Japanese 12” for Love Song finally surfaced. This was all after PiL had made a huge announcement before Keith left that they were diversifying into all these different corporate sub-entities to handle different aspects of the business. There was Public Enterprise Productions and Multi Image Corporation to handle live performances and video/film projects, etc. All of this seemed to be thrown into chaos now.

 

John & Martin continued on with PiL and released This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get, which was an LP that came quickly on the heels of Keith’s Commercial Zone LP in 1984. It had many of the CZ songs, though completely rerecorded with session musicians replacing Keith’s parts. There was also a leftover from Flowers reworked slightly for the new album and a couple of new tracks Lydon recorded with Martin. The two LPs stood toe to toe with each other and reminded me of that Star Trek episode where Kirk has a transporter accident and is split into two people, each with traits of the other, but each somehow incomplete. That’s how these albums felt. They were parts of the same whole and each had its virtues, but they were also both lacking something. One couldn’t help but feel like they’d have made a spectacular whole if they could be fused together.

 

After this, Keith seemed to disappear for a couple of years until the release of his Violent Opposition EP in 1987, which was followed by another EP, 2011 Back Too Black. These were then combined with some additional tracks for the 1989 Violent Opposition album. By this point, he’d moved with his then wife to LA and was doing some session work producing groups like Red Hot Chili Peppers. After that, Keith’s music career became exceptionally sporadic and intermittent. I heard that he’d gone into working in IT/digital media, but there was little information surfacing on his activities. He was effectively silent throughout the 1990s with only a few guest appearance credits showing up throughout the decade.

 

In 2002, Keith emerged from the shadows again with a brand new website and “band”, Murder Global. There was a new EP, Killer In the Crowd, and a video to go along with it. It seemed like he was about to jump back into the music business again after a decade of absence, but the traction from this seems to have been quickly lost as Keith, again, disappeared save for the odd guest appearance until 2010 when he did this bizarre PiL revival gig with Wobble where they hired a Johnny Rotten impersonator to do vocals and they played all the old PiL songs! I remember coming across YouTube clips from the show and wondering what the fuck I was looking at as it sounded remarkably bang-on to what PiL should be, more so than the revived PiL that Lydon was touring around with at the same time. In 2012, Wobble & Levene released an EP and album of brand new recordings, reviving their collaboration and showing themselves off as the true musical innovators of PiL, while Lydon was touring with what felt like a shadow of the original.

 

Keith followed that up with the Search for Absolute Zero album of brand new solo recordings. Suddenly he was all over social media, particularly on Twitter. He’d follow-back anyone who followed him and was always willing to engage with people, responding to every inquiry. Absolute Zero was a standout collection of new songs, showing Keith was still able to put things together in a way that only he could conceive. He was doing music like he’d never done before and it was all sounding great. After completing that project, the ghosts of Commercial Zone began to surface as the 30th anniversary of its release came up. Keith ended up going to Prague where he began recording what would become CZ2014, what he conceived of as his ultimate realization of the ideas inherent in the original Commercial Zone project. This was all part of a larger umbrella project Keith regularly referred to as “2051”. It’s not clear what that all entailed, but it was something Keith enthusiastically talked about in interview as tying together all his work over the years. The mechanics and physical manifestation he intended where never clearly elucidated, but it was obvious he had SOMETHING in his mind.

 

It was around the beginning of CZ2014 production when I was able to establish a personal interaction with Keith. I’d started to exchange messages with him and had commented that I wished I’d been able to contribute to his Indiegogo campaign that was partially funding the project, but that I was unemployed and had no extra income. I was also dealing with health issues. Keith, in an act of great generosity, sent me a complete set of recordings from the new album as a gift. I wrote a review for it all, which Keith loved and shared wherever he could. I also started creating little promotional memes for him to share to help generate publicity for the project. It was all going great until Keith posted a video on his YouTube channel that included a “dedication to Ugo” in the title/description. This inadvertently caused something of a storm with his principal financial backer, who was partially financing the recordings in Prague. They were incensed that they didn’t get a dedication and I did and it all got very weird and awkward and I kinda withdrew from any further direct involvement in the promotion of the project.

 

Subsequently, I kept my distance, but also kept tabs on Keith’s activities as he moved on to doing a series of bespoke “Teenage Guitarist” limited edition art pieces and began publishing biographical texts about his days with the Clash and forming PiL. He was doing original paintings and selling them with CDs and records and copies of his booklets. He had a few different websites up and it seemed like he was all over the place with talk of a film project in the works as well, but then it all turned into a legal nightmare as his relationship with his business partner turned toxic and he was ensnared in a web of lawsuits and litigation. These issues even managed to hold up the release of Keith’s last major recording project, Jah Wobble’s Very British Coup single from 2019. With all that going on, it seemed like Keith vanished from social media and the music business. I only found a couple of interviews with him after that talking about his Bitcoin interests, but nothing relating to any new musical or artistic projects. Until hearing about his death, I had no idea he was ill or suffering from liver cancer. Hearing that hit pretty close to home because it’s what killed my dad back in 1987.

 

Keith was a spiky person in a lot of respects and that’s one of the things I loved about him. I remember seeing him and John on Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow show in 1980 and being in stitches as they made Tom beg for any kind of response to his often inept and obviously uninformed questions. Tom was usually a much better interviewer, but he seemed stumped by these two. Keith was also a bit brutal on social media. After opening up to everyone, he turned the tables and started to block anyone who said anything he didn’t like. I ended up getting blocked when I made a dumb joke about a guitar of his that had been stolen in 1983. It was just a silly comment, but it was enough to get me on Keith’s shit list. The situation with his ex-business partner was a mess and they were seemingly everywhere whenever anyone mentioned Keith, ready to pounce on even the most innocent comments. It’s not surprising he gave up on social media for all practical purposes. I was hoping he might be coming back again after seeing him talking about Bitcoin, but he never responded to my inquiry when I tried to contact the Twitter account he gave out during one of his last interviews.

 

Hearing about him passing at such a relatively young age is a huge shock. Though his output could be sporadic and infrequent, when he did get it together to do something, he managed to make an impression and do something unexpected and innovative. He certainly made an impact on me. I wouldn’t have pursued music as a form of expression had it not been for him and Wobble showing me that I could do it too. I’m sure he did that for a lot of people and that’s a pretty good legacy to leave behind. Oh and there’s all that revolutionary mind blowing music too.

APHEX TWIN - SELECTED AMBIENT WORKS 85-92 @ 30

 

Marking its 30th anniversary today is the debut album from Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works 85-92, which was released on November 9th, 1992. Issued in double LP, CD and cassette formats, it became a cornerstone for the next evolution of electronics music, commonly referred to as “IDM - intelligent dance music”.

As the first waves of techno & house/acid house music swept the clubs in the UK through the late 1980s, cresting with the dawn of the new decade, DJs and producers like Richard D. James were looking for ways to evolve the music into more thoughtful, progressive forms. This desire became the impetus for James to found his Rephlex record label. After debuting his Aphex Twin alias the prior year with the Analogue Bubblebath EP followed by the Digeridoo 12”, when it came time to put together an album, James decided to soften his edges, He compiled a set of tracks largely based on input from friends regarding which of his recordings they enjoyed hearing most when they were chilling out.

The material for the album was reputedly all recorded directly to cassette between 1985 and 1992, utilizing a limited set of electronics, synths and drum machines, often modified and customized by James. While still pursuing his academic studies prior to committing full time to a music career, James had been focusing his education on engineering and electronics, so that expertise dovetailed perfectly with his interest in music making.

The genius of the album’s style is that it combines the contemporary electronic rhythms of the dance floor with the layering of subtle, evocative melodic textures which, when infused with the soft-focusing effect of the somewhat “low fi” recording techniques, created the album’s trademark dreamscape effect. Indeed, it’s James’ nuanced and delicate melodic sensibilities that set his music apart and above so many other electronic artists. There’s a compositional cohesion to his use of musical refrains and chord shifts which stamp his work with its distinctive surrealism. While it isn’t technically “ambient” in the classic, "Eno" defined sense of the term, it still rests inside an atmospheric landscape which avoids the jarring edginess of the more brutal material James had been releasing for the clubs.

The album was minimally packaged with the iconic Aphex logo prominently dominating the otherwise blank surface. The logo had been designed by Paul Nicholson under the guidance of James, with the two going through several iterations before they settled on a final form. James’ principal instruction was that it should refrain from the use of any sharp edges, thus the entire design is based on rounded corners with the overall shape vaguely suggesting the letter “A”. James has also suggested it has some significance as a sigil, though he has not elaborated on the specifics of its meaning or intent.

Since its original release, the album has been reissued and remastered numerous times, though its content has remained exact, with no bonus materials ever being added. Its influence and legacy have remained consistent as well. It set a standard for its genre of electronic music and pushed other producers in the field to try to keep up. Listening to it today, though it may have been produced with limited and primitive tools, it still sounds contemporary and even ahead of the times. It’s simply one of the best, most visionary electronic music albums ever created. It is the soundtrack for “dreamers of dreams”.

LOU REED - TRANSFORMER @ 50

 

Celebrating half a century of walking on the wild side, it’s the sophomore solo LP from Velvet Underground main man, Lou Reed, with Transformer being released on this day, November 8th, 1972. It’s the album which would secure his place as a rock ’n’ roll legend and break him out from the shackles of cult obscurity into the realm of commercial accessibility.

After his years fronting The Velvet Underground, Reed had become infamous in certain circles, though his record sales would belie the far reach of his influence on the next generation of music makers who were starting to shape the decade of the 1970s. Principal among these was no less than the “Starman” himself, David Bowie, who had embraced Lou’s work and incorporated a number of VU songs into his live repertoire, including White Light/White Heat and I’m Waiting for My Man. Bowie had made reference to Reed on the liner notes for Hunky Dory and had struck up a friendship with him on his visits to NYC. After the failure of Reed’s eponymous debut to make any kind of commercial impact, Bowie and fellow Spider from Mars, Mick Ronson, offered to produce Lou’s next album and duly packed him off to London to record.

The duo proved to be the perfect conduit for Reed’s music and Ronson, in particular, ended up offering much more than production as he contributed session guitar, keyboards, recorder and, along with Bowie, backing vocals. Their prowess at the studio console was equally matched by the quality of the songs Reed brought to the table, several of which had been lurking around since the VU days. Andy’s Chest, Satellite of Love, New York Telephone Conversation and Goodnight Ladies had all been performed or demoed by the Velvets before they found their place on Transformer.

Overall, the album boasts a host songs which would become quintessential for Reed like Satellite, Vicious & Perfect Day, but the most significant of all has to be Walk on the Wild Side. It was released as a single and became a major hit and Lou’s most successful single ever. Over the years, it’s been used repeatedly in soundtracks for feature films and TV and become the most iconic piece of music Lou ever produced. It’s also one of his most controversial and prophetic songs. Given the evolution of transgender identity in the last 50 years, it can legitimately be seen as a flashpoint for igniting awareness of the culture within the minds of the mainstream. It’s gender bending was so unsettling for some that the single was edited in some markets and outright banned in others because of its reference to what was perceived as sexual depravity.

The cover for the album utilizes an image by legendary photographer, Mick Rock. The look of the photo was a total accident, however, as it came about when Rock overexposed the negatives. Lou loved the look and it ended up becoming the perfect image to represent the album.

At the time of its release, it became an immediate pillar within the “glam rock” scene of the early 1970s. Along with Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and Bolan’s Electric Warrior, it was an album that was a must-have if you were part of that movement. Since then, it has become one of Reed’s most essential albums. Personally, my opinion is that, if you’re gonna have two Reed albums, you should have Transformer and Metal Machine Music though for entirely opposing reasons.

DAVID SYLVIAN - SECRETS OF THE BEEHIVE @35

 

Released on November 7th, 1987, David Sylvian’s fourth solo album, Secrets of the Beehive, is marking its 35th anniversary today. Written in a flush of inspiration in a mere two week period, it’s an album that explores the subtleties of jazz, folk and orchestral music, avoiding obvious excess and focusing on lyrical content.

Though the album received high praise from critics, it was ultimately felt to be a failure by Sylvian because of the fact he was not able to complete it to his satisfaction. Budgetary constraints meant that he was not able to complete the album’s planned centerpiece, Ride. That track would end up having to wait for the Everything and Nothing collection in 2000 to see completion. Because of this, Sylvian was heartbroken that he couldn’t finalize Beehive the way he’d envisioned. Given that the compositions came together so quickly and clearly, he went into the production with a definite vision of what he wanted it to be and, not reaching that goal, it left him burdened with a sense of incompleteness. Yet this is only something that the artist himself will notice as we, the listener, can only appreciate the beauty and elegance of what he did manage to present for this most sublime of albums.

For the album’s recording, Sylvian was joined by frequent collaborators, Ryuichi Sakamoto, brother Steve Jansen and producer Steve Nye. Sakamoto handled most of the orchestral arrangements. Formal production of the album was completed in just two and a half months with basic tracks begun in Chateau Miraval in the South of France because of its exotic location. Tracks were built up layer by layer, with musicians contributing in turns for recording. Overdubs and orchestral sections were added in London and then it was off to Wisseloord at Hilversum in the Netherlands to finish the overdubs and record the vocals.

Since its initial release, the album has seen a couple of reissues with bonus tracks appearing in later editions.

THE MONKEES - PISCES, AQUARIUS, CAPRICORN & JONES LTD @ 55

Released 55 years ago today, on November 6th, 1967, The Monkees fourth studio album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd, would be their forth consecutive number one charting LP in less than two years, though it would also be the last album from the group to hit that height. Both commercially and creatively, it was the high water mark for the band.

After their successful corporate revolution, where they broke free of the iron grip of music director Don Kirshner, their third LP, Headquarters, was a triumphant statement of independence. The band deliberately set about to create the album with no one else in the studio with them save for producer Chip Douglas, who also assisted on bass so that Peter could focus on keyboards and other instruments. Because the group were between seasons of their TV series, they had the luxury of time to dedicate to that album, but the pressure of producing a weekly series came to bare on the next.

It wasn’t so much the mechanics of the first two LPs which were the problem. It was the complete lack of input and creative control that drove the revolt within the group’s ranks. So, when it came time to start work on a fourth LP, struggling against the time constraints of filming, the group recognized the value of the songwriting team they had at their disposal, as well as the expert session musicians who made up the so-called “Wrecking Crew” of loosely affiliated LA players. They’d managed to get some great results on Headquarters, at least insofar as offering up themselves as a credible garage band, and were still going to do a lot of playing themselves, but it would be foolish not to leverage these resources and to be able to produce more sophisticated music for the next album, and that’s exactly what they did.

In fact, they'd never return to the self-contained approach again until their 1996 reunion LP, Justus. Given the individual group member's wildly divergent musical ambitions, it actually made more sense to work somewhat separately and then stitch each member's contributions together for the final product. It was a double edged sword which could offer diversity, but also inconsistency, but for this particular effort, it all came together into a very coherent whole.

Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd would turn out to be one of the group’s most mature and ambitious albums, both musically and thematically. The subject matter covered by the songs includes: allusions to drug trafficking (Salesman), materialism at the expense of happiness (The Door Into Summer), the superficial affections of groupies (Cuddly Toy, Star Collector), the malaise of suburban banality (Pleasant Valley Sunday) and the LA riots (Daily Nightly). Beneath the bubblegum pop sheen, they were subverting their audience with a variety of more critical and cynical messages, a tactic which would belie their image as a squeaky clean boy band for children.

Technically, the album was one of the first to feature the use of the MOOG modular synthesizer, played on Daily Nightly by Micky and on Star Collector by Paul Beaver. The instrument had been acquired by Micky from the first lot of 20 ever sold. Only The Doors’ Strange Days LP, released in September, predates the use of the synth within the pop/rock domain. The Monkees would soon be followed by The Rolling Stones (Their Satanic Majesties Request in December) and The Byrds (The Notorious Byrd Brothers in January - 1968).

The album is loaded with some of the band’s most significant songs and offers up one of the most consistent listening experiences of their catalogue. It leaps from strength to strength with songs like Love Is Only Sleeping & Pleasant Valley Sunday. Michael Nesmith gets a surprising number of lead vocals in the set as well, which works to add diversity to the songs. Also of note is the group’s last number one single, Daydream Believer, which was recorded during these sessions and intended for the LP, but not issued on LP until The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees (1968). Love Is Only Sleeping was originally going to be the first single, but it got swapped with Daydream Believer, so the LP track listings were changed to remove the latter and insert the former.

In recent years, it has been reissued in a number of vastly expanded deluxe editions featuring numerous alternate mixes, outtakes and demos. Next to the HEAD soundtrack and film, it is unsurpassed in terms of its artistic merits within the group’s canon of work. A remarkably “adult” work from a “fake” band for kids.

GEORGE CLINTON - COMPUTER GAMES @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary today is the debut solo album from Funkadelic/Parliament founder, George Clinton, with Computer Games being released on November 5th, 1982. After dominating the R&B scene throughout the previous decade with the monster P-Funk collective in all its variations and manifestations, Things were starting to get dicey for Clinton in the 1980s. Computer Games was a brief commercial rally for Clinton before he’d be beset by grinding legal battles, personal struggles and lack of label support through the remainder of the decade. The album was conceived of as a response to the burgeoning electronic music scene which was rapidly infiltrating the funk/R&B/soul/disco dance music scenes. Rather than reject the insurgence, Clinton chose to embrace it and integrate it into his own methods of production. Though the album was listed as a solo work, the personnel for the project was largely the same musicians he’d been working with on the most recent Parliament and Fundadelic albums.

The centerpiece of the album is the epic Atomic Dog. Released as a single, it was created almost by accident by virtue of an inadvertently backwards drum machine recording in something of a drug addled miasma when Clinton stumbled into the studio one day in the middle of a blizzard. He could barely stand, but mumbled some incoherent instructions and then improvised his vocals, leaving the folks in the studio with the task of making some sense of it all. Miraculously, not only did they make sense of it, they turned it into pure dance floor gold. More than that, the song has become a template for countless grooves in the ensuing decades, which repeatedly sampled to the track’s riff to build upon as a foundation. It has become part of the DNA of hip-hop on the deepest possible level.

SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES - A KISS IN THE DREAMHOUSE @ 40

 

Turning 40 years old today is the fifth studio LP from Siouxsie and The Banshees, A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, which was released on November 5th, 1982. It was their most experimental and ambitious production to date and garnered universal praise from both fans and the music press.

After the success of their previous album, Juju, the group took some time to reassess their work and felt that, for the next release, they wanted to up the production values, particularly by introducing the use of real strings rather than synthesizers. Working on the non-album single, Fireworks, set the template for where they wanted to go. While John McGeoch was okay with the use of synths, Siouxsie and Steve Severin were adamant about going acoustic, with the former stating, “They give a real, earthy, rich sound. You could hear the strings spitting and breathing and wheezing.” Beyond that, producer Mike Hedges strongly encouraged the group to experiment with radical effects setups, tape loops, vocal layering and different instruments like recorder, tubular bells and chimes. The end result was a post-punk neo-psychedelic hybrid born of extensive drug use while working on the album. That tactic, while perhaps inspirational at the time, would sadly lead to a darkness which would prove fatal to more than one person in the long run.

The title of the album was conceived by Severin after watching a documentary about Hollywood prostitution. the “Dreamhouse” was an actual brothel in Hollywood which featured a number of prostitutes who had undergone cosmetic surgical alterations in order to make them appear more similar to the famous stars of the times. A good lookalike would be able to command a significantly higher price than the other girls.

A Kiss in the Dreamhouse was the final release in a triptych of albums, begun with Kaleidoscope and followed by Juju, which featured John McGeoch as a member of the band. His alcoholism would result in him leaving after Dreamhouse, replaced by Robert Smith of The Cure for a time. It’s a period for the band which saw them transform into sophisticated, adventurous trendsetters, moving well ahead of the pack when it came to pushing the boundaries after the initial wave of punk had subsided. With this album, they made it clear to everybody that they were a creative force to be reckoned with.

NEGATIVLAND - ESCAPE FROM NOISE @ 35

 

Marking it’s 35th anniversary today is the fourth studio album from Bay area sonic collage masters, Negativland, with Escape From Noise being issued on November 4th, 1987. For this album, the group took their penchant for cutups and assemblage and applied it to slightly more conventional song structures, utilizing shorter song lengths and occasionally recognizable musical arrangements. The results were still wildly surreal and bizarre, but also engaging in a way which hadn’t been achieved on earlier works. It was the first album I ever heard by the group and it left an immediate impact. It was certainly the funniest album I’d heard since I had encountered Nurse With Wound’s Sylvie and Babs a couple of years prior.

The album very nearly ended up in ashes as the band’s studio was destroyed by fire when the dry cleaning business below it on street level erupted into flames accelerated by toxic cleaning chemicals. Luckily, Don Joyce happened to notice flames licking up the bottom of the studio window and, after calling 911, grabbed all the masters to the album before evacuating. That didn’t save the band’s gear or masters from previous projects, but it did mean they were able to release Escape From Noise, which came out on SST, the most prominent label to feature the group’s work to date.

The album gained notoriety shortly after its release when the song, Christianity Is Stupid, became associated with a famous murder case where David Brom had killed his family, supposedly after listening to the song. This wasn’t actually true, but the group weren't averse to leveraging the misinformation as it did ignite a firestorm of media interest which became fodder for their next project, Helter Stupid. Since its release, the album has become perhaps the most notorious and recognized release in the group’s long history.

RAMONES - ROCKET TO RUSSIA @ 45

 

Released on November 4th, 1977, the Ramones third LP, Rocket to Russia, is celebrating its 45th anniversary today. The album continued the band’s quest for a commercial breakthrough, but despite improved production values, evolved songwriting skills and consistent critical praise, the album failed to generate significant sales and kept the group rutted in the “punk” gutter. Even though they were at the height of their powers and were knocking out songs which should have been taking the charts by storm, the "dog had a bad name" and the band squarely blamed the Sex Pistols for creating a hostile environment within the AM radio industry for anything often lazily labeled “punk”. Radio programmers tarred anyone associated with the genre with the same brush and simply weren’t willing to give the band the chance they so desperately deserved.

The album would be the last to feature original drummer Tommy (Erdelyi) on the skins, though he would return as producer for the next LP, Road To Ruin. His clashes with Johnny were enough that he felt that it was for the good of the band’s moral for him to focus on the production side. The label put up somewhere near $30K for the album and most of that was spent on production while recording was done as quickly as possible to minimize the cost of studio time. The production credits list Tony Bongiovi and Tommy Ramone as head producers, but in reality, the majority of the work landed in the lap of engineer Ed Stasium. Bongiovi, who is the cousin of Jon Bon Jovi, had a reputation for being difficult to work with and Johnny often insisted on only recording when he wasn’t in the studio. Johnny was also the main driver in pushing the production emphasis, going so far as to bring in a copy of the Sex Pistols single, God Save the Queen, at the start of production and stating that they’d ripped off the Ramones and their next album MUST exceed the production values of the Pistols.

Musically, the band went in a more surf & bubblegum pop direction, albeit with their patented buzz-saw edge. Thematically the lyrics focused on humour, often referencing mental disorders and psychiatry. The band were broadening their palette of styles as well, so it wasn’t all rapid-fire tempos all the time for this outing. Critics were enthusiastic for the variety and evolution in the band’s sound. The legacy of the album, like so much of the band’s output, particularly with the first half dozen LPs, is that they left behind an incalculably infectious canon of work which has succeeded in infiltrating popular culture over the ensuing decades, becoming touchstones for a generation and beyond. It’s only sad that they could never reach those heights while they were around to enjoy the success. As the Stranglers said, “everybody loves you when you’re dead”.

HARMONIA 76 - TRACKS & TRACES @ 25

 

Released 25 years ago today, on November 4th, 1997, the material for Harmonia & Eno’s “Tracks and Traces” album was originally recorded in 1976, but remained shelved for over 20 years before it was salvaged from oblivion and finally published.

After hearing Harmonia in the early 1970s, which was a collaboration between Cluster’s Dieter Moebius & Hans-Joachim Roedelius and NEU! guitarist Michael Rother, Brian Eno proclaimed them the “most important group in the world.” Eno promised to come work with them and finally kept that promise in 1976, though they’d already split up by then. Nonetheless, they agreed to reunite with Eno and began recording together. At the time, those recordings ended up being set aside as Eno moved on to his collaboration with David Bowie for what would become the “Berlin Trilogy” albums: Low, "Heroes" & Lodger.

In the 1990s, Roedelius retrieved the master tapes from Eno and did a bit of work on them to create the 1997 edition of the album. Further to this, Michael Rother contributed additional material from his cassette archives for the 2009 reissue. Those tracks could now be included because the digital restoration process was sophisticated enough that Rother’s tapes could be cleaned up to remove noise and enhance the sound quality. This resulted in three bonus tracks being added to the release.

Stylistically, the collaboration with Eno traded some of the flair of the previous Harmonia albums for a more muted ambience, but it was a fair trade-off and the results were a kind of music that was well ahead of its time, being produced by four creative masters who were in their prime. It's only frustrating that it took two decades for these recordings to finally find the light of day.

THE SECOND ANNUAL REPORT OF THROBBING GRISTLE @ 45

 

Forty five years ago this month, in November of 1977, The Second Annual Report of Throbbing Gristle hit the record shops in the UK in its first edition of exactly 785 copies. Independently released by the band’s own imprint, Industrial Records, the run was precisely how much they could afford to press with their limited, self financed budget. It was the first major release from Industrial Records and would become the cornerstone for an entirely new genre of popular music.

TG had been bubbling up from the basement of their “Death Factory” at 10 Martello Rd. in Hackney for about two years before the album was released, mutating out of the carcass of COUM Transmissions, a multimedia transgressive performance art collective which had been operating since 1969. After being essentially chased out of their home town of Hull by local authorities, Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti managed to pull in fellow pervert, Hipgnosis photographer/designer Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, and electronics wizard, Chris Carter, to complete the TG lineup before the end of 1975. After spending endless hours reinventing sound in their makeshift studio, the group began to perform live in 1976, kicking off their notoriety with the infamous Prostitution show at the ICA, which triggered off debate in the British parliament regarding the use of public funds for the arts. This also garnered them the infamous “wreckers of civilization” condemnation from one of the MPs.

Prior to the release of the album, a few cassette compilations were hand copied and unofficially circulated among friends until the group felt they’d got something worthy of pressing on vinyl. Side one of the album would mostly consist of extracts from four of their recent live performances, which had been recorded on stereo cassette. These would be edited together on 2 track reel-to-reel and augmented by a couple of studio tidbits. The side would end with a DJ from one of the live shows scolding the audience for their bad behavior. The second side of the album would consist of a single composition, the soundtrack to the COUM film, After Cease to Exist, recorded on 4 track reel-to-reel. The overall sound of the album ended up being a bubbling cauldron of murky noise, news radio & surveillance sound fragments and distorted vocals from Gen about things like Manson family style murdering as exemplified by a graphic description of a pregnant woman having her baby cut out of her belly. It was the ambience of dead factories and deserted streets mixed with images of suburban nightmares and it was deliberately as far away from the influence of American style blues and jazz as you could possibly conceive. Despite this, the group, on stage, still affected a kind of “rock band” configuration, using heavily processed, ineptly played guitar and bass, though without a drummer and accompanied by home made synths & electronics. The whole shebang was further processed through Chris’ custom made sound processors, the “Gristleizer”, giving it all a distinctly garbled modulation.

The album was presented in a plain white sleeve with a printed b&w sheet glued to the back containing a small photograph of the band and an extensive text detailing the product and its purpose. It was presented like a dry, clinical research paper from a soulless corporation of no particular distinction. Inside was included a long questionnaire which encouraged purchasers of the LP to complete and return to Industrial Records by mail. It was a tactical ploy to help the group establish both a kind of “fan club” correspondence and to develop internal data regarding their followers. The entire operation was quite brilliantly conceived to both parody corporate methodologies while leveraging their practical value for the groups own purposes.

Surprisingly, the LP quickly sold out and garnered some very favorable reviews, which took the group by surprise and brought them a level of credibility they’d not anticipated. The funds from the sale of the album were returned directly back into Industrial Records and used to finance further productions of records and singles. The master tapes for the first album were turned over to the founders of Fetish Records to use as a means of establishing their label. Fetish reissued the LP in a few different editions, including one where the record was remastered backwards and side two included an inadvertent addition to the audio in the form of some barely audible chamber music, which had been on a tape used for the remastering, but which was not properly erased and bled through the After Cease To Exist audio.

That particular backwards/chamber music version of the LP ended up being the record by TG which caused me to have my “epiphany” in terms of recognizing the importance of this music. It was on a night in December of 1984 when a friend and I dropped blotter acid called “Flash” (complete with a lightning bolt print on the tab) and listened to that album. It was during that experience when I comprehended that TG had done something much more fundamental than gone “primitive” with their music. They’d actually gone back into the DNA of sound itself and recombined it into something entirely new. Not that there weren’t precedents to this music prior to TG. The German experimental scene of the early 1970s had produced similar sounding recordings, but TG had identified something additional in terms of both the means of performing and the conceptual potential inherent therein. TG had created an entire methodology of presentation and packaging, as well as the use of transgressive, “taboo” subject matter. They devised a system of delivery which was constantly able to re-calibrate itself and apply contradictory juxtapositions in order to avoid any sense of predictability. Whatever the tangent, as soon as it was perceived as becoming “expected”, they’d swap things around and deliver something which seemed to oppose what went before.

As a foundational document, The Second Annual Report of Throbbing Gristle stands as one of the most vitally revolutionary musical artifacts to come along in the latter half of the 20th century. It utterly changed the way I perceive sound and how I approach the creation and performance of “music”.

IGGY POP & JAMES WILLIAMSON - KILL CITY @ 45

 

Celebrating its 45th anniversary this month is Kill City by former Stooges band-mates, Iggy Pop and James Williamson, which was released in November of 1977. The material was originally recorded in 1975, after the Stooges split, as a demo to try to secure a new recording contract, but there were no takers at the time. Williamson subsequently managed to get funding and generate some interest for the material after the release of Iggy’s two Bowie produced solo LPs, The Idiot and Lust For Life, which were released earlier in 1977. With an advance from Bomp! Records, he went into the studio to remix the tracks and add some overdubs of guitars and sax. Pop’s vocals had been recorded in 1975 during day passes from the asylum he’d checked himself into while trying to kick his heroine addiction.

After the release of the original green vinyl version of the album, the master tapes were lost for many years and all subsequent reissues had to be mastered from a copy of that poorly pressed LP, which resulted in a rather murky sound for the material. However, in 2010, the masters would resurface and Williamson, along with engineer Ed Cherney, remixed the album once more for a cleaned up “restored” reissue.

Critically, the album has been widely praised and features some material which originated before the Stooges breakup. The original 1975 mix of the album has never been heard with the exception of three songs which have appeared on various compilation albums.

CAN - EGE BAMYASI @ 50

 

Marking half a century on the shelves this month is the third studio album from CAN, Ege Bamyasi, which was released in November of 1972. With the title and cover inspired by a can found by Jaki in a Turkish shop, Ege Bamyası translates as "Aegean okra”.

Prior to the release of the album, the song Spoon, was released as a single and became a German radio hit, reaching #6 on the charts by virtue of it being used as a the theme for a popular mini-series, Das Messer (The Knife). The success of the single helped to finance the lease of a large ex-cinema in Weilerswist near Cologne, which the band converted into part studio, part residence. The remainder of the album would be recorded there and the location would become their home base going forward, renamed “Inner Space”.

The album continued the group’s exploration of organic improvised jam sessions, with Holger Czukay handling the recording process. For this LP, vocalist Damo Suzuki remained as part of the band, though recording the album became somewhat sidetracked as Suzuki and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt became preoccupied by their obsessive chess games. This meant that recording became more frantic as time went on and the group ended up recording songs practically in real time. The single, Spoon, ended up being added to the album due to the shortfall of finished material in order to fill out the LP.

Despite the rushed nature of the album, critical reception was extremely enthusiastic and it has gone on to be recognized as one of the group’s finest LPs from this era. Over the last 50 years, it has become hugely influential in the realm of alternative rock music, inspiring artists around the world with its distinctive application of improvisation and rhythmic innovation.