Celebrating
its 45th anniversary today is the third LP from Throbbing Gristle, 20
Jazz Funk Greats, which was released by the band's own Industrial
Records imprint on December 10th 1979. While it was the group's most
accessible record to date, it has also become recognized as one of the
most insidiously subversive albums to ever come from the genre that
Industrial Records gave a name.
Up
until the release of 20 Jazz Funk Greats, TG had made a name for
themselves through a series of brain crushing live performances and a
couple of unclassifiable LPs, which combined segments of recordings from
their live performances along with studio concoctions created using the
primitive facilities of their Death Factory studio, located in the
basement level at 10 Martello St, in Hackney. Their debut LP, Second
Annual Report, was a dirge of electronic lo-fi noise that oozed and
sputtered with a queasy murk of fuzz, bass throb and incidental jabs of
seemingly random chaos. With their follow up single, United, they
dabbled in a bit of techno-pop, and their next album had a range of
styles, from creepy to ambient to churning to flat out noise. Little of
it was particularly accessible, challenging the patience and the
auditory senses of listeners. So when it came time to do their next
album, the group were eager to confound the expectations of their
audience and critics, because TG were nothing if not consummate
contrarians.
The initial
inspiration for the album came about because of a visit by Genesis with
his mum, who asked him why he didn't do a "nice" record for a change.
The comment stuck and the idea was brought back to the band to do
something more ordered and structured, less noisy and more like a "pop"
record. Of course this idea didn't merely sit at that level, as the
band then began to turn the concept over and explore ways to subvert the
format. They took every aspect of every song into consideration, as
well as ideas for packaging and design.
For
recording, this would be the first fully studio produced LP by the
band, since both the previous LPs and single had incorporated live
performance recordings. Peter Christopherson, who was working as a
partner in the Hipgnosis design firm, had been involved in a cover
design for Paul McCartney prior to TG beginning work on their new LP.
Through this connection Peter managed to secure the loan of a 16 track
recording system from McCartney. This allowed the group to achieve a
recording quality they'd never had before, giving the new album
production values far beyond the primitive results of their earlier
works. They'd also managed to acquire a lot of new gear from Roland and
its subsidiary brand BOSS, including drum machines, synthesizers,
effects units and amplifiers. With all this new kit in tow, they were
assured a sound on the new album miles ahead of where they'd got to
before.
Musically, the
construction of the album was carefully discussed and debated in terms
of what kinds of tracks to have in which position on the album. For
example, they knew they needed something a bit light and rhythmic to
kick off each side of the record, choosing pieces like the title track
and Hot On the Heels of Love. From there, they ran the gamut of styles
from the pastoral beauty of Beachy Head and Walkabout to the perverse
pulse of Persuasion to the grinding churn of Convincing People and What A
Day. Yet even with the intensity cranked up, the clarity was never
sacrificed.
Of course the
massive cherry for this album was the impeccably deceptive cover
graphics. The front photo depicts the band, smartly dressed in summer
casuals, smiling vacantly in a grassy green field peppered with wild
flowers, next to a barely perceptible cliff. Because of the cloud cover
on the day of the photo shoot, it's not entirely obvious that they're
next to a cliff, let alone that it's Beachy Head, a location notorious
as a suicide hot spot. In fact, Sleazy commented that it was incredibly
difficult to get the shot to look like a nice day and not gloomy
because of the weather. He had to do a lot of careful processing of the
photo to lighten it up. The group also rented a Range Rover vehicle to
get out to the shoot, and made sure to include it in the photo as a
status symbol, being as they were all the rage for the wealthy at the
time, giving the group a false appearance of affluence. The album's
title was an ironic joke as there was virtually nothing jazzy or funky
about the record, and there were only 11 tracks, not 20. The idea was
that the record should look like some innocuous discount bin pop LP
you'd find you your local department store, something someone's gran
might pick up out of curiosity, only to put it on the phonograph at home
and find something unexpected instead.
With
the album's release, critics and fans were confused as to where TG were
going and what they were aiming to achieve, though after the initial
shock, both groups began to appreciate the subtleties of the record. As
time passed, people noticed its prescience in terms of anticipating
music like acid house techno with tracks like Hot On the Heels of Love,
which was created as a song Cosey might strip to when she was doing her
striptease gigs. As Industrial music has evolved and grown, 20 Jazz
Funk Greats remains a regular touch stone release for the genre, nearly
always included in any "best of" lists as a nod to the group who
effectively invented the genre.
