THE PAPER AGE - MUSIC BEFORE THE INTERNET

I’ve been contemplating life before the internet lately, specifically how I acquired information about music when I first started collecting it.  Long before there was a Google or Discogs or YouTube, one had to do a bit of reading the old fashioned way, in printed media, in order to learn about things that were happening in certain corners of the world.  Of course, there was radio and TV available to expose some of what was going on, but by and large, those media outlets focused on the mainstream  in a fairly superficial way and you had to go to other sources if you wanted to discover anything off the beaten track or more in-depth.  You might see the odd new wave act on Midnight Special or Saturday Night Live, but the music press was where you got to know these artists in detail and discover what they were doing and when.

I first started to collect records when I was 13, back in 1976.  Soon after that started to develop into a serious interest, I also discovered there was a variety of magazines on the shelves of my neighborhood corner shops with all sorts of fascinating stories of my favorite performers and their adventures, interviews with the them and reviews of their work.  It didn’t take long for me to get just as hooked on these as I was on the records.  So much so, in fact, that I got to the point where I’d use my lunch money to buy magazines instead of eating.  I’m thinking now that this may have been part of the reason I got so svelte in my last year of high school.  Oh well, food is over rated! 

The first publications I came across were rags like Hit Parader, Circus and, occasionally, Rolling Stone.  I never got into RS much because there were a lot of non-music articles and that stuff just didn’t interest me.  I only wanted to read about rock stars.  The other two were pretty light weight, however, and I found them to be a bit sycophantic, even at my young, naive age.  But then I came across CREEM and that one really caught my fancy.  It was not so concerned with stroking rock star egos or cheap gossip.  I didn’t understand it at the time, but it was more akin to magazines like National Lampoon and harbored a kind of “gonzo” style which often took great delight in ridiculing some of the subjects covered in its pages.  The captions to the pictures were a clear case in point.  Every one of them was a joke, often at the artist’s expense.  You never got a serious comment in the photo captions.  And they had writers like  Robert Christgau and the notorious Lester Bangs, who made an art of taking the piss out of the folks they covered.  Bangs’ LP reviews were some of my favorites.  I recall one he did for Queen’s Day at the Races that read like a bad trip and I’d never even done drugs yet.  

Eventually I discovered a used book shop downtown and it’s shelf full of old magazine back-issues.  This became a regular haunt for me and I was able to find many of the older issues of CREEM going back to the early 1970s.  This became a priceless resource to me and gave me a lot of background on my favorite bands and their history.  On the other end of this spectrum, the new issues of CREEM that were coming out at the time were starting to clue me in to a lot of new music that was coming out of places like New York and London.  They began to feature bands like the Sex Pistols, Ramones, Devo and Elvis Costello.  I remember seeing an issue with Johnny Rotten on the cover and, at the time, I thought he just looked stupid and weird and found it all rather annoying.  It wasn’t until I began to get dissatisfied with the tedium of top 40 rock music that I started to wonder what all the fuss was with these new groups and why they were getting so much press.  

Like a damn bursting, my curiosity soon got the better of me and I went out and started buying records by these people.  I can actually remember a day, flipping through the pages of a magazine in my bedroom, where I made a conscious decision to go out and buy some of these records.  It started small, with The Cars, then The Clash, Ramones, Costello, Devo and, finally, the most naughty band of all, The Sex Pistols.  I remember putting on the first Clash album and feeling like someone had blown the dust off my mind to reveal it's bright, shining surface.  I remember pulling out the lyric sheet for the Ramones' Road to Ruin and being gobsmacked that there were so many songs with just four or five lines of lyrics.  And they were fucking hilarious!   It was a few days of complete revelation that would trigger a lifetime of exploration and it all came from some ratty little music magazines.

Soon, I was on the hunt for even more magazines that featured these bands.  This is when I came across rags like Rock Scene and Punk magazine.  They were both very New York centric and featured all the CBGBs bands.  Rock Scene had a LOT of press for Patti Smith, thanks to her hubby, Lenny Kaye, being the editor.  I must admit I kinda got turned off a bit to Patti for a bit because her features in the magazine became so gratuitous and obviously so.  But still it was a valuable reference, though pretty light weight in terms of coverage of these bands.  It was mostly a scenester, “who’s with who”, kinda vibe.  Punk Magazine seemed to be the most underground and hardcore at the time.  I’m actually pretty surprised, looking back, that it ever landed in a middle of nowhere town like Thunder Bay, ON.  But it somehow managed to find its way into my hands and gave me another perspective into the alternative music scene.   

In 1979, the ultimate underground magazine started hitting the local stands, Trouser Press.  This was the most out there publication I’d managed to come across and it was in its pages that I first read of names like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, The Residents and others who were truly foraging on the fringes of experimental music.  I became obsessed with snapping this one up as soon as it hit the stands.  It was coolness in print.  And it wasn’t easy to find as only a couple of places carried it, so I’d be on the lookout for each new issue with hawk-eyed determination.  It wasn’t a fancy looking magazine either.  It was plainly designed in terms of the graphics.  But it had the best written articles and most thoughtful reviews I’d come across.  Though the irreverence of CREEM was entertaining, it was nice to have something that really dug into the new music with a more serious tone. 

Sometime in 1980, the next phenomenon to hit my collecting obsession arrived in the form of the “import”.  The little record shop I favored, Records on Wheels, introduced a small bin of LPs labeled “Imports”.  The concept was utterly new to me, but I soon realized there was a whole world of music being released in other parts of the world than never got released in Canada.  Now, most of these ended up being imported from the UK, but that was enough as all the strangest stuff seemed to get released there.  Along side these import records, the shop also started getting UK music papers.  Things like NME and Sounds started showing up and these were a whole new world of music journalism. 

I even discovered I could purchase records directly from these papers.  They had classified ads in the back pages.  This is where I found I could actually get a copy of the holy grail of albums for me at that time, Public Image Ltd’s Metal Box.  I’d read about it in some publications and it had a sort of mythical allure about it because it was so exotic sounding.  The standard double LP version had been released in Canada and I'd fallen in love with it, so there was no question that I needed it in its original format.  Finding out it was just a matter of calculating the currency exchange and sending off a money order was thrilling to me, but also nerve-wracking.  This was, of course, long before internet or cheap international phone calling, so putting money in the post and having to wait three months in the blind hope that something would come back was a bit daunting.  But it worked and, after duly and patiently waiting, I had my hands on my treasure, greedily drooling over it like Gollum with his “precious” ring!  

When I moved to Vancouver in 1982, I continued to buy the UK papers as much as I could afford to, though I would often just read them in the import record shop that got them in.  In Vancouver, it wasn’t just a bin in the shop that sold imports, it was an entire store dedicated to them.  I swear, the first time I walked into Odyssey Imports, I was like Dorothy prancing through the gates of the Emerald City.

As I got settled in a new city, I found I was buying fewer and fewer magazines.  Trouser Press ceased publication in 1984 and CREEM in 1989 (though it kinda lost its edge a few years before that and I stopped collecting it).  The UK papers still had some attraction, but by the early 90s, I wasn’t buying records much anymore because I was so poor.  There was also the transition to CD going on and CDs, particularly imports, were going for stupid prices like $40 a pop!  It’s funny now that’s the average price for a domestic piece of new vinyl these days, but you practically can't give a CD away. 

It wasn’t until the dawn of the new millennium that I was set up with a proper computer, a high speed internet connection and a functioning credit card so that my collecting bug could lurch back to life and i dove head first into the world of online shopping.  I was working a decent job with a reasonable bit of disposable income at hand, so no limited edition collectible was out of reach for me and I had the tools to track who was releasing what and also follow recommendations for new artists.  I had automated “sniper” tools for buying on Ebay so I could snap up rarities at the last second.  I went a bit nuts, I must confess.

These days, I’m poor again, but the internet and YouTube have offered me a new way to indulge my music mania and I’m swimming in an ocean of music, both old and new.  While I love the convenience, I do still have fond memories of those bygone days of picking up a magazine and reading about some strange new artist.  I was thinking the other day about the old ads from Ralph Records for The Residents and that got me inspired to write this piece.  I recall the strangeness and mysterious infatuation with their mystique that drove my imagination.  That sense of wonder is so much harder to find or create these days. 

These days, I don't read much about music, particularly reviews of albums.  I find I don't rely on them to discover new music anymore.  I use my own judgment as to whether I want to investigate something because I can always preview it, usually on YouTube.  I use Discogs "Explore" feature to play with search filters to find interesting combinations of genres and styles.  I still read the occasional interview or analytical article, perhaps on an old release being re-appraised or celebrating an anniversary.  But I look at magazine racks in the stores and there's nothing there anymore for me to pick up.  All the music magazines have pretty much vanished or you have to go to some out of the way specialty store to find them and I can't be bothered. 

I used to have a huge box of all my old rags I'd kept for many years.  I think I may have held onto them until the end of the 1990s before I finally dumped it all.  I wish I still had them now.  Some are available online, but it's not quite the same as holding it in your hands.  Kids don’t understand it now, but I remember it and I’m glad I got to bridge both worlds.

METAL BOX AT 40

METAL 1

Forty years ago, on November 23rd, 1979, Public Image Ltd unleashed their second "album".  Its initial release was in the UK, coming a year after their debut LP.

That "First Issue" had come at the tail end of 1978, a year which had begun with the infamous Sex Pistols disintegrating while wrapping up their one and only US tour.  In the wake of that chaos and all the recriminations surrounding their demise, Johnny Rotten, now back to being John Lydon, went on vacation to Jamaica where he scouted reggae acts for Richard Branson before returning to the UK to get back to the business of making music himself.  Once home, he recruited a couple of friends for his new venture; a bass player who didn't know how to play bass plus an ex-Clash guitarist.  A quartet was completed with a Canadian drummer found via a music press classified ad.  Together they knocked up an album which was greeted with a mixture of suspicion, contempt and occasional praise.  It was an uneven affair, offering glimpses of genius when they'd been able to pay for proper studios and production, but it lagged in spots once the money ran out and they had to tack on rushed pieces recorded in budget studios.  In at least one self declared case, they "only wanted to finish the album with a minimum amount of effort".  It was a contentiously auspicious debut that demanded an unequivocal follow up for this entity to be taken seriously.  So during the beginning months of 1979, PiL set about assembling new tracks while churning through drummers like toilet tissue. 

Prior to it's release, Metal Box was buffered by two singles, Death Disco (issued in June) and Memories (in October).    Both of these set the stage for what was to come, but no one was really prepared for the full force of the post-punk monolith which was about to descend.  Recorded in fragmented sessions at various studios throughout the year, Metal Box rolled out of the gate while smashing it to pieces along the way.  It was unlike anything anyone had seen or heard before, both in structure and content.  Housed in a logo embossed circular metal canister, it contained three 12" 45rpm "singles" with a dozen tracks spread across them and a  running time of about an hour.  It posed questions on every level, from how to get the records out (they were so tightly housed, you'd have to shake the container and try not to scratch or drop them as they tumbled out), to what order to play them (play order was meant to be flexible) to what kind of stereo system was capable of reproducing the sound in the grooves (I personally know people who bought whole new audio systems in order to handle the extremes of bass and treble contained on those records).  

Where their first LP had indicated movement into new musical directions, such as the nine minute dirge of Theme, it still retained remnants of what could legitimately be called "rock & roll" on songs like its title track and Annalisa.  This new product, however, left those conventions behind on all fronts.  There were elements of disco, dub, German "motorik", martial music, funk and some unidentified strains in the mix.  That "mix", itself, was another thing all together.  The bass was front and center, pushing the capacity of the medium to reproduce it.  Guitars & synths buzzed, scraped and squalled in thin ribbons across the top.  Drums were generally utilitarian, minimal and repetitive, providing support for the bass, but never offering too much flash.  Kick drums were EQ'd with enough thud to pop needles out of the grooves and hi-hats sizzled with enough top end to fry bacon. Occasionally, a drum track was no more than a tape loop of a simple beat.  Lydon's voice moaned and squeaked or screamed in vacant hallways, always sounding lost or distant.  Even the editing of the tracks was fair game for mischief.  Some tracks would abruptly cut off and bump into the next.  Sometimes it sounded like the tape player was shut off or switched on as the music did a sharp pitch drop into a halt or lurched to a start.  A song might trail off into the locked groove at the end of the record and either loop there indefinitely or be roughly snatched away by the auto-return kicking in on the tone arm.  It all felt inside-out, like a building with the plumbing and wiring deliberately showing on the outside.

SECOND EDITION

It wouldn't be until early in 1980 that the album would find its way into my 16 year old hands in Canada.  By then, it had been reissued in a more conventional double LP format, in a standard gate-fold cardboard sleeve, as "Second Edition".  I remember going into Records on Wheels, which had opened up recently in a little strip mall next door to the Burger King where I worked, after my shift on a cold April day in Thunder Bay, ON.  I spotted it instantly as I entered the shop and saw it on the wall in the new releases section by the entrance.  I'd heard of PiL by then, but never heard them.  The first LP was never released in Canada, so I had no idea what they sounded like.  I didn't even know if this was a different album from the one I'd read a review of in CREEM magazine the year before.  I knew I had to check it out, so I plunked my hard earned burger flipping money down and then had to wait until later that evening to hear it.  The whole family went out that night to visit friends, so I spent most of the evening staring at the cover graphics while the adults talked and drank.  

I was fascinated by the photos on the front and inside the gate-fold.  I didn't know who was who yet.  I knew what John Lydon used to look like, but not the rest of the band and the distortion of the warped image effect used made it nearly impossible to tell which one was him.  The cover also had all the lyrics printed on the back.  They weren't originally included with the Metal Box edition due to cost, so PiL had run an ad in one of the UK music papers with the lyrics printed in it so people could take that and fold it up to stick inside the tin.  They were in the same hand written style in both cases, I'm assuming in Lydon's writing.  They weren't in the same order as the songs on the LPs, so when I did finally get to hear the records, it took a bit of sorting to figure out which song was which.
 

When I finally did get home that evening, I went to the big old wooden console stereo system in the living room, grabbed the headphones, set myself up in a comfy chair and dropped the needle on the first track.  It wasn't a great system, so I didn't have the best first listening experience, but it was good enough for me to be able to appreciate how different this all was.  Looking at the labels on the records, I noticed the run times for the track listings.  Side one started with Albatross, which clocked in at an intimidating 10 minutes!  I wasn't used to songs being much longer than 3 or 4 minutes.  Maybe 6 was long when you're talking about something like Bohemian Rhapsody or a Zeppelin track and, in those cases, they were intricately orchestrated with major changes in structure and arrangements as the track progressed.
 

YOU ARE UNBEARABLE

Albatross kicked in and I was immediately anxious and anticipating when it was going to start changing.  After a few minutes in, it became apparent it wouldn't.  Jah Wobble's bass line comes in first and it sounds lazy, like it can barely stand to differentiate the three notes it keeps repeating.  It doesn't even want to try to do anything but lumber along.  And it's so deep!  It's just this rumble under the floorboards.  It sounds scary and maybe a little pissed off about something. Brooding?  Yeah, that's the feel.  Then the drums start plodding along and this scraping, screeching noise from Keith Levene's guitar comes in like a carrion bird way up in the sky, circling and waiting for something to die so it can swoop down and gorge itself.  The ghost of Johnny Rotten then looms up from his grave and starts moaning about something he can't get rid of.  His thoughts are fragments, piecemeal musings you might extract from a cadaver's brain.  "Frying rear blinds"?  What does that even mean?  It's bits and pieces of ideas and images, but there's a sense of exasperation  and boredom.  What's he on about?  Is it his career and fame?  Is it the carcass of rock & roll being flogged like that dead horse?   "Slow motion... slow motion..."  The whole thing fucks with your sense of time.  It goes on so long and is so ruthlessly repetitive, that you lose any sense of time passing.  Everything stands still.  Then it's over and the last thing you hear is that squalling vulture flying off into the distance.

IT SHOULD BE CLEAR BY NOW

Next up, Memories kicks off with some pep as the tempo picks up.  Now, the bass is hollow sounding and bouncy while a disco beat pops along, encouraging some toe tapping.  A curtain of vibrato guitars starts shimmering in the background.  There's something vaguely Latin about it, like flamenco or something, but it's not even certain what instrument you're listening to.  It sounds a bit like an organ too.  There's a flurry of notes that dance around, but they never quite create a melody.  It's merely a suggestion of conventional structure.  Lydon's voice comes in with a sneer and declares he's "had enough of useless memories" and proceeds to tear into the concepts of sentimentality and nostalgia.  Then, just when you think you've got a handle on things, the entire mix suddenly cuts to something completely different.  The bass is back to booming again.  The drums are heavier now too, with the kick threatening to bounce the stylus right out of the grooves.  It's all compressed so that the loudness of the track hits the maximum and you can imagine any VU meter pinned to the top when the mix cuts over.  That curtain of Spanish moss is now a wall made of steel and it's pushing that voice as it bellows and snarls about being "used" and "dragging on and on and on and on and on AND ON AND ON!"  Back and forth, the song snaps between the two mixes until it goes careening out of sight.  As previously mentioned, this song was released as a single, but that version only used the bottom heavy mix throughout and did not have the abrupt edits between mixes.  Personally, I can never really decide which is more effective, though I tend to favor the single most of the time, but the juxtaposition of the two mixes on the LP was a fresh, jarring concept and executed flawlessly. 

FLOWERS ROTTING DEAD

By the time I'd finished the first side, I was feeling like I'd been punched in the head in the best way possible.  My initial apprehension was replaced by an exuberance as I could feel the sense that something new was taking hold in my brain.  Flipping the record over, the next track up was Swan Lake.  This had been released in a more stripped down, rough mix as Death Disco in the summer of that year.  This finished mix would take the rawness of the single and refine it into a truly heartbreaking exploration of loss and death.  The song was written by Lydon about watching his dear mother pass due to the ravages of cancer.  His delivery during the song is nothing short of agonizing.  There's no measuring or muting his suffering and he lets it out with every excruciating wail of "words cannot express!!!".   Again, a disco beat provides the bedrock while Wobble's bass thunders with the tension and anxiety of an anxiously racing heartbeat.  Levene's repeating guitar and synth motif, borrowed from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, creates the sense of mourning and lamenting the loss of a loved one.  The emotion in the song is so raw and uninhibited, it's very strange to see the promo video made for it as the band seem to be mugging it up during their miming of the track for the camera. On Second Edition, the track spins into a frenzy before before being abruptly cut off by the next track while, on Metal Box, it bleeds into the run-out locked groove to find its terminus.

THE SMELL OF RUBBER ON COUNTRY TAR

Things abruptly switch to the next track, Poptones.  The song tells the tale of kidnapping and murder, snatched straight out of the headlines of the tabloids.  It's almost beautiful, musically.  Keith spins a delicate spiderweb of guitar notes, cascading down upon each other and churning like a glittering Ferris wheel.  I say "almost" because it's all a bit like a bouquet of flowers that has died on the dressing table.  The tale being told is past tense, so there's no sense of urgency or threat.  There's only the aftermath as the deceased in question relates its own demise, the sound of music playing on a cassette in the car communicating the dispassionate telling of this sordid true crime story.   A walking bass loops around along with the guitar, meandering through a cycle of notes while the drums tumble along for the ride.  It's a dizzying swirl of sound as we feel the chill of a car boot in the country air and the "wet" of the dirt while we lose our "body heat".  Lydon intones the vocals in a cracked, reedy tone that reinforces the detachment from any direct experience.  Faintly in the background, his voice echoes down into the vortex, barely audible amid the distortion. 

MANGLED MACHINERY

Cut to the battle field for the completion of the trifecta on side two of the 2nd-E track listing.  The tape machine kicks into gear with a sweep of the pitch and we're marching.  The drums pat out a militant trundle while the bass, deep as usual, pushes underneath,  an insistent drill sergeant, counting out steps as the troops move forward.  All around, synthesizers swirl, discordant and droning, swooping through as teargas lingers on the horizon.  We're going to war, but it's corpses for cash in this modern military industrial complex.  The big money is meticulous and well organized as it poisons the landscape.  Lydon's voice searches for "meaning behind the moaning", but all he finds is dollar signs.  This is not conflict over ideals or beliefs or even traditional material concerns such as land rights.  This is military for money, as a mechanism for generating financial profit.  PiL were predicting the future here and, 40 years on, it's horrifying how precisely accurate their prediction was.  Synthetic gunshots ring out in jarring bursts.  When they hit rapid-fire, it makes you jump in your seat.  It's frightening and relentless and it all ends in a crescendo barrage.

IT IS YOUR NATURE

The next set of tracks gives the listener a bit of a breather.  I'm going by the double LP track listing here for this article as this is the ordering I was ingrained to follow until I finally got a proper copy of Metal Box a good year after first getting Second Edition.  First up are a couple of instrumentals.  Socialist comes staggering out of the speakers like some sort of short-circuiting robot.  The drums are weirdly syncopated with the bass and the whole thing is sprinkled with nothing more than some random synth bleeps and bloops.  This is followed by Graveyard, a track which previously appeared in a different mix with vocals on the B-Side of the Memories single as Another.  It was also recycled by Wobble for the track Not Another, reverting back to an instrumental, on his first solo LP.  It's a rhythmic, atmospheric piece with a decidedly morbid mood, most suitable for some midnight forays to the land of tombstones.  It would make a good soundtrack for waiting for The Great Pumpkin in the pumpkin patch.  This moody, brief trio is rounded off with The Suit, also recycled by Wobble for his solo album as Blueberry Hill.  Here, it's little more than a lonely bass line playing against a tape looped kick & snare with Lydon doing some of his infamous piano tinkling in the background (he often did this in the studio simply to annoy everyone).  Keith is nowhere to be found here.  Lydon's lyrics sneer and snigger at those who live off the ideas of others, never originating anything themselves.  Their look, their attitude, their manners, all borrowed from others and sold cheap to anyone stupid enough to buy into their fake personas.  It eventually  disappears down an echoing corridor to end this set.

ONE MORE SOB STORY

The final quartet of tracks brings us to some of the most harrowing moments of the album.  First up is another story torn from the morning papers, Bad Baby.  This was the audition piece for drummer Martin Atkins, who knocked it out in a single take, thus clinching his hiring by the band.  Here, he drops a minimalist funky beat while Wobble saunters along on bass.  Keith ads no more than the occasional car horn inspired atonal synth stab, but that's enough.  The track doesn't need any more.  Lydon fills in the rest with his recounting of a story of an infant being left alone in a parked car.  It's a story you hear every year, at least a dozen times, still to this day.  Lydon relates it rather offhand and almost distracted, like he's busy looking for gum in his pockets or something.  It's a song about thoughtlessness and that's the feeling that comes across in the delivery.

DON'T KNOW WHY I BOTHER, THERE'S NOTHING IN IT FOR ME

Things start to get harrier with No Birds, the post-punk equivalent to The Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday.  In this case, it's suburban malaise taken into discordant abandon.  The drums ripple with tribal toms while the bass pushes them along.  Once more, Lydon's piano is plinking in the background while Keith shaves off sheets of searing guitar.  Lydon's vocals paint a picture of disaffection, "a layered mass of subtle props."  He keeps insisting "this could be Heaven", but you know it's a long way from that.  The song trots along until it's suddenly struck down by the most manic piece on the album, Chant.  The drums are primal and thudding, like a mob stomping in rage.  The bass grumbles underneath and, like Albatross, there's barely any distinction between the notes, only an uneasy minor variation.  Keith's guitar thrashes and spits in all directions.  There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it, it's chaotic flailing imitating the mob mentality being evoked.  There's a "chant" building in the background.  "Love, war, fear, hate"!  At lease, that's what it sounds like.  It's not really possible to say for sure.  The chanting is so incessant, the words lose their meaning from repetition.  Then the lead vocals charge in, scouring the air with condemnation.  "Voice moaning in a speaker, never really get too close".  Riots, protests, demonstrations, a futility of empty gestures accomplishing nothing.  Meaningless slogans, unfulfilled promises, empty threats.  It's the anger of the world stewing away with no target, no hope of success and no objective to accomplish.  The song riots along until the channel gets abruptly changed because it's too miserable to take any more. 

It's all been a pretty bleak affair up to this point with the music and lyrics and even the packaging painting a grey, metallic picture of death, despair and hopelessness.  So how come I felt so good listening to it?  The final track in this assault, Radio 4, finally lifts us out of the bleakness for a brief glimpse of beauty.  It's the third instrumental and it's pretty much all Keith (though I've heard rumors that Ken Lockie, of Cowboys International, had a hand in it).  It's essentially no more than a wandering bass line and washes of synth chords moving in like waves crashing on the shore while a lonely lead line drifts over top.  Occasional cymbal splashes are the only accents.  It's peaceful, serine, contemplative and brings you back down to earth after the rest of the album's jarring, hypnotic melee.  It's waking up from the nightmare and realizing you're still okay... for now. 

WE'RE NOT A BAND, WE'RE A CORPORATION

After my first listen, I was stunned.  I went to high school the next day and tried to explain that I'd heard something beyond anything I'd heard before, but I didn't have the words and no one took note of me.  For the next 6 months or more, Second Edition was played at least once, start to finish, every single day.  I obsessed over it. I played it for anyone who would listen. It made most of the other records in my meager collection irrelevant.  Verses and choruses?  How quaint and old fashioned.  Melody and harmonies?  Passé.  It had thrown itself so far ahead of the pack, listening to most other music seemed pointless.  It also inspired.

Before hearing PiL, I'd had ideas of wanting to make my own music and had even taken guitar and bass lessons.  As a result, I had instruments sitting in my room and a cheap amp, which were mostly ignored for the prior two years.  I never seriously felt like I could do music myself.  I never thought I had the ability to make anything anyone would want to listen to.  I didn't think I was good enough and I didn't know where to start.  But Second Edition was like an instruction manual and it was a tool kit and a pile of building blocks, all in one.  It wasn't something to merely listen to.  It was something to study and learn from.  Its structures were primary and easy to comprehend.  Throw down a simple beat, add a few notes on bass, jam some guitar on top or just make weird noises and blather on about whatever you wanted to finish it off.  That was it.  That was all you needed to make your own music.  Within a year, I'd managed to buy a synth and a drum machine and a cheap cassette recorder.  I'd met a few friends who were also interested in fucking around with music, so we'd hang out in someone's basement or bedroom and crank out some noise.  I wouldn't have felt like I could do it if it weren't for PiL and this album, in particular.

PiL made you question every structure around music and understand that the rules were not fixed and that every aspect could be played with.  The way you play an instrument, the way to make a record, the way you package it, the way you structure your band.  You could have an accountant and a publicist be part of the band.  They did.   It was all up for grabs and you only needed to have the nerve to throw caution to the wind to try to make shit happen.  That was an important lesson and one I will always be grateful for learning. 

Eventually, as I mentioned, I got my hands on a sanctified original pressing of an actual Metal Box.  Back in 1980, living in Canada, that wasn't easy to do.  The Records on Wheels shop was getting in copies of NME and Sounds music papers on import, so I was buying them and checking out the classified ads at the back.  I found one selling copies of Metal Box plus the 12" of Memories and Death Disco.  I got my calculator out, went to the bank and managed to figure out the exchange between British Pounds and Canadian Dollars, bought a money order and sent it off in the mail.  With no internet or cheap overseas phones, it was a huge risk to send so much off like that.  It cost about $60 all total, which was a lot back then.  I had to wait about 3 months and often wondered if it would ever arrive, but one day, it finally did and at last, I had my hands on an actual copy of Metal Box.  I still have all those records today, prominently displayed on my CD shelf.

Over the years, I've purchased this album more times than any other.  There was my original Second Edition Canadian release in 1980, the above noted original Metal Box edition in 1981, a UK pressing of Second Edition in 1983  (still have that one),  my first CD copy of Second Edition circa 1989,  a CD replica of Metal Box sometime around 2002, the 2006 4 Men With Beards vinyl Metal Box reissue and, finally, the 2009 Virgin 30th anniversary 3 CD Metal Box replica (which I also still have).  That makes 7 different versions.  I couldn't get the expanded edition from 2016, sadly, because I'm poor now and can't afford such things.  At least I was able to hear the bonus material thanks to YouTube.  Anyway, the point is that no other piece of music in my life has demanded my attention and collecting obsessiveness like Metal Box.

Since its release, it has gone on to secure its position in popular music history as one of the most significant and influential albums of all time.  It rehabilitated dance music, allowing it to move into more experimental realms in the 1980s, after "disco" had made the 4x4 beat a cocaine dusted disgrace.  It can credibly be sited as the seed that grew into the bass music culture that spread throughout the 1990s and 2000s via downtempo, drum & bass and dubstep.  It may not have had the sales figures of a Sgt. Pepper, but it was no less revolutionary in terms of the effect it had on people who make music and art.

Where the Sex Pistols had been an attempt, at least for Mr. Rotten, to blast apart the ramparts of "rock 'n' roll", Metal Box showed you what could be built in its place, once you'd cleared away the rubble.  It was the next step beyond the nihilism of punk and actually a positive statement about the nature of creativity, which is why it had the odd effect of making me feel good even when the themes of the songs were so bleak and unsettling.  It made you feel like something was possible, in spite of all the horror.  And it also told you the truth about how fucked up things were.  You felt like it was honest about the world.  There was no fake optimism or plaster over the horrors "feel good" bullshit.  And it concealed a wickedly dark sense of humor, if you knew where to find it (just ask Dick Clark or Tom Snyder). 

In the end, it has proven itself more than capable of "sowing the seed of discontent". 

IS MUSIC A DEAD ART?

 

Let's begin by defining what I mean by the term "dead art". In essence I'm referring to an art form which is no longer capable of significant technical or conceptual progress and no longer has the capacity to instigate change on a cultural level. An example of what I would consider a "dead" art would be painting, at least in the sense of something hanging in a traditional gallery somewhere. Perhaps it can be said that certain forms of graffiti still manage to trigger controversy and commentary. A practitioner such as Banksy is an example of someone able to inspire discussion and make political statements through their art. Street art aside, I don't see anything happening in that particular branch of the visual arts world which is likely to cause much of a stir or inspire anything to happen beyond its canvases. At most, paintings now simply decorate a room.  Perhaps the work of Warhol may have been the last time paintings had any particular impact on the larger cultural landscape other than, for example, soliciting outrage at the expense of a "stripe" on a canvas.  

I"m old enough to have experienced at least three major cultural shifts within my lifetime which I can say were, more or less, directly linked to a particular musical movement. In my childhood, the late 1960s, there was the psychedelic explosion. Though the primary impetus for that change was a narcotic, specifically LSD, its route through western culture was entirely paved by music. It was rock & roll bands who were sounding the clarion call and it was songs about altered perception which seduced the youth of the era into "tuning in, turning on & dropping out". Without bands like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead and others, the word would never have been able to reach as many people as it did.

In my adolescence during the late 1970s, it was the three headed Cerberus of "punk", "new wave" & "industrial" music which broke kids out of their doldrums and got them thinking, dressing and behaving in new ways.  It was a rebellion against the status quo and conformity which had set in after the comedown of the hippies left their parents dropping the love beads and packing up the station-wagons that drove them out into the bland mediocrity of the suburban landscape.  

In the spring of my adulthood, the final revolution came about through the entwined twins of hip-hop/rap music and electronic rave culture spearheaded by acid house and techno music in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Starting in the early 1980s, before the cancerous spread of gentrification and rising property costs, the warehouse was the scene where exploration and experimentation could happen.  You could get a cheap space for a couple hundred or less per month and pay for it by selling unlicensed booze at weekend parties a few times a month.  Designer drugs, mobile sound systems, isolated locations and trance inducing music sent youth back into tribal states of ecstasy and transcendence. Though a callback to the spirit of the 1960s in the case of the rave scene, the hip-hop crowd veered into the raw street rage of gangster culture.  It shone a glaring light on issues such as police brutality, racism, class discrimination, poverty and injustice.  In either case, it was again a time when adults were afraid of what their kids were getting into.     

Outside of my own personal experience, music as a driver of cultural influence practically only goes back to roughly the beginning of the 20th century.  Before that, you only had folk and traditional music available to the general public and those forms tended to reinforce and sustain existing norms rather than drive changes to them.  On the other extreme, with "classical" music, you might have some influence within the upper crust of society, but very little beyond it.  Religious music, like folk music, tended to sustain tradition rather than spur innovation.  It's not until the advent of recording technology that the idea of true "popular" music comes into play as the populace gain access to mass produced music mediums and playback systems accompanied by radio broadcasts.  Also, the push to innovate, driven by the industrial revolution and its technological advances, begins to trigger changes in music technology and techniques, and consequently, culture.  

The first popular music form to trigger controversy in the general public comes with the birth of jazz.  Elitist art movements like the Futurists and Dadaists may have inspired extreme experimentation with sound, but it was not something that noticeably effected the masses and remained a novelty of the galleries and wealthy art circles.  Jazz, on the other hand, came up from the black communities and was entirely driven by the "grass" roots (pun intended).  This was music that was accessible by the average person and was one of the first times music was seen as being a degenerate influence on youth.  It impacting dress styles, dance, sexuality and social issues.  The ideas of losing one's inhibitions and free expression were built into the very DNA of jazz and these have been a recurring theme throughout every musical epiphany and paradigm shift which has occurred since. 

In the 1950s, there was the birth of that great BEAST, rock and roll.  Here was a hybrid between white western swing music and black boogie-woogie blues with a backbone borrowed directly from native American aboriginal music, thanks to the Creole merger of Louisiana post-slavery blacks and "Indian" blood.  This combination proved combustible beyond anyone's imagination and sent the entire north American continent into a spin, one which would ultimately bust out onto the world stage and influence youth around the globe, from Europe to Africa to Asia.  Rock & roll was the proverbial "Pandora's Box" and, once that lid was open, all manner of wicked spirits flew out.

When you line all of these movements up, you have a 20th century popular culture which was continuously and repeatedly impacted and influenced by musical movements.  In each case, these changes were derided  and dismissed by conservative, "adult" overseers as subversive, perverted and destructive to the moral fiber of the youth and the nation.  There was a sense of threat and menace perceived by the "powers that be" which drove them to do whatever they could to stifle and inhibit the spread of these movements and, without exception, those efforts not only failed, but likely resulted in even more popularity for whatever it was they were trying to stop.  

Throughout the 20th century, there was also a marked and obvious change in the styles, techniques and technologies used to create music.  Something that was popular in the 1950s sounds completely different from something popular in the 1960s.  Take any decade or even the span of a few years and a major evolution could take place.  Anyone with even a basic familiarity with 20th century popular music can listen to virtually any tune and peg, fairly accurately, when it was made.  The style of playing, the recording techniques, the way it was mixed - all these clues tell the tale of when that recording was made and often where and by whom.  

Flash forward to the 21st century and things seem to have reached a kind of impasse in terms of forward momentum and cultural significance.  Since the 1990s, I can't think of any significant cultural shift which has been driven by music.  Technological changes such as computers, internet, smart phones and wireless networks have had far greater impact on our lives than any art form.  The machinery of the popular media has become so efficient at assimilating creative product, that nothing seems to be able to upset the cultural "apple cart" these days. 

Stylistically and technically, music has essentially plateaued.  We're two decades into the new millennium and I can put on a recording from 1995 and put it next to something form 2015 and only the most sophisticated, knowledgeable listener would be able to distinguish their origins.  For several decades, beginning with the unfortunately termed "Krautrock" of the early 1970s, electronic music was at the forefront of innovation and experimentation.  From the "motorik" rhythms of Kraftwerk and Neu to the ambience of Cluster & Eno to the pulsing sequencers of Tangerine Dream, the German music scene blasted the lid off and broke away from the rigidity of American blues archetypes.  After this, experimentation flew off in all directions through post punk, industrial, techno and a plethora of sub-genres, constantly evolving throughout the 1980s and 1990s.  But it all kind of stalled out after that.  Beyond the shifting of tempos between drum & bass and dubstep, the genres seemed to stabilize and consolidate and, with only minor variations since, they've remained relatively constant and consistent.

Culturally, no one gets upset about what a music personality does these days except for the most trivial and sensational issues of bizarre conduct or eccentric individual behavior.  Today, when Kanye West stirs up the media, it's because he's boasting about himself or proposing some laughable indulgence.  The days when politicians would discuss a Johnny Rotten in parliament or a president would put a John Lennon on a subversives list are long gone.  Rap music is more concerned with money and status these days than social justice, for the most part.  At least that's the kind of content that ends up in greatest rotation and gains the highest profile.  And those who do seek to make critical statements are commodified to the point where they are no threat to anyone in the establishment.  They are all neatly and safely packaged and peddled to the appropriate pauper for consumption.  

It seems that most art forms go through a similar arc in terms of their evolution.  They begin in primitivism, as an expression of the masses, evolve into more refined, classical complexity in the hands of the elite and then expand into more experimental realms such as abstractionism, surrealism, modernism and impressionism before ultimately culminating in various forms of post-modernism, which creates hybrids between all of these various branches.  Once you get to the stage of post-modernism, works tend to become self-referential and the commentary becomes an internal dialogue.  That point where the art is able to interact with and influence people and culture on a large scale begins to diminish and disappear.  The medium then tends to fade into the background as mere decoration or embellishment. 

This is where we seem to have arrived at in terms of the art of music.  It now seems to be no more than a structural component rather than something that stands on its own.  People spend less and less time sitting down and listening to music anymore or taking any kind of message or influence from it.  It's mostly just something that's happening in the background. It's no more than a form of "wallpaper" or distraction and not a primary focus of attention.  It's not that that there's anything intrinsically wrong with that, but for someone who grew up with music that made revolutions, I can't help but express a sort of lamentation for the loss of that capability.  Parents don't get scared by their kids records anymore.  Sure, they may not like them or find them objectionable for aesthetic reasons, but they rarely worry that their kids might join some subversive movement because of whatever is hiding in those grooves.  Even that terminology is irrelevant now as most people don't use physical media anymore except as a fetishized object for some hipster sense of nostalgia.

It's not that no one is doing "good" music.  As subjective as that may sound, there are very real standards which can provide a sense of value and quality for any piece of music.  Talented artists are creating quality recordings and performances.  It's just that the sense of a sharp, cutting edge has gone.  I can't look out there anywhere and find anything that gives me that quiver in my gut feeling that something "dangerous" is going on. 

If there is any art form remaining which can get the hackles up of the establishment, I'm not sure I know what it is or where to find it.  I suppose the most dangerous, subversive medium on the planet these days is the dark web, but this is more a place of criminals and perverts than revolutionaries.  If they do exist there, they're doing a pretty shitty job of pulling the pins on this nightmare we're all trapped in.  At a time when we are staring down the barrel of extinction level global catastrophes, we need that revolutionary voice now more than ever.  We need something that can wake us out of this zombie like trance that keeps us lumbering ever closer to the precipice awaiting our final stumble.  If it's out there, I have yet to see it.