THROBBING GRISTLE - DISCIPLINE @ 40

 

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

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

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

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

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

QUEEN - A KIND OF MAGIC @ 35

 

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

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

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

THE RAINCOATS - ODYSHAPE @ 40

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE MONKEES - GOOD TIMES @ 5

 

May 27th marks the fifth anniversary of the release of The Monkees 50th anniversary comeback album, Good Times!, which was released on this day in 2016.

It’s strange how a mere five years seems like a lifetime ago now. Back then, we were teetering on the precipice of the decent into hell that would be the Dumpo presidency. It didn’t seem possible, yet it happened and now we’re in this surreal pandemic dystopia looking down the barrel of potential social, economic and climate collapse. I remember when this album came out, it was a slap in the face to all the toxic pessimism that was rearing its head at the time. It was like the most revolutionary thing that you could do was to put out an album of unassailable joy.

There are simply so many inexplicably marvelous facets to this album, but it could easily have been something so much less than it was. It could have been nothing more than maudlin nostalgia and rehashed, recycled cliches of 1960s “summer of love” bullshit. Yet somehow, the right people came together at the right time to make this happen. They were able to unearth some foundational bits and pieces from the Rhino archives and then carefully stitch them together with contemporary extrapolations and augmentations which did far more than simply recollect the past glories of this cherished pop phenomenon. They effectively re-birthed it with an inexplicable sense of vitality and freshness that belies the half century legacy of the product.

Shortly after its release, Micky Dolenz summed up the extraordinary nature of its success by trying to imagine someone from 1916 revitalizing their career in 1966. The cultural gulf between those two eras is so clearly great from our contemporary retrospect that it starkly puts into perspective the idea of The Monkees reviving their essence so successfully for this sophomore decade of the 21st century. This was all made possible by a carefully assembled collection of creative professionals who not only understood what they were working with, but imbued it with a sincere passion and love that pushed it beyond mere marketing and consumer exploitation. They found the FUN in it again and infused every aspect of this project with it, from the first track to the last, including the clutch of bonus tracks that were sprinkled in various editions along the way.

For me, it became the soundtrack to my summer that year, a season which culminated with the opportunity to actually see The Monkees perform live for the very first time when they came to Vancouver’s PNE on September 4th of that year. What a painful irony it was that I would end up having to duck out of the last 15 minutes of the show due to medical issues which would end up resulting in my having to undergo heart bypass surgery on Sept 12th, the exact date when The Monkees TV show debuted on NBC back in 1966. That coincidence has never been lost on me and forever ties all of these events together into the strangest package. Fortunately, I’m still here to write about it and recollect the release of one of the best Monkees albums since their heyday in the late 1960s.

DOLENZ, JONES, BOYCE & HART @ 45

 

May 29th marks the 45th anniversary of the release of the eponymous titled debut album by Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. That is: Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart.

For all practically purposes, this was a reunion of The Monkees, but in 1976, the legal rights to use that name did not reside with any of the band members nor the song writing duo who created many of their biggest hits. This was nearly 10 years after the debut of the TV series and almost exactly 6 years since the release of the last official Monkees LP, Changes. Since that time, the value of their brand had taken a nose-dive and the world was still nearly 10 years away from the infamous MTV marathon of the TV show, which would kick-start a massive wave of nostalgia for the band. But in 1976, to be a Monkee was to be a has-been; forgotten and often despised and ridiculed. Yet enough time had passed that a little nostalgia for the boys was percolating to the point where principal lead vocalists, Dolenz & Jones, and the creative core of the songwriting and production team, Boyce & Hart, felt that they might be able to tap into the old vein one more time. Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were both approached to participate in this, but declined.

To record the album, Boyce & Hart recruited many of the same musicians who’d been part of their house band at the time they did their original hits. Chip Douglas, who had produced the band for several albums after the ousting of Don Kirshner, also came onboard. Together, they managed to craft a pretty nicely updated version of The Monkees, even though they couldn’t call it that. They’d embraced the sounds of the times and the vocal talents of Dolenz & Jones were always reliable. The selection of songs is quite good with maybe one or two exceptions. Overall, they created a very enjoyable and listenable album.

Sadly, the public weren’t quite ready for it and not even the help of a tour and a number of national TV appearances could help push the record into significant sales. The album pretty quickly dropped from sight, but it still managed to get Peter Tork to change his mind and join Micky and Davy to record a Christmas single, Christmas Is My Time of Year, released in time for the holiday season of 1976. Again, however, the spark of sales didn’t quite ignite and, after the tour, The Monkees went their separate ways again for the next decade. They’d bide their time on solo projects until that fateful day in February of 1986 when the world would rediscover them and set ablaze the Monkeemania that would continue to flare up again and again to the present day.

While the D, J, B & H LP vanished into the ether for many years, eventually, aficionados for the band would dig it back up from its grave and it would see a reissue on CD in 2005 and is now readily available on streaming mediums like YouTube. Fans of the band have recognized its value after all these years and it is widely accepted as a legitimate part of The Monkees canon of albums. And it deserves this recognition since it is a full fledged representation of the people who were always a part of the project, even if the name is missing.

POLYESTER @ 40

 

May 29th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of John Waters’ crossover film, Polyester. After a decade of working on the fringes of midnight movie cult cinema with such low budget features as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living, Polyester was his first attempt at doing anything approaching a “mainstream” feature. Being shot on actual 35mm film and featuring a real Hollywood star in the form of one aging heartthrob, Tab Hunter, it was a significant step into accessing a much broader audience than the freaks who’d slither into a late night theater when most respectable people were all tucked up in their beds. That's not to say it was bereft of the bizarre transgressions of his earlier films, but it did tamp them down enough to smuggle them into a few mainstream big screens.

In 1981, I was still living in Thunder Bay, ON and had only come across a few scant mentions of John Waters and Divine in the odd punk music magazine. Yet I knew enough to realize that, when I saw his new movie advertised as playing in the local theater, I had to check it out. The advance promo regarding the “Odorama” gimmick also piqued my curiosity. So when it came, some friends and I made our way downtown and settled in for a scent filled evening of warped suburban dysfunctional family fun!

The film begins with a scientist describing the Odorama process and offering some examples of how it worked and what you were supposed to do. This was all inspired by the old William Castle style gags and tricks he’s incorporate into his horror B-movies. Everyone was issued a card with numbered pink circles on one side and the Polyester logo on the other. We were instructed to scratch a numbered circle whenever the corresponding number appeared on the lower corner of the screen. The first number on the card, when scratched, gave off a lovely rose smell in conjunction with the rose the scientist displayed on the screen. After this demonstration, the movie proper started and we found ourselves in the Fishpaw household master bedroom as Francine (Divine) and her husband are in bed preparing to go to sleep. As we see the number 2 begin to flash on the screen, we all scratch and the unmistakable sulfuric scent of a fart fills our nostrils as poor Francine begins fanning her face with her hand in disgust at her husband’s foul bowel expulsion. That was when we knew that we were likely not going to get too many pleasant scents wafting off our scratch cards for the remainder of the movie. From there, it was everything from airplane glue to dirty sneakers to skunk and any other unsettling odor that could be stuck under our noses. It only relented with the final 10th circle at the end of the movie when we got to smell some air freshener to leave us with a “happy” ending!

Multi-sensory gags aside, the movie is a riotously melodramatic descent into a struggling housewife’s crumbling marriage and the trauma and stress of dealing with two delinquent teens - one a daughter dealing with an unwanted pregnancy and the other a son obsessed with women’s shoes and smashing their feet in terrible random assaults. Francine’s only support through it all comes from her dear clueless debutante friend, Cuddles, played to oblivious perfection by Edith Massey. The tears and the sorrows of the Fishpaw family become an exercise in schadenfreude comedy as each progressive indignation leads to more and more hilarity for the audience.

From here, the gateway drug of Polyester sent me into the theater again and again whenever a John Waters movie found its way to any local silver screen. Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living became essential staples in my underground cinema education. After crossing into more mainstream works, I continued to follow him through Cry Baby, Hairspray, Serial Mom, Pecker and A Dirty Shame. John Waters became more than just a film director for me. He became the fount of a particular kind of “trash” culture which sent me searching for so many other bizarre examples of movies, music and fashion as well as histories of people and events which went beyond the mundane realities of so called “normal” life. Aunt Ida from Female Trouble gave me a guiding principal that I’ve since held onto when she famously said, “The world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life.” I wholeheartedly concur with that and continue to be dedicated to seeking out the bent in all things. That quest found its “ground zero” in the work of John Waters. For me, Polyester was the flash point which began that journey.

EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN @ EXPO '86

 

May 24 marks the 35th anniversary of the performance by Einstürzende Neubauten in Vancouver at the Xerox International Amphitheater as part of Expo ’86.  The group was booked for the appearance thanks to the involvement of members of Skinny Puppy in the planning committee for these shows.  They were also responsible for getting Test Department to perform shortly after this.  This day was my first visit to Expo and it was an incredibly memorable day from start to finish. 

Expo ’86 was a massive event for the city of Vancouver.  With it’s theme of transportation, it was an invitation to the world to come and discover this “world in a city”, as the winning slogan promoted the event.  A massive area of the downtown was reconfigured and custom built for the fair.  This included a new rapid transit system, stadium and convention center.  It was intended to showcase the city’s attractions and ultimately succeeded in putting Vancouver on the international map of destination cities.  For me, however, being a 23 year old Industrial Goth hipster, it was all commercialism and corporate consumerism and I looked at it primarily as a bizarre collection of expenditures designed to illicit investment and immigration.  What I wasn’t expecting was to have one of the world’s most extreme Industrial bands show up to do a show in the middle of it all.  

My plans for that day were simple.  A close friend and I procured some good blotter LSD and we dropped it shortly after arriving on site in the early afternoon.  I’m pretty sure we had a booster blotter for the evening when it would be show time.  For the day, we planned to explore the fair and the pavilions and see what was there to see.  As we started to check out some of the main exhibits, we soon realized that standing in lineups for an hour or so per pavilion was not going to be conducive to good tripping.  We made it through 2 or three of those before we ran out of ways to amuse ourselves while in line.  It was fascinating, briefly, to see the methodology of line management that had been implemented.  It’s something I’d never seen before, the way lineup size was concealed by wrapping it or folding it into zig-zags hidden by foliage and fencing.  There was also the presence of roaming entertainers who would work lineups to try to distract patrons from their fatigue and boredom. 

After a few of these lines, we strategized a bit on how to make the most of our time there while avoiding this obvious pitfall.  I theorized that there must be an “underbelly” to this place.  That there must be unpopular exhibits from small, poor countries which were being ignored and overlooked and that they may have a kind of appeal in their D-grade execution that could offer some fun and amusement.  This indeed turned out to be the case as we started to explore the outer periphery of the grounds, into the less desirable lots where the big boys stayed away due to lack of exposure.  So we whiled away the rest of the afternoon trolling the underclass booths, tents and pavilions and enjoying the neglected sights.  

Throughout our time exploring the grounds, we began to notice the presence of a certain anomalous sort of people mixed among the throngs of families and tourists.  You’d see them sticking out in the crowd like invaders - hair sticking up on end, black clothes, garish eyeliner and pancaked white skin.  Something was definitely afoot in this crowd.  Something didn’t belong here and you could see them infiltrating the space with greater frequency as the day went on. 

The second clue to this unusual day was a noise.  We were getting a late afternoon bite to eat at the giant floating McDonald's barge when we noticed it.  Apparently Neubauten were doing their sound check at the theater and all you could hear was this massive groaning metallic moan echo across the site as they tested some unfathomable industrial noise maker.  It sounded like some kind of iron dinosaur rearing its head in the distance.  As the sound continued, the excitement of what was ahead began to really take hold.  

When it was finally show time, people began to assemble in the outdoor theater and the incongruity of the audience became very quickly notable.  The majority of the crowd were decked out Goths & post-punks in black with frizzed out hair and shock-horror makeup.  Mixed in among them were the families who would wander in, clueless as to what was about to happen.  They’d have a seat and then you’d see the smiles drop from their faces as they looked around to see what was surrounding them.  Over and over, you could see the look of anxiety sweep over their faces as their eyes caught a glimpse of the weird collection of freaks that this event had attracted.  Some were brave and stayed while others quickly took stock of the situation and opted to abandon ship. 

Once the show started, the line between tourist and aficionado was quickly established as the remaining looky-loos were driven out by a barrage of feedback, metal clanking and nightmarish screams from Blixa.  I was in the perfect state of altered awareness and the sound system for the show was magnificent.  As loud and aggressive as it was, it didn’t hurt to listen to.  The equalization and tonal balance was so spot on, you could decipher every sound and nuance, from the loudest thunder crash, to the smallest shopping cart squeak.  The band played a set that was heavily weighted with material from their most recent Halber Mensch LP, opening their set with the choral title track.  By the time they got to the finale, they had set the entire front of the stage on fire and my LSD addled brain pretty much exploded with the spectacle.  It was a profoundly moving experience and gave me a new appreciation for the band and their ability to deliver a performance with such a clear sense of deliberation.  

I attended the fair 2 more times after this: once for the Test Dept. show and a third time just to hang out and look around.  I didn’t enjoy the TD show as much as the EN one, mostly because the TD show was much more politically focused and emphasized labor strikes and unrest with the UK miners strike in full swing at the time.  At that time in my life, I didn’t really identify with that content very much, whereas the EN show was much more visceral and emotional and seemed to be more metaphysically driven that political.  It just had a deeper resonance for me.  The EN show and the entire day that lead up to it still stands as one of the most amazing days of my life.  It’s a memory that constantly reminds me of how wonderful Vancouver was during those years.