THE CLASH @ 45

 

Marking 45 years on the shelves today is the eponymous debut LP by The Clash, which was released in the UK on April 8th, 1977. Recorded over a scattered three week period in February of that year at a cost of a meager £4,000, it would go on to be considered one of the most important and influential albums to come from the UK punk movement.

The Clash came together early in 1976 after founding members, Mick Jones & Keith Levene, made a concerted effort to recruit Joe Strummer into their ranks and out of his position fronting the 101ers. Filling out their lineup with Paul Simonon on bass and Terry Chimes on drums, the group began playing gigs around London along with friendly rivals the Sex Pistols. Before recording their debut album, Levene would end up departing the band to dabble with Sid Vicious in the Flowers of Romance before eventually founding Public Image Ltd with ex-Pistol John Lydon in 1978. Levene is only credited with one song writing acknowledgement for What’s My Name from the debut LP.

Upon delivery of the album to label, CBS, its US counterparts passed on releasing it, citing that the production values were sub-par, rendering the LP not “radio friendly”. This, however, didn’t stop the album from gaining chart traction in the UK, along with several singles, which helped to make the band premier ambassadors of the punk movement along with the Pistols and The Damned. Even though the album wasn’t released in the US, initially, it became one of the best selling imports of the year, racking up over 100,000 unit sales. The album would eventually find release in the US and Canada in 1979 after the group’s second album, Give ‘em Enough Rope, though with a slightly altered track listing and cover color. The US edition swapped out 4 tracks for 5 different ones and a re-recorded version of White Riot.

The legacy of the album has become clear as it is acknowledged as one of the most important releases to come from the initial punk movement on either side of the Atlantic. My own relationship to the album goes right back to the dawn of my fascination with non-mainstream music early in 1979. The “A-B-Cs” of my “gateway” albums into the realm of the paths less traveled goes: The Cars (debut) > Ramones - Road to Ruin > The Clash (debut). Those three albums were the trifecta which knocked my musical trajectory off the “middle of the road” and onto a path that would lead to progressively more and more extreme music. DEVO, PiL, TG and others might never have caught my ear if it weren’t for getting curious about all these new groups being written about in music magazines like CREEM. The Clash also helped me meet people who would become musical compatriots, like that gruff blonde kid who asked me about my Clash record in high school assembly that one day and told me he was into the Pistols and had a cousin in the UK who periodically sent him cassettes of upcoming bands (hello Mark!). As such, it’s a watershed album for me and, I’m sure, for many from that generation.

THROBBING GRISTLE - PART TWO - THE ENDLESS NOT @ 15

 

Marking its 15th anniversary today is the reunion album from Throbbing Gristle, Part Two - The Endless Not, which was released by Mute Records on this day, April 1st, 2007. More of a “re-birthing” than a reunion, it was the first fully realized studio album produced by the group since 20 Jazz Funk Greats in 1979.

The road to Part Two began back in 2002 with the reactivation of Industrial Records under Mute’s umbrella and the release of the sprawling TG24 box set of live recordings. This was concurrent with a museum exhibit of TG memorabilia and ephemera, which was held at the Cabinet Gallery in London in December. The occasion of this event was the catalyst for the four members of TG to come together again for the first time since disbanding in 1981. With the old wounds mostly mitigated by the passing of time, Mute began a process of encouraging the group to explore the potential of working together again, even if for only very specific and limited purposes.

The initial results of these efforts manifested in a planned one-off reunion performance to be called RE:TG. It was to have been part of a music festival put on by All Tomorrow’s Parties featuring an impressive lineup of groups who had been, in some way, inspired or influenced by TG. The event was well into being realized when it was abruptly cancelled due to logistical reasons beyond the groups control. However, the momentum of putting this together left the group in a position where they felt compelled to offer a performance, regardless of the situation with the festival. This resulted in the now legendary Astoria gig on May 15th, 2005, almost 23 years exactly since TG’s last appearance on stage.

The preparation for this performance involved the group going to the studio, not only to rehearse, but to come up with new material for the show. In typical TG fashion, they didn’t want this to be merely a “best of” set of fan favorites. They wanted to showcase how the individual members had progressed as artists and demonstrate what that development meant in terms of a 21st century incarnation of TG. Some of the material created during these sessions became the four track TG NOW EP, which was a souvenir release made available in a limited edition for the RE:TG event. The success of those recordings and the live performance then became the impetus to push beyond what they had foreseen as a one-time event.

After the Astoria show, other performances followed and more time was spent in the studio to work on additional materials with the objective of creating a full album of new TG compositions. Those efforts eventually culminated in the realization of Part Two - The Endless Not. The finished album featured all new material, save a reworking of Almost a Kiss from the NOW EP. Like the DOA album from 1978, Part Two features four individual solo tracks from each member, though Gen’s track was a collaboration with his Thee Majesty partner, Bryin Dall. Overall, the album offers a fully updated manifestation of Throbbing Gristle’s sound, with their collective knowledge and experience gained over the preceding decades readily apparent in the sophistication of the production. It was unmistakably “TG”, but that beast had evolved and grown into something new and vibrant. There was no rehashing of obvious old tropes and no nostalgia for their bygone glory days. This was 21st century TG for the present day and beyond.

The album was minimally packaged for the CD release with only a card insert in the front featuring a photo of Mount Kailash taken by Martin Gray. The initial run of the CD included a “totemic gift”, the production of which was overseen by Peter Christopherson at his compound in Thailand. The primary run included one of four items encased in the spine of the CD tray. Each was made from one of the following materials: bone, wood, rubber or copper. A fifth stainless steel totem was made available in a Japanese edition of the CD. A sixth totemic gift was made of 23 carat gold.

Critical reception for the album was generally very positive, as was the response from fans, though there were those who were not so enthusiastic about it all. Personally, I felt it was something of a minor miracle to be able to get a brand new album of TG music, something I never expected to happen prior to the reunion rumblings that began in 2002. I loved hearing how this creature could come back to life after so long and, not only exist, but be more than it had been in the past. Perhaps the overt confrontational nature of “classic” era TG was gone, but this was light years away from the kinds of rehash “oldies” reunion efforts that you see from most other aging bands.

TG would continue in this reconstituted form until December of 2010, when it would all come apart, first with the abrupt, mysterious departure of Genesis P-Orridge at the beginning of a short European tour, and then with the sudden death of Peter Christopherson. During their reunion era, they would release a number of recordings along with NOW and Part Two, but nothing which constituted a full, proper studio album. Third Mind Movements was essentially a collection of improves captured during the Desertshore Installation and 32nd Annual report is a live recreation of their first LP. Their Desertshore project would eventually materialize in 2012 under the X-TG banner, without Genesis being involved, so Part Two stands, like the mountain on its cover, as the sole complete manifestation of 21st century TG. Whether or not we’ll see anything else materialize from this era remains a mystery as Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti now remain as the sole gatekeepers of the TG archive. I suspect there are many recordings, both studio and live, which could be released at some point in the future, but no word has come in terms of any specifics. For now, this is what we’ve got to mark this creative period. It’s an album that sits along side a host of other releases from that year by the members of the group. It was a remarkable period with new albums from TG, Psychic TV, Sleazy’s post-Coil project, Threshold HouseBoys Choir, Carter Tutti & Thee Majesty. All in all, 2007 was a banner year to be a fan of the music created by these four remarkable individuals.

CARTER TUTTI VOID - TRANSVERSE @ 10

 

Released on March 26th, 2012, the debut album, Transverse, by Industrial super-group, Carter Tutti Void, turns 10 years old today.

In May of 2011, Mute Records organized a music festival of its artists called “Short Circuit”. For this event, they contacted Chris Carter & Cosey Fanni Tutti and proposed a one-off collaboration with Factory Floor’s Nik Colk Void. The trio agreed to do an impromptu performance for the festival and, after Chris Carter prepared some backing materials and they’d done a bit of rehearsing at Chris & Cosey’s studio in their Norfolk converted schoolhouse home, they performed their set at the Roundhouse in London on May 13th, 2011.

The impact of this performance took both the CTV trio and Mute by surprise with its intensity and enthusiasm. What they had managed to put on stage was a seamless fusion of old school industrial edge with modern electronic sophistication. With Carter manning the machines in the center, flanked by Cosey and Nik on noise guitars, they offered up an atonal, pulsing maelstrom of sound. However, rather than projecting the typical nihilism that has become associated with modern Industrial music, the effect of their performance was transcendent and joyful. All those shards of discordant sounds flailing against Chris’s rhythms were a celebration of unbridled, spontaneous creativity.

Nearly a year after its presentation, the recordings of this performance were finally released. What was intended to exist for a single night had taken on a life of its own, prompting further live performances and, eventually, two more albums to complete a triptych trifecta of soaring, searing electronic exuberance. The trio had demonstrated how challenging experimental music need not be confined by dour depression and hopelessness. They brought it all to life like some triumphant three headed mythological creature, which however briefly, strode across the contemporary musical landscape and left behind its examples of an entirely different disposition within the experimental music world.

IGGY POP - THE IDIOT @ 45

 

Issued on March 18, 1977, Iggy Pop’s debut solo album, The Idiot, is celebrating 45 years since its release. As well as re-birthing Iggy’s career, it also marked the beginning of what would become known as David Bowie’s “Berlin” period, even though the bulk of the album was recorded at the Château d'Hérouville, France.

By 1976 both Bowie and Pop had abused themselves sufficiently with drugs, cocaine and heroine respectively, that the two artists found themselves in a position where they were ready to do some self maintenance and clean themselves up. Their friendship had brought them together to go through this process as a team and they set about putting their ships to rights by getting out of the US and heading to France where they figured they’d be able to better buffer themselves against temptation. Arriving at the Château in June, they spent the next two months working there until relocating to Musicland Studios in Munich in August to finish off the album. Production on The Idiot somewhat dovetailed with work on Bowie’s Low album, which was recorded back at the Château through September & October of 1976. Though Low was recorded after The Idiot, it was released first in January of 1977 so that The Idiot did not distract from the Bowie release, at least as far as the record label was concerned.

The Idiot, insofar as it’s a solo album for Pop, should really be considered a collaboration between Bowie and Iggy. Bowie’s participation on the album is significant, writing most of the music and performing much of the instrumentation, which included guitars, keyboards, synths, sax & backing vocals. Its style is very much part of the direction Bowie was going with his own music at the time, taking in the influence of Germanic experimental music like Kraftwerk and the general Krautrock aesthetic. Iggy and Bowie even managed to have themselves name-checked in the Kraftwerk song, Trans-Europe Express, after encountering the group while visiting in Germany. This influence pushed Pop away from the proto-punk thrash of The Stooges and into a more subdued, restrained sound, something which alienated him from some of his fan base. Some considered Bowie’s influence here too overwhelming and that the album is less than representative of Pop’s true character and style.

Production wise, it may have suffered a bit from neglect as recounted by Laurent Thibault, the owner of the Château. Bowie bonded with him while they started work on the project and the former Magma bassist was asked to play on the album. He recorded bass, engineered and hired Frenchman Michel Santangeli to play drums on what he thought were demo recordings. After Bowie dismissed him from further work, he realized that the recordings were actually going to constituted final takes for the album and has since expressed dissatisfaction with the end results.

Despite the mixed responses to the album from critics and fans, in the long term, the album still contains numerous classics. Songs like Sister Midnight, Nightclubbing, China Girl and Dum Dum Boys have established themselves as essentials within Pop’s solo canon. Nightclubbing was also covered by Grace Jones, who had a major hit with it, as did Bowie with his version of China Girl. While it may not be completely representative of Iggy’s raw essence, it still demands acknowledgement as an innovative and forward looking album that set up both artists for success throughout the remainder of the decade and beyond.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO @ 55

 

Celebrating its 55th anniversary today is the debut album by The Velvet Underground and Nico, which was released on March 12th, 1967. It was an album that had limited sales when it first left the gate, but as Brian Eno famously remarked, pretty much every person who bought it in those early days went out and started a band themselves, with often revolutionary results. After over five decades in the world, it is surely one of the most profoundly influential records ever produced within the realm of rock and popular music.

It’s an album that came about at a time when youth culture was intoxicated by the psychedelic swirl of groups like The Beatles and albums like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The summer of love was about to happen and flower power and hippy utopianism were all the rage. As such, even though the Velvets were honing their craft as part of Andy Warhol’s LSD freakout Exploding Plastic Inevitable “happenings”, the essence of their music was on another level entirely. Rather than singing songs about peace and love and togetherness, they were exploring drug addiction, sexual perversion, sadomasochism, prostitution and a generally darker, New York style street hustler vibe that was on a completely different wavelength than the hippies. They dressed in black and seemed like a bunch of dour, unsettling people. Musically, their sound was harder and sharper and had a strangeness to it that felt off center and, at times, distinctly dissonant. They were, quite literally, ahead of their time.

The kind of attitude that the VU fostered wouldn’t become in vogue until a decade later, when punk, new wave, post-punk and industrial music sprang up in the late 1970s. By that time, the VU’s first album, along with the the ones that followed it, had become musical touchstones for that next generation. The naiveté of the hippies had long since lost its sheen. The reality of the crumbling cities and the failure of the “love” revolution to influence any real change had fostered a deep sense of disillusionment and that zeitgeist became the perfect ground for the VU legend to take root and grow.

The album was recorded during the latter part of 1966 with Andy Warhol listed as the “producer”, though he actually had no direct hand in its sound. Rather, Warhol was the band’s facilitator. The credibility his name offered allowed the group to do basically whatever they wanted with the recordings. That “hands off” approach, however, is still considered by the band to have been a valid production technique as it allowed them to realize their music the way they wanted. However, Warhol did contribute the distinctive album art for the record, featuring the infamous “peel and see” banana, which resulted in some exorbitantly expensive and complex manufacturing in order to realize. It was hoped that Warhol’s name would help to bolster sales of the record, but even with his branding firmly affixed to the project, the sales didn’t materialize.

But it’s not always about the numbers in the bank accounts and The Velvet Underground and Nico proved that sometimes art requires a long game in order to realize its potential. One has to wonder if this kind of influence is still possible in today’s modern music industry. Is it possible for a group of outsiders like this to set anything in motion that can flow into so many sub-genres throughout the decades. How many touch points are there in contemporary music that can trace their roots back to this album? Are there any contemporary artists around today that have the potential to plant that kind of seed for the future?

25 YEARS OF HOME COMPUTING

Front view of the PowerPC 7600 w/ CD-ROM & floppy drive slots.

Rear view with audio & video ports, including S-VHS and composite video ins.  Very handy for the times.  Of course there's the massive SCSI slot and free slots for additional cards for audio & video upgrades.

It was the beginning of March 1997, 25 years ago this month, that I got my first proper home computer. After spending a decade watching the technology advance and occasionally managing to get my hands on it for brief forays into amusement, I was finally financially able to invest in a decent setup so that I could “beam myself into the future”.

 

Up to this point, I’d only ever dabbled with computers my friends had. My first was an Amiga system I got to play with for a while back in 1988. My friend got it to do video and animation and we played around with its graphics apps and speech synthesizer, which we made say some very awful, rude things. After starting my job in 1994 at a call center for the local phone dating service, my work hours gave me a chance to tinker with their office computers while I was occupying my downtime between customer service calls. My curiosity with the office computers occasionally resulted in some panicked moments when I put in the wrong command and sent the network into a tailspin, but I was fortunate in that it was never anything that a good reboot couldn’t solve. I learned enough about them that I was able to diagram their phone messaging system to a degree that I ended up getting transitioned to working with their software developer, diagramming his code, which helped me learn a lot more about computing. A friend had also given me an old Macintosh to play with in 1996, but it was so outdated that I couldn’t do much with it and barely used it. I think I only managed to write a computer based I Ching program as my sole accomplishment on that machine. So at this point, I had a rudimentary understanding of DOS and Windows based operating systems. It was a good foundation to start with.

 

When it came time to pick a machine for myself, my decision was completely driven by my desire to use it as a creative tool. I wanted to use it for music, video, graphic design and creative writing. With that as my principal criteria, after talking to a few arts based people working with computers, it quickly became apparent that a Mac was gonna be my best bet. Now, any of you PC zealots out there, I’m gonna stop you right now because I don’t wanna hear any PC vs Mac arguments. This is not about that. This is just history and how I made my choices.

 

At the time, Apple were on the ropes as a company. They were toying with allowing clones on the market and had not done anything significant in the computing world for a few years. The iMacs hadn’t come out yet and there certainly were no iPhones or iPads or iPods, which were years away. Buying into them was a big risk as they were seriously on the verge of folding as a company. Even Steve Jobs was on the outs at that time, but my gut told me to take the chance anyway as I had a line on a dealer I knew personally who’d get me a good price and I also had friends promising me they could hook me up with oodles of top end cracked software. Macs were also kinda left alone insofar as virus threats, so this all added up.  I ended up going with a pseudo-clone, the PowerPC 7600. It came loaded with cool hardware interfaces build right in like S-Video, composite video and slots to add audio cards for music production. I got the computer, monitor, keyboard and, pretty soon afterward, a scanner for graphics & disc burner so I could author CD-Rs.  Once I got it all home, the big job was to set it up and start learning how to put it to use. At that point, Mac’s OS was at version 7.6 and was about to jump to 8 before the end of the year, I think. On the one hand, the basic architecture of the OS was pretty simple to understand, but that didn’t mean I didn’t spend many hours pulling my hair out trying to tweak things to sort out issues and conflicts.

 

This was the age of “Extensions”, components of functionality which were introduced to facilitate certain features specific to individual applications being used. Pretty much every app you installed had an Extension or two or more that was needed to make it work. The problem was that Extensions didn’t always like each other and having too many loading up during the boot-up process could risk things going snaky very easily. And it wasn’t always easy to figure out where the conflict was because some Extensions might get along fine until you introduce something new and then, suddenly, they’re causing the computer to crash during startup. It could make watching the boot-up process a real nail-biter as you’d see each Extension load, one after another until something would go sideways and you’d end up with your head in your hands again, broken and hopeless.

 

Those first few months, I’m sure I wiped my HDD about a dozen times just to start with a clean slate and try to figure out where I might have gone wrong. There were times when I would literally be in tears from the frustration of not being able to figure out what the problem was. My GOD, I cursed that box some days. I cursed it straight to HELL! But I also learned... A LOT, and I was able to troubleshoot just about any problem without having to rely on service techs to look at what was going on. Again, that was the nice thing about the architecture. If you had half a brain, you could figure this shit out on your own without having to call in the pros. Eventually, I got a feel for it and, as newer OS versions came along, the issues started to lessen as they introduced safeguards and troubleshooting tools to help with the problems. That meant that I could actually start using the computer to do some fun things.

 

Of course getting it online and connected to the internet was a huge step forward for me, but that didn’t come without its issues either. My first provider was a joke and I ended up dumping them for another one after going crazy trying to get the damn thing connected via that stupid phone based modem. Dial-up was a complete hassle and slow as molasses in those days, so time spent online was limited and you had to be patient as even loading a damn JPG could take several minutes. It was a huge relief when the TV cable company introduced high speed internet that freed up your phone line again. That was a game changer for sure.

 

Creatively, the first things I did with that computer were graphic design experiments. The earliest documents I can find in my backups are some image files from March 10th & 11th, 1997. I’ve included them here so you can have a look. I was trying to come up with some designs for a couple of Mysterons albums and these were initial experiments. This machine never did become too useful for anything beyond photo manipulation and internet use. I did a few things with music & video on it, but they were pretty primitive. The software that would run on this machine wasn’t too sophisticated, so I could only really do a bit of editing of stereo files and maybe a bit of layering and run a virtual synthesizer or sound generator.

 

I was starting to come up with ideas for a new cover design for The Mysterons Hotdog, Pop 'n' Clown CD, which was going to be repackaged for distribution by a local label.  This is dated March 10th, 1997.

 

This was the first cover concept for The Mysterons Wiki Wiki album, which was just at the conceptual stage at that time.  I got the title from watching Hawaii Five-O as it was something Kono always said when he wanted something done quickly.  This is dated March 11th, 1997.

The earliest song I composed on it was an ambient piece called Tuktoyaktuk, which was created by taking some elements from a Mysterons song and mutating them with an audio editor and then adding in a voice recording I snagged off of a radio show that Barry was listening to. I can't recall how I got it recorded. Maybe he'd recorded it on cassette, I think, but I just recall hearing this woman going on about visiting Tuktoyaktuk and immediately realizing I had to sample her. It wasn’t until I got a Mac G4 tower in 2000 that I had a machine capable of running the Logic Pro DAW, which allowed me to get into true professional digital multi-track recording and production.

 

For a first computer, my old 7600 was good start for the times, but I was glad to get a better one when I did as that completely changed the game for me as a creative tool. That old PPC was a good warmup act though and got the bug firmly in me to want to do more. It’s just hard to imagine that a quarter century ago, all this computer stuff was so new and strange and we had no real idea what it would become, both good and bad.

THE FUN BOY THREE - FB3 @ 40

 

Released in March of 1982, the eponymous debut LP by Fun Boy Three is celebrating 40 years on the shelves this month.

After splitting from The Specials, Terry Hall, Neville Staple and Lynval Golding decided to step out of the ska framework and move into a more Afro-centric vibe with a heavy emphasis on percussion on their debut as Fun Boy Three. With the trio working predominantly on their own with only guest background vocalists on some songs and Dick Cuthell doing some horn work, the album took on a singularly esoteric sound that combined electronic drum machines with acoustic percussion, guitars, piano and ambitious vocal arrangements. Production on the album was somewhat rushed, however, which drove the group to work spontaneously, writing songs and working out arrangements in a manner that created a distinctive looseness. It’s a situation which Terry Hall bemoaned in later years, dismissing the album as being underdeveloped, but this free-form, by-the-seat-of-their-pants methodology resulted in an album that feels fresh and innovative. In fact, I find it’s held up incredibly well over the years and, in some respects, remains a peerless pop record. There was nothing that sounded quite like it back then and nothing has sounded like it since.

Aside from the vibrancy of the atmosphere created by the album, it manages to hit hard in terms of social consciousness, particularly with its lead single, The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum. Its a song which has continually increased in relevance as we’ve seen the world spiral down a rabbit hole of social insanity and political corruption. It really should be considered THE anthem of the 21st century. On a lighter note, the album also introduced the world Bananarama, the all girl vocal trio who’d go on to massive success on their own following their appearance on the joint FB3 follow up single from the LP, T'Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It).

The album enjoyed considerable commercial success and the group would go on to expand their lineup for their second album, allowing them to become a full live performing act rather than only a studio creation. Their second album and a few other singles continued the group’s popularity, though with a more conventional pop song structure, but they’d disband after that and Hall would move on to other projects like The Colour Field before moving on to a full solo career. For me, their debut remains one of my all-time favorite records from its era and still finds itself getting into my music rotation on a regular basis. I’d neglected it for a while in the 1990s and early 2000s, but since rediscovering it, I never leave it for too long without a listen.