FANNY - MOTHER’S PRIDE @ 50

 

Celebrating it’s 50th anniversary this month is the fourth and penultimate album from rock’s premier major label all girl group, Fanny, with Mother’s Pride, which was released in February of 1973. It was also the last album to feature original members June Millington (guitar) & Alice DeBuhr (drums), With the help of producer Todd Rundgren, it was arguably their most sophisticated album, though perhaps not their hardest rocking effort.

After their stint in London to record their their third album, Fanny Hill, at the illustrious Abbey Road Studios, they were back on American soil and ensconced in Todd Rundgren’s Secret Sound Studio in New York City for their next LP. When it came time to pick a producer, Todd was the only name all the band members could agree on, at least as far as people who were available. Todd’s approach with the band was to move them away from the hard rock sound of the previous records and into a more pop friendly feel. Ultimately, this ended up being at odds with some members of the group, who were hoping for a more raw, rockin' sound. Both June and Jean Millington felt the end result was overproduced and they were also resentful that he was so guarded about the production process, shutting the band out of the mixing process entirely. While this resulted in disappointment for some in the band, critically, the response was mostly very favorable, with many finding the combination of Fanny’s music with Rundgren’s production sophistication a perfect marriage. Personally, I find it hard to argue with Todd’s results as he managed to bring out a layered and varied complexity to their performances and songwriting that weren’t as apparent on their previous records. The exception to that being the off key vocals from Alice DeBuhr on Solid Gold, which were reportedly recorded when she was off-her-face drunk. Even there, however, Rundgren’s production prowess manages to make it seem deliberate enough to work in the finished mix.

As richly loaded with quality music and performances as the album is, it didn’t help break the group in any meaningful way. The tensions of the recording process and the industry in general ultimately proved too much for June and Alice and the group fractured with them jumping ship to leave bassist/sister Jean Millington and keyboardist Nickey Barclay holding the bag to reconstitute the band. They’d pull it together to record one final album with original drummer, Brie Howard, and new guitarist, Patti Quatro. As Fanny faded into obscurity by the back half of the ’70s, the beauty of this album was lost for a long time until the past few years, when a revival of interest in the group brought a new wave of appreciation for their pioneering efforts.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - WHITE LIGHT / WHITE HEAT @ 55

 

Marking its 55th anniversary today is the sophomore album from the Velvet Underground, White Light / White Heat, which was released on January 30th, 1968. It was the Velvet’s most aggressive outing and, while perhaps pushing their production limits beyond their capacity, it still became a critical influence on the worlds of extreme music making for decades to come.

After the disappointing sales for their debut album the year before, the relationship between the band and producer Andy Warhol began to deteriorate. Not that Andy actually did much of anything in the studio to influence the band’s sound, but the decision to dismiss Andy would impact them more in terms of name recognition as they couldn’t leverage Andy’s fame anymore. The band also decided to part ways with Nico, a move which she interpreted as being “fired” as well. For the second album, the group brought Tom Wilson back to produce and set about assembling material largely inspired by the harsh noise jams they’d been exploring during their live performances over the previous year. These excursions would form the conceptual backbone for the new album. The group had also worked out an endorsement deal with VOX, who provided a slew of brand new guitars, amps and, most notably, distortion pedals, for them to exploit.

The feel of the album was designed from the get-go to be opposed to the “summer of love” vibes of the West Coast hippy scene. It was a deliberate bracing against that tide and the group, especially Lou Reed, wanted to push the tone of the record into the realms of excessive volume and distortion. The problem with this disposition was that the group didn’t quite understand how to achieve this effect without compromising the production quality of the album. As a result, when it was eventually mastered, additional compression resulted in an over saturated sound which brought in additional, unplanned levels of distortion. Where the debut album had a balance between their more aggressive nature and softer moments with songs like Sunday Morning, what ended up on WL/WH was pretty consistently harsh and volatile with little relief from the assault.

The album kicks off with the title track, with lyrics referencing the effects of intravenous injection of amphetamines - a speed rush. But the title also references Reed’s interest in certain esoteric teachings which involved healing through the use of a kind of “white light” inspired by Alice Bailey and her occult book, A Treatise On White Magic. It’s a pulsing fusion of doo-wop and proto-heavy-metal. This is followed by The Gift, the first VU track to feature John Cale on vocals. It’s an oddly mixed extended dirge which features the band improvising away on one side of the stereo field while Cale recites a story about a lover who’s surprise for his girlfriend goes terribly wrong. After a few more shorter songs like Here She Comes Now, the album wraps up with a 17 minute jam about a drag queen orgy that goes off the rails. A rather progressive theme when you consider how far ahead of the curve Reed was with the whole trans culture.

Recording of the album was done quite quickly over the course of a couple of weeks and the band didn’t have a lot of songs to work with at the time, thus the minimal track listing. Producer Tom Wilson never worked with the band again after struggling to accommodate their insistence on pushing the volume and distortion throughout the sessions. Reed purposefully wanted to go "as high and as hard as we could" and, though there were brewing conflicts with Cale, which would ultimately result in his leaving the band after this album, during the recording sessions, the band were essentially all pulling in the same direction, though that may have resulted in them going over a cliff, but at least they went as a unit.

The cover for the LP was based on an idea which originated with Warhol, but he was not credited for it. It shows a barely visible tattoo of a skull. The tattoo was that of Joe Spencer, who played the lead role in Warhol's 1967 film Bike Boy. Spencer starred as a hustler in a motorcycle gang and is seen taking a shower in the movie. Reed selected the image from negatives of the film, and it was enlarged and distorted by Billy Name, one of the members of the Factory. Sterling Morrison, however, states that the cover was picked by him.

At the time of its release, it was a commercial failure, selling even less than the group’s debut. References to drugs and sex resulted in numerous stations banning the record and its single from airplay, which didn’t help generate interest. MGM didn’t promote the album much either, which disappointed the band, who came off the session feeling confident in what they’d done. They wanted a record that rejected the “flower power” of the day, but that also meant turning off those record buyers, leaving only a small cult to appreciate its edginess. Rolling Stone refused to even review it and Melody Maker, on the other hand, wrote off the album as "utterly pretentious, unbelievably monotonous”. Not all critics were so negative and dismissive, but those voices were sparse and had no impact on record buyers.

Yet its legacy would eventually make it an inspiration for punk, No Wave and noise music in decades to come. Its brutal aggression, searing distortion and blistering raw energy would inspire future generations, who saw the bankruptcy of the hippy culture and its failure to engender any real change, to use it as a clarion call to arms for a disaffected generation of rejects and rebels. There are few examples in popular music of a band pushing itself into such a starkly confrontational stance and it stands as a rare breed of outsider art.

THE STRANGLERS - FELINE

 

Released 40 years ago today, on January 22, 1983, it's The Stranglers 7th studio LP, Feline. After the critical and chart success of La Folie and the Golden Brown single, Feline continued the band's evolution into a hybrid style of electronics infused alternative Euro-pop. Most notably, this is evident in Jet Black's use of synth-drums, augmented by his near metronome perfect meter. It's a move which may have alienated fans of their raunchier punk roots, but resulted in some exquisitely composed confections for those who could appreciate their newfound subtlety.

The album was initially released with a bonus 7", Aural Sculpture Manifesto, a deliberately pretentious sounding monologue delivered by Hugh Cornwell, espousing the band's theory and mastery of sonic manipulation, which was clearly beyond the purview of their peers <hurumpf>. As for the LP proper, it was home to three singles: European Female, Midnight Summer Dream and Paradise, though the US edition of the LP included Golden Brown as the closing track on the A side of the record. While the LP charted higher than the previous album, the singles found less receptive audiences than Golden Brown. Critics were somewhat mixed in their response to the album, with accusations that the album was "boring" coming from several. However, as previously mentioned, the style of the album was less "beat them over the head" and more "seduce them", so its charms are only revealed through repeated listening. In addition to the electronic drums, the album relies on predominantly acoustic guitars and Dave's synth textures to create a balance between the natural and the synthetic. This gives the album a rather dreamy ambience throughout.

While it may not rank as my favorite LP from the band, falling in behind La Folie, The Raven & Meninblack, it keeps pace as a tight fourth in that pack and offers a consistently enjoyable listen whenever I'm in the mood for its muted savage charms. I had the pleasure of seeing the band live when they toured this LP and it was a wonderful experience I'll soon be recounting for your amusement.

AIR - MOON SAFARI @ 25

 

Celebrating it’s 25th anniversary today is the debut album from French band, Air, with their Moon Safari, which was released on January 18th, 1998. It came along at a time when much of the electronic music movement dwelt on darker and stranger atmospheres. Popular music in general seemed angrier and more aggressive with the state of alternative rock leaning more into a deranged heavy metal and hip-hop mining the “gangsta” vein. Air seemed to come out of the blue with a pristine, euphoric and magnanimous world view, bringing breezy melodies and uplifting harmonies to their take on downtempo music.

The duo from Versailles, consisting of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, came together as architecture & mathematics students, respectively, at the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles. Before forming Air in 1995, they played together in a band called Orange. Initially making a name for themselves doing remixes for other artist in the mid 1990s, the group released the EP, Premiers Symptômes, in 1995 before recording their debut album.

While grounded in downtempo grooves, Moon Safari encompassed many divergent influence and styles including: electronica, space pop, dream pop, progressive rock, chill-out, trip hop, ambient, electronic pop and space rock. In many respects, the album touches on a lot of nostalgia, but somehow manages to cast that sentimentality into a projection which feels forward looking and futuristic. This music manages to sound ahead of its time while propelling itself off of so many historical reference points. The group used a massive amount of vintage electronic gear to help create that sound and achieve the effect of both being grounded in the past and traveling into the future.

In 2008, a tenth anniversary edition of the album was releases which was housed in a deluxe book bound case containing two audio CDs, one for the original album and a second for remixes and live versions, and a third disc, a DVD including a documentary on the band and all the music videos from the album. Its legacy has remained intact as a signpost to possibilities and hopefulness.
 

POLYGON WINDOW - SURFING ON SINE WAVES @ 30

 

Turning thirty years old today is Surfing On Sine Waves by Polygon Window, which was released on January 11th, 1993. Polygon Window was a pseudonym used by Richard D. James, better known as Aphex Twin. Chronologically, it could be considered his second full length album, coming on the heels of the debut Aphex Twin album, Selected Ambient Works 85-92.

Recorded at Llannerlog Studios, Cornwall, the album pays tribute to James’ home town in a number of ways. The cover photo is of Chapel Porth beach, where James spent time with his sisters as a child; James thanks the seaside village in the liner notes. Bonus track titles like Redruth School references James's alma mater, and "Portreath Harbour" references the Cornwall port. The title for the album was conceived by Warp founder and friend Rob Mitchell after James mentioned that "loads of people I knew growing up in Cornwall were poser surfers and I didn't wanna hang around with them." With all that, the album has a lot of sentimental connections to James’ roots.

Musically, the album seems to straddle his rhythmic "ambient" works, similar to those featured on the debut Aphex Twin album, with his more aggressive style featured on numerous singles and EPs, as heard on the slamming Quoth, which was released as a single itself. The album was issued as the second part of Warp Records’ “Artificial Intelligence” series and was a major success, yet James would only return to the Polygon Window imprint once after the initial album/single with a 2001 12” release, included as the aforementioned bonus tracks on a later reissue of Surfing on Sine Waves. Since its release, it has become a critical item in James’ sprawling catalogue and remains one of my personal favorites from his early canon of work.

ALAN VEGA - SATURN STRIP @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary this month is the third solo album from Suicide’s Alan Vega, Saturn Strip, which was released in January 1983. It was produced by Ric Ocasek of The Cars, who also contributed guitar & keyboards. Ric was a longtime champion and fan of Suicide and he turned this album into a passion project. The album also featured contributions from fellow Cars member, Greg Hawkes, and Al Jourgensen of Ministry & Revolting Cocks fame.

Ocasek had previously handled production duties on Suicide’s 1980 sophomore release, Alan Vega - Martin Rev, where he managed to bring a more accessible polish to their minimalist style. He did the same with Vega’s solo LP and succeeded in finding a perfect balance between his stripped down ’50s tinged rock-a-billy style and Ocasek’s tightly crafted pop sensibilities. Indeed, the album gleams like a chrome accented cross between a ’57 Corvette and a Star Wars flyer, fusing nostalgia and futurism into a precision music machine. The production carefully integrates enough ventilation into the sound to allow each instrument space to shine through, making it sound sleek and minimal even when it's concealing numerous layers. And Vega's vocal performances are the very embodiment of cyber-psycho-billy. The future and the past of rock 'n' roll extend off into the horizon on this skyway. Each song offers a sleek monotone drone with a back-beat that you can't resist.

After 40 years, it has stood the test of time in terms of remaining listenable and relevant and is some of Vega’s best and most accessible solo work outside of Suicide. It offers both edgy energy and mainstream sophistication.

SUICIDE @ 45

 

December 28th marks the 45th anniversary of the release of Suicide’s eponymous debut LP. It’s a singular monument to mutant electronic rock-a-billy, which would become one of the landmark albums of the emerging electronic music scene and give birth to the concept of the “synth duo”.

Prior to recording their debut, Martin Rev and Alan Vega had been slumming it in the ghetto clubs of NYC since the early 1970s. Inspired by seeing Iggy & the Stooges, Alan Vega, who was initially focused on visual arts, decided he could turn his hand to fronting a rock band with the same kind of frightening intensity as Mr. Pop. Vega, who was raised on the hip shaking hiccups of Elvis Presley, had that essence of ’50s greaser delinquent baked into his DNA.

Hooking up with keyboardist Rev, the duo were the first band on record to self-describe their music as “punk” in their hand drawn gig flyers & handbills of the early 1970s. By the time the actual “punk” scene started to bubble up around them in clubs like CBGBs, Suicide found themselves playing alongside contemporaries like the Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads and the rest of the NY underground scene. The difference with Suicide was that they were mostly hated by audiences, though they were deeply loved by certain musicians. People like The Cars’ Ric Ocasek would become stalwart champions for the band, helping to promote and further their career.

Their live performances were notorious for being awkward, confrontational and, on frequent occasions, threatened to break into violence. With Rev holding sternly at his keyboards, offering little beyond a disinterested sneer, Vega turned the sexual intensity of Elvis into a a fun-house mirror distortion, punctuated by psychotic screams amid lyrics that twisted rock & roll iconography into gritty street poetry. During one of these gigs, Marty Thau, who was starting up his own record label, happened to catch their act and took a liking to what he saw and heard. He ended up signing the duo as his first artists for his new label, Red Star Records.

When it came time to record the album, Vega and Rev were so well rehearsed with their material, after having played it live for 5 years, it only took four days in the studio to capture it all. The majority of the songs were basically as done on stage, though the album’s sprawling nightmare centerpiece, Frankie Teardrop, underwent a drastic lyric rewrite after Vega read a newspaper article about a factory worker who murdered his wife and child and then committed suicide. This happened during the mixing phase of production, so there is a version with the original lyrics, which was recently released on a retrospective compilation. Personally, I think Vega made the right decision. While the original has some historical interest, the story of a murderous gangster is far less emotionally triggering than the tale of a downtrodden struggling every-man who’s pushed to his limit. That’s a story that can resonate with anyone who’s struggled to make ends meet. For the production, co-producer Craig Leon had managed to get his hands on an Eventide digital delay unit to use on the vocal tracks, adding dub inspired echo effects to further enhance the alien sounds of the album and bring Vega's guttural screams into deeper resonance.

When the album was released, while it garnered some positive reviews in the UK, the US press were generally unimpressed and dismissed the LP as inconsequential or even stupid, but that shortsightedness would be exposed with time as the band were vindicated by creating one of the most revered and influential albums to come from the punk and new wave movements of the ‘70s. I remember seeing it on the shelves in my local record shop and couldn’t resist my curiosity, so I picked up my first copy sometime in 1980. It immediately blew me away with its stark simplicity and razor sharp edge. Vega’s vocals could be terrifying, mostly due to that inhuman scream he could stab into an arrangement, slicing through it like a switchblade knife. One of our favorite things to do in our senior year of high school was to go in my friends truck and blast Frankie Teardrop over his stereo in the school parking lot at night, when the other kids were parked there, hanging out with nothing to do. Hearing that scream rip across the football field was a real delight.

Since its release, Suicide has gone on to be recognized as one of the most seminal albums to come out of the NYC music scene. They were certainly one of the most unique and distinctive groups of that time. No one else had their sound as they straddled this strange netherworld between punk and electronica. They had one foot in the nostalgia of the 1950s while the other strode into our dystopian future, sounding totally modern, despite their primitive and even antiquated electronic organs & drum machines. Their minimalist approach set them on course to inspire the next generation of electronic musicians, and the effect of that barrier-breakthrough still resonates to this day.