BRIAN ENO - HERE COME THE WARM JETS @ 50

Marking its golden jubilee today is the debut solo album from Brian Eno, Here Come the Warm Jets, which was released 50 years ago, on February 8th, 1974. While the album's experimentation and innovation rest on numerous contrivances, the end results certainly do not sound contrived.

Eno began working on the album shortly after his departure from Roxy Music, and he would utilized a number of former band-mates to contribute to the record, in a addition to a long list of other extremely varied collaborators. His explicit intent with his selection of guests was to counterpoint them against each other in an attempt to contrast seemingly incompatible styles and personal approaches. He specifically wanted to encourage them to break from their own conventions by being forced to interact with others who worked in entirely different ways. In terms of directing their performances, Eno often resorted to non-verbal instruction, using body language and interpretive dance moves as a means of expressing his intent. Once he'd captured performances from his musicians, he'd then take that raw material and process it in the studio until he attained often unrecognizable end results. Stylistically, he pulled together a pastiche of influences, both contemporary and vintage, incorporating elements of 1950s pop and rock & roll with elements of modern art-rock.

Though Eno didn't consider himself much of a singer, and indeed would mostly abandon that aspect of his creative arsenal in his later works, for his initial "pop" centred albums, he developed an approach to lyrics that involved first making nonsense vocalizations along with the music in order to identify phonetic qualities that best suited the piece. From this point, he'd gradually build in actual words and phrasing that ingrained those qualities, with the meaning of the lyrics being rather secondary to the process. This technique tended to deliver results that were cryptic and free-associative. As a result, Eno discouraged listeners from imposing too much emphasis on the meaning in the words. It's an approach that he'd pass on to people like David Bowie, who'd incorporate the methodology into the albums Eno produced with him during their Berlin era collaborations.

Critical response to the album was near universally positive, with only a few contrarian opinions on the album's merits. Critic Lester Bangs of CREEM declared it "incredible," and noted that "the predominant feel is a strange mating of edgy dread with wild first-time-out exuberance." Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave it an "A" rating, stating that "The idea of this record, 'Top of the Pops' from 'quasi-dadaist British synth wizard', may put you off, but the actuality is quite engaging in a vaguely Velvet Underground kind of way." With Eno coming off of his association with Roxy Music, he had enough career momentum to make the record a top 40 hit in the UK, making it one of his best selling solo releases, though it barely broke the top 200 in the US. Nevertheless, its legacy has assured it a place as essential listening when it comes to important releases from that era and in terms of appreciating Eno's catalogue in all its diversity.

BLAZING SADDLES @ 50

 

Celebrating its golden anniversary today is Mel Brooks' outrageous western farce, Blazing Saddles, which was first screened on February 7th, 1974. While lampooning the absurdities of racism, it managed to bring the laughs to audiences in enough droves to make it Warner Bros highest grossing comedy of the year.

The idea for the film began with writer/director Andrew Bergman, who'd started off the project with the name "Tex X" as a play on Malcolm X's name. His intent was to write and produce the film himself, hiring Alan Arkin to direct, with James Earl Jones slotted to play the lead of Sheriff Bart. Bergman couldn't get the project off the ground on his own, however, but he'd shown it to Mel Brooks, who took an immediate shine to the concept, so he came to the rescue, buying the rights to the treatment Bergman had put together. The title of "Tex X" was then rejected by Brooks, who felt people would think it was an X-rated adult movie. The title "Black Bart" was kicked around for a bit, but the name was already associated with a white heavyweight boxer from the 19th century. Brooks ultimately came up with "Blazing Saddles" in a flash of inspiration while in the shower one morning.

For script development, Brooks kept Bergman onboard to co-write, and also brought in Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg and Alan Uger. He had not worked with a writing team since Your Show of Shows, and posted a large sign in the writing room that encouraged: "Please do not write a polite script." Brooks described the writing process as chaotic:

"Blazing Saddles was more or less written in the middle of a drunken fistfight. There were five of us all yelling loudly for our ideas to be put into the movie. Not only was I the loudest, but luckily I also had the right as director to decide what was in or out."

Bergman remembers the room being just as chaotic, telling Creative Screenwriting,

"In the beginning, we had five people. One guy left after a couple of weeks. Then, it was basically me, Mel, Richie Pryor and Norman Steinberg. Richie left after the first draft and then Norman, Mel and I wrote the next three or four drafts. It was a riot. It was a rioter’s room!"

For casting, Brooks had originally planned to give the lead role to Richard Pryor, but his history with drug arrests made the studio claim he was uninsurable, so they refused to green light his casting. Instead, the role of Sheriff Bart went to Cleavon Little. Brooks offered the part of the Waco Kid to John Wayne, but Wayne turned it down, stating that it went against his wholesome reputation, though he promised Mel he'd be first in line to see the picture. Gig Young was ultimately cast to play the Kid, but collapsed on the set the first day of shooting from alcohol withdrawal syndrome, so the last minute scramble to replace him lead to Gene Wilder, who had been offered the role of Hedley Lamarr, but turned it down, along with Johnny Carson. Carol Burnet Show cast regular, Harvey Korman eventually landed the Lamarr role. Madeline Kahn objected when Brooks asked to see her legs during her audition. "She said, 'So it's THAT kind of an audition?'" Brooks recalled. "I explained that I was a happily married man and that I needed someone who could straddle a chair with her legs like Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again. So she lifted her skirt and said, 'No touching.'"

An interesting side note to the character of Hedly Lamarr, with the name being an obvious parody of the name of actress Heady Lamarr, the film production was sued by the actress for $100,000 for "infringing her right to privacy". Clearly she just didn't get the joke, but the studio still went and settled with her out of court for an undisclosed sum and an apology. This lawsuit would be referenced by an in-film joke where Brooks' character, the Governor, tells Lamarr that "This is 1874; you'll be able to sue HER."

During production, Brooks ended up having numerous battles with the studio over content in the film, with the studio constantly pushing back on things like the repeated use of the "N" word and the aforementioned scene with Kahn. Other scenes that stirred up battles included the flatulent campfire beans dinner and the horse punching. But Brooks had final say in his contract, so he stood firm on nearly all of his creative choices, with the exception of cutting Bart's final line during Lili's seduction: "I hate to disappoint you, ma'am, but you're sucking my arm." When questioned about the use of the N-word, Brooks defended himself by citing that he worked closely with both Richard Prior and Cleavon Little on these lines and they were both insistent on the necessity to use that language, though the film still received letters of complaint upon its release. Brooks added in a 2012 interview: "If they did a remake of Blazing Saddles today, they would leave out the N-word. And then, you've got no movie."

Once completed, the film nearly fell into oblivion as the studio considered dumping it and writing it off as a tax loss, in an ironic shade of Brooks own prior work The Producers. At a test screening for the studio executives, the audience was dour and there were few laughs to be heard. The head of distribution suggested binning it and dealing with the loss, but then Warner Bros president, John Calley, insisted on releasing it in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago as a test. The world premiere took place on February 7, 1974, at the Pickwick Drive-In Theater in Burbank for 250 invited guests, including Little and Wilder, who watched the film on horseback. Once it was given wide release, it became the studio's top moneymaker that summer.

I was just 11 years old when my parents took my brother and I to see it in the theatre. I remember it vividly, because I'd never laughed so hard or so much in a movie in my entire life. I'd never seen anything like it, and the jokes just kept coming and coming, in an unstoppable barrage. It was absolutely relentless and I completely loved every minute of it. That feeling was shared by many millions of others, though the critics, typically, were somewhat divided in their appraisal. Some found it too scattershot in its attempts to pack in too many gags too densely into the movie's run-time. But others understood the approach and appreciated the balls it took to load a movie up with that much comic ammunition. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four, calling it a "crazed grab bag of a movie that does everything to keep us laughing except hit us over the head with a rubber chicken. Mostly, it succeeds. It's an audience picture; it doesn't have a lot of classy polish and its structure is a total mess. But of course! What does that matter while Alex Karras is knocking a horse cold with a right cross to the jaw?" Gene Siskel awarded three stars out of four and called it "bound to rank with the funniest of the year," adding, "Whenever the laughs begin to run dry, Brooks and his quartet of gag writers splash about in a pool of obscenities that score belly laughs if your ears aren't sensitive and if you're hip to western movie conventions being parodied.

The film has gone on to be recognized as a critical contribution to American cinema, being added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2006. Given the consistency of racial turmoil that continues to plague North America, it hasn't lost any of its cultural relevancy, though it's perhaps fallen behind the times in terms of certain attitudes towards sexuality. Still, it retains its edge, with many wondering if anything like it could be made in the 21st century. It seems to be able to explore racial boundaries in a way that other creative properties can't, maintaining a kind of humour that is distinctive and unrepeatable.

ZARDOZ @ 50

Celebrating its 50th anniversary today is the science fiction feature film classic, Zardoz, which was theatrically released on February 6th, 1974. Written, produced, and directed by John Boorman and starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling, it's a dystopian vision of social engineering and privilege stratification taken to an extreme, where an immortal elite rule over tribes of savage brutes, denied a place at the table of plenty.

With John Boorman hot off the massive success of his last film, Deliverance, he was in a position to be somewhat self-indulgent with his next major project. Initially, he'd planned to attempt an adaptation of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for United Artists, but that project didn't get too far into development before the studio sussed that the budget required to bring such an expansive work to the screen would need to be astronomical. That was enough for them to pull the plug, but Boorman was still of a mind that he wanted to create something set in a fantastical imaginary world, so he started developing his own story ideas.

Deciding he'd work within the science fiction genre, he determined that he wasn't interested in the usual "outer-space" tropes, but rather, he wanted to explore "inner-space" and the concepts around the premise of a far future civilization advancing too quickly for human intellectual and emotional sophistication to keep pace. He was looking to explore the social dissonance such a dynamic could create via the lens of extreme stratification. It was metaphysically ambitious territory, but also a landscape that would inevitably result in the film's creator overstepping his vision, pushing his narrative into the realms of pretension.

After developing the script, the project was first presented to Warner Bros, who immediately turned it down, but Twentieth Century Fox had been courting Boorman and were keen for a chance to work with him, so his agent used that disposition as leverage to strong-arm their representative into a "love it or leave it" deal, presenting him with the script and a couple of hours to read it, with the provision that he'd have to offer a deal on the spot or they'd walk. The exec emerged from reading the script looking bemused and lost, but reluctantly agreed Fox would bankroll the film.

Casting of the lead character of Zed had started out as a role tailor-made to suit the man who'd made Deliverance so memorable, with Burt Reynolds being offered the part, but he was unable to accept due to illness at the time, so an alternate had to be found. Sean Connery was coming off a run of highly successful James Bond films, but his departure from the franchise had left him typecast and unable to secure any major roles in its wake, so Boorman & Connery felt that this was a perfect opportunity to redefine Connery's screen presence, so he was signed on to the project.

Shooting of the film took place entirely on location in the Republic of Ireland, which while offering plenty of exceptional scenery, also offered a few cultural challenges. The region's religious conservatism meant that shooting nudity was often problematic, with female extras from the area reluctant to be seen topless. There were also bans on importing of firearms because of the IRA troubles, which threatened to shut down production as there were numerous requirements for weapons to be used in various scenes. Yet these issues were ultimately overcome and the film was shot between May and August of 1973.

A group of County Wicklow artisans were hired to create many of the film's futuristic costumes, which were designed by Boorman's first wife, Christel Kruse. She decided that, because the "Eternals'" lives were purely metaphysical and colourless, this should be incorporated into their costumes. As The "Brutals" were lower, more primitive beings, Christel decided that they would not care much about what they were wearing, only what was functional and comfortable. As stated in the magazine Dark Worlds Quarterly "functional" and "comfortable" costumes ended up meaning that the costumes were extremely revealing, "It is the costumes for the Brutal Exterminators, and Zed in particular, that raise the eyebrows, with thigh-high leather boots, crossed bandoleers and shorts that can only be described as 'skimpy', the Brutals, and Connery in particular, exude raw masculinity, particularly as they ride their steeds and fire their guns."

Upon its release, the film immediately suffered a tide of highly negative reviews, with critics nearly unanimous in their condemnation of its overly ambitious story and awkward dialogue. Nora Sayre of The New York Times wrote Zardoz "is science fiction that rarely succeeds in fulfilling its ambitious promises... Despite its pseudo-scientific gimmicks and a plethora of didactic dialogue, Zardoz is more confusing than exciting, even with a frenetic, shoot-em-up climax". Yet Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it two-and-a-half stars out of four and called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less had carte blanche to do a personal project after his immensely successful Deliverance". On the other hand, Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave it one star out of four and called it "a message movie all right, and the message is that social commentary in the cinema is best restrained inside of a carefully-crafted story, not trumpeted with character labels, special effects, and a dose of despair that celebrates the director's humanity while chastising the profligacy of the audience".

Audiences were just as savage against it during its theatrical run, with patrons from early shows actively warning those waiting outside for the next showing to flee from the theatre. It quickly dropped in box office receipts, leaving empty seats wherever it played, until it was quickly pulled from the screens, barely earning enough to cover its production costs. After the success of Deliverance, this was a shocking downturn for Boorman. Yet his efforts would eventually win him a cult following in later years.

As the home video and later DVD markets exploded, Zardoz would become recognized as one of the 1970s most bizarre and distinctive science fiction entries. Before the demarcation created by the release of Star Wars, with its attendant focus on superficial moralizing, action and spaceships, Zardoz was a quintessential example of the decade's penchant for deeply analytical extrapolations of humanity's future. It was a thought experiment, asking the audience to question the nature of mortality and our desire to circumvent its inevitability. It posed the question of what an eternal youth culture would do with itself when its constraints were effectively eliminated. Its answer was the depiction of a hedonistic, decadent, emotionally short-circuited society, lacking any sense of empathy or comprehension of the suffering happening outside its entitled bubble. Actually, not a bad prediction of the culture of today's mega-wealthy. It also presciently explored the concept of a society managed by an artificial intelligence and how that entity could distort and mutate a civilization's value systems.

Yet within its ambitions, there is also the reality that it was, inescapably, a failure on many levels, which make it a prime candidate for those looking to scratch the "so bad it's good" itch. Its grasp wholeheartedly exceeded its reach, with the results being often strained and pompous as it attempted to out intellectualize itself, like some awkward interpretive dancer. But that becomes part of its charm because there's a certain amount of credit that must be given to Boorman for having the courage to attempt the film in the first place. It's an admiration that can be given to a creator willing to push their work that far and risk such a spectacular face-plant after achieving so much success with their previous work. Needless to say, Zardoz wasn't the end of Boorman's career by any means, though it is certainly one of his most notable flops.

My personal experience with the movie goes back to seeing it on TV a couple of years after its theatrical release. I must admit that the sight of burly-bear Sean Connery, who was looking decidedly husker than in his Bond prime, bounding about the screen for most of the movie in little more than a tiny red loincloth, was not at all an unwelcome image for an adolescent gay boy like myself. My "spank bank" owes a double debt to Boorman, not only for this movie, but also for Ned Beaty in Deliverance. I am eternally grateful for both! But even at my young age, I could appreciate the ludicrous aspects of this, albeit also its higher aspirations. There are great, iconic moments here, intertwined with just as many scenes of the ludicrous, like some sort of overwrought performance art. For every face-palm you get something brilliant and thought provoking. All in, what's not to love, from the profound to the absurd? I've seen it many times since then and it never fails to entertain, on a variety of levels. It's most definitely a must-see for any fan of '70s science fiction, right up along side the likes of Logan's Run, Phase IV, Demon Seed, The Andromeda Strain and innumerable others that define the era's sense of introspection.

MC5 - KICK OUT THE JAMS @ 55

 

Celebrating its 55th anniversary this month is the debut LP from the notorious MC5, with Kick Out the Jams being released in February of 1969. With its revolutionary stance and biting raw edge, it became a crucial foundation stone for what would become "punk rock" within a few years.

The roots of the band go back to their initial founding in 1963, which grew out of a childhood friendship between guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith. As well as being aficionados of the blues, Chuck Berry, Dick Dale and The Ventures, the pair were also enraptured by the cutting edge frenzy of free-jazz, with its wild flights of dissonance being incorporated into the their soloing styles. The group's name is an abbreviation of the term "Motor City Five", a reference to their hometown stomping ground, Detroit, MI. They'd play there almost every night, at any venue they could get a booking.

The group's high energy style quickly earned them a lot of recognition as they began to tour around the US, often upstaging the established acts they opened for. Fans would demand encores before allowing the headliners to take the stage. A trio of singles released throughout 1968 further bolstered the band's popularity, while their hard-left politics raised eyebrows and stoked paranoia about the radical nature of the band and its followers. A fanatical, reverential cover story in Rolling Stone cemented their position as emerging messiahs of Rock 'n' Roll.

Through their activities, MC5 would become mentors to fellow Detroit bands like The Stooges, while the band were, in-turn, being politically influenced by the Marxism of the Black Panther Party and Fred Hampton, and poets of the Beat Generation such as Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders, or Modernist poets like Charles Olson. Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton prompted the band's "manager", John Sinclair, to found the White Panthers, a militant leftist organization of white people working to assist the Black Panthers.

The band began to perform at various protest rallies, especially in opposition to the Vietnam war, appearing most notoriously at an event against the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which ended in a police riot. The event is also notable for the duration of the MC5 performance, which went on for an astonishing 8 hours! At the height of this publicity and mayhem, MC5 recorded their debut album, Kick Out the Jams, live, on October 30 & 31, 1968, at Detroit's Grande Ballroom. With the band performing at their best in front of a rabidly receptive audience, the decision to release a live album as their debut was an easy one. Culling the best from the two nights, what ended up on vinyl was nothing short of sheer, ferocious genius.

With the album bursting out of the speakers with the declaration, "KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!", it was inevitable that controversy would flare up in its wake. An alternate rallying cry of "Kick out the jams, brothers and sisters" was used on the single release of the title track, and also some versions of the album after retailer, Hudson's, refused to sell the album with its original expletive spiked incitement. This substitution was bitterly objected to by the band and their management, who fought tooth and nail to have it preserved. The title was a phrase that had originated while the band were touring and working with a variety of bands who were noted for their languid, extended improvisational performances, with MC5 blasting the stage free of the self-indulgent hippy jamming, in favour of their high octane garage rock. The phrase was somewhat appropriated 20 years later by the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, aka, The JAMs / KLF for somewhat more esoteric purposes.

The album sold well upon its release, quickly cracking over 100,000 units and peaking at #30 on the Billboard charts, though there was some critical lack of consensus. Yet the legacy of the album has helped it retain its status as a constant reference point when musicologists attempt to trace the roots of the punk and alternative rock movements that evolved in the ensuing decades. Most of those roads invariably lead back to the MC5, alongside a small cadre of other foundational bands like the Velvet Underground. Essentially, anyone who takes proper, soul satisfying rock 'n' roll music seriously has this record in their collection, likely right next to the first New York Dolls and Stooges LPs.

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD - COMMERCIAL ZONE @ 40

 

Released on January 30th, 1984, what was supposed to be Public Image Ltd's fourth studio album, Commercial Zone, turns 40 years old today. I use that qualifier as a way to indicate that, while this album was released, it has never been considered an official entry in the PiL canon of albums, at least not by John Lydon. Its existence is purely the result of the actions of former guitarist, Keith Levene, trying to salvage the wreckage of a project he was exiled from before it could be completed.

After the release of Flowers of Romance in April of 1981 and following the disastrous Ritz NYC multimedia performance-turned-riot in May of that year, PiL were fed up with their situation in the UK. London didn't feel like home anymore and John Lydon was exasperated with the constant harassment of the police, who regularly executed unjustified raids on his Gunter Grove townhouse, usually in the middle of the night while acting on spurious reports of illegal activities. It was a campaign of persecution being pursued by officials to try to silence someone who'd made too much of the wrong kind of noises. Fortuitously, while in NYC to do the Ritz show, they had established some contacts in the city, so John, Keith & Jeanette Lee packed up and headed to the Big Apple shortly after the Ritz debacle.

Not long after moving, John and Jeanette headed off to Italy so Lydon could shoot his parts for the film, Cop Killer (aka, Corrupt, Order of Death, etc). For some unpublished reasons, when John returned from the shoot, Jeanette was no longer in tow, having returned to the UK, with Lydon announcing she'd left the band, a situation that ultimately inspired the song, Where Are You? (Lou Reed pt2). While Lydon and Lee were abroad, Keith had started sketching ideas for the next PiL album. As John was shooting, he'd supposedly negotiated a deal for PiL to provide soundtrack music for the film, with he and Keith working out ideas by humming them over the phone on long distance calls, but the soundtrack never materialized, though the song, The Slab/Order of Death did result from their long distance brainstorming.

Once they'd set up a loft to live in and contracted Park South Studios for recording, John and Keith set about trying to reconstitute the band. Rumours of their splitting had circulated in the press early in 1982, likely partially triggered by Jeanette Lee mysteriously bailing from the PiL camp. Their contract with Warner Bros in the US had also expired, so they no longer had any US label support, though Virgin were still onboard in the UK. Getting a band together to play gigs became a necessity as a way to generate some income and finance recording.

Initially, Ken Lockie from Cowboys International was working with Lydon and Levene, contributing to a number of early recordings, but he quickly left the project and none of his contributions were ultimately used. Former PiL drummer, Martin Atkins, who had worked on Metal Box and Flowers of Romance, as well as touring with the band throughout 1980, was in NYC at the time, performing with his own band, Brian Brain. John and Keith went down to one of his gigs and proposed he rejoin the group. To fill in on bass, Martin brought in Pete Jones, also from Brian Brain, thus completing a functional lineup. Throughout the latter half of 1982, they alternated between playing a series of gigs across the US and returning to NYC to record at Park South. The engineer for the studio, Bob Miller, became heavily involved in the production of the recordings to the point of becoming a de facto fifth member, and the makings of a new LP began coming together, with announcements of releases being made to the press.

On stage, the band had redeemed themselves from the chaotic fiasco of the Ritz riot, offering up a rejuvenated, tight, aggressive and potent version of PiL, sprinkling their sets with some of the new songs that were coming together during their studio time. I got to see them in Seattle, and it was one of the most memorable live gigs I've ever been privileged to attend. There was a palpable tension in the atmosphere that gave the show a distinct edge, like everything could fly apart at any second, but somehow they managed to keep a lid on it all. They even kicked off some of their shows with a recording of a new song, Blue Water, which was initially planned to be the first single released before the end of the year.

With the location of the studio in a heavily industrialized section of the city, there was a sign nearby that read, "YOU ARE NOW ENTERING A COMMERCIAL ZONE". The group felt this was a perfect title for the band's planned new album. The irony of it made sense given how Flowers of Romance was so decidedly NONE commercial, and the new material was striving towards a level of accessibility that was relatively new territory for the band. Having painted themselves into a corner with their avant-garde leanings, the only thing left to do was make some unapologetic pop music, of course with PiL's own idiosyncratic twists.

Along with the touring and recording, a couple of new corporate entities were created to help manage various aspects of the band's activities, ostensibly to finally bring to fruition the promise that PiL were not just a "band", but a "corporation". Public Enterprise Productions (PEP) and Multi Image Corporation (MIC) were two of the entities that were announced at press conferences during 1982, and a deal was struck with Stiff Records in the US to licence their recordings released under the "PEP" umbrella. Things were going along so well that the group had managed to secure a contract to tour in Japan, which would be the first market where the new recordings would be released. A 12" single, This Is Not a Love Song, was planned for release in June of 1983. But just as things seemed to be coming together, simmering tensions between John Lydon and Keith Levene erupted into full blown conflict.

The breakdown came to pass in March of 1983 when a disagreement about mixes for the single set the spark. Keith recounted the events as follows:

“I went to the studio to remix 'Love Song', I told them 'I've got to remix it, it's embarrassing.' Martin called John in L.A. and told him I was in the studio. John called up screaming that I should get out of the studio immediately, right? I said 'John, I can't put out a tune that sounds like that!' Martin was just pacing the studio all night until he could call John in L.A. John just said 'Get out of my studio!' I said 'Your studio? Fuck off and die!' When these Japanese guys came that morning to pick up the tapes, I said to Martin 'Fuck it – I'll give them both mixes and I'll let them decide. When the Japanese guys arrived John got on the phone from L.A. at 5 am yelling 'Get out of my fucking studio!' And me replying 'It's not your fucking studio!' and so on. A load of shit went wrong literally in the space of 18 hours that made it that I just said 'Fuck it!'”

After returning from LA, Lydon regrouped with Martin Atkins after Pete Jones decided the situation was untenable and also quit the band. Lydon and Atkins recruited a trio of musicians from a local lounge band to play guitar, bass and keyboards, and took them to Japan to fulfill their touring obligations. The result of those shows eventually ended up as the Live In Tokyo album, which was one of the first digitally recorded live albums ever released.

While they were touring Japan, Keith managed to sneak into Park South and clandestinely mixed a bunch of songs, absconding with the resulting masters with no one the wiser from the PiL camp. Keith then took his rough mix of the Commercial Zone LP to London and attempted to present it as a finished PiL album to Virgin's Richard Branson. Virgin rejected the recordings with Lydon insisting that this was NOT his album. Virgin instead releasing the This Is Not A Love Song single in the UK in September. The record proceeded to become the biggest selling PiL single to date, reaching number 5 in the UK charts. Despite that success, Lydon and Atkins abandoned the remainder of the Commercial Zone recordings and headed to a London studio with some session musicians to start the project from scratch, rerecording five of the Commercial Zone tracks and filling out the rest of the album with a few new compositions and a remix of a leftover from Flowers of Romance (1981).

Returning to NYC, Levene decided to release his mix of the Commercial Zone album himself on his own label and, on January 30th, 1983, registered PIL Records Inc. For the first run of the album, he had 10,000 copies pressed at a cost of $8,500, packaged in a plain white slip cover with a modified PiL logo on one label of the record and the track listings and publishing credits on the reverse. Levene distributed the album himself, literally loading up boxes of records on his skateboard and humping them around the city to various record shops. Copies were then sent from these retailers to importers in the UK and Europe. A few copies managed to find their way to Vancouver, which is how I was able to acquire mine, with it appearing unceremoniously in the record bin, taking me entirely by surprise. A second run, with a slightly different track order, a few modified song titles and a black slip cover, was pressed in a run of 30,000 copies in August of 1984, timed to coincide with the release of Lydon's version of the album, This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get.

Put side by side, the comparison is a fascinating exercise in fragmentation. I have always felt it apt to think of the old episode of the original Star Trek series, where Captain Kirk is split into two people, with mutually exclusive personality traits, by a transporter malfunction. If there was a way to combine these two records into one, you'd have a brilliant album. Taken individually, there are similarly mutually exclusive positives and negatives to each. In the case of the Commercial Zone album, the raw energy and passion of the recordings is far more apparent, while the album suffers from lacklustre production values that make it sound like incomplete demos, lacking the spit and polish of proper mastering, as is obvious when comparing it to the Love Song single. In the case of the Lydon album, while it has all the lustre of professional production values, many of its songs, especially those that overlap with the Levene album, feel hollow and perfunctory, missing a sense of authenticity. The Live In Tokyo album didn't help the situation either as it presented a version of PiL that sounded like a cheap cover band attempting to pretend to be the real thing, a situation further exacerbated by the crystal clear digital recording quality. It was like a K-Tel copy, missing all sense of menace or immediacy.

After those two runs, Commercial Zone would never be reissued again by Levene or anyone else, nor was it ever acknowledge by Lydon, though original versions of This Is Not a Love Song, Blue Water and Bad Night would appear on a number of official PiL anthology releases. But in 2014, Levene crowd-funded a project to do a revamped version of the album from scratch. However, rather than re-record the original songs, Levene went to Prague and recorded a jumble of brand new songs, flirting with innumerable musical styles, and initially releasing it to subscribers as raw audio files with no track order or graphics. As much of a hodgepodge as it was, it was a wonderful burst of creativity after a long period of inactivity from Levene, and it was rather fun putting together the album like a puzzle. Eventually, a sequenced and packaged edition was released, but this project would ultimately turn out to be the capstone of Levene's solo career before his death in 2022. After the Prague sessions, he fell out with his principal backer and the resulting legal embattlement ensnared him in a creative limbo, effectively making it impossible for him to release anything under his own name while court cases dragged on.

For many hardcore PiL fans, myself included, Commercial Zone represents the last true PiL album, with Lydon's post Levene version of the band never again reaching the creative heights it had achieved with Keith present, not to mention the loss of the likes of Jah Wobble. Though PiL continues to this day under Lydon's leadership, that sense of adventure, experimentation, risk taking and trouble making would never return to make the band feel like it presented a challenge the way it had been for the first five years of its existence. Keith may have been an agent of chaos in some regards, but that edginess was what made the band such a vital force in the first place.

THE BEATLES - YELLOW SUBMARINE OST @ 55

Released on January 13th, 1969, and celebrating its 55th anniversary today, is the Beatles' original soundtrack for their animated feature film, Yellow Submarine, which premiered in London in July of 1968. It was the tenth studio album by the band, though it does not, in fact, offer a full LP's worth of original Beatles music. The B-side of the LP is entirely taken up with incidental music created for the film by George Martin, the Beatles' producer. It was essentially a contractual obligation release due to the band having singed a deal for the film stipulating that they would create four original songs for the soundtrack and include Martin's score on the release.

The first side of the record features six songs from The Beatles, two of which had been released previously. These included the title track and All You Need Is Love. Of the 4 songs unique to the album, Only A Northern Song, a gripe-song about George's publishing contract, and It's All Too Much, an ode to LSD, were both Harrison compositions, with the former being a rejected leftover from Sgt. Pepper. The latter was originally over 8 minutes in length, but was edited down for the final version. All Together Now is a McCartney composition that was inspired by British music hall singalongs and was considered by its author to be a "throwaway", while Hey Bulldog was contributed by John Lennon, who described it as, "a good-sounding record that means nothing."

The B-side of the LP consists of re-recordings of the incidental music by George Martin and many consider this material to have severely compromised the overall quality of the album. Even John Lennon dismissed the music as "...all this terrible shit" and blamed Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, for allowing Martin to participate in the project. Plans were even made to release an EP containing only the 6 Beatles songs, but this release, even though it got as far as mixing mono versions of the songs and mastering, was ultimately abandoned. George Martin certainly wasn't going to agree to have his contribution dropped as this was going to be a major payday for him, given the massive publishing and royalties he'd be getting by piggybacking on The Beatles popularity. This was only changed when a 30th anniversary edition of the soundtrack was released in 1999, which omitted Martin's work and added 9 Beatles songs that appeared throughout the movie, but were not included on the original soundtrack due to being previously released songs.

Though the new material for the soundtrack was recorded and completed before the group started work on their eponymous "White" album, release of Yellow Submarine was delayed until after the White album was released in order to avoid having the impact of that album undermined by the soundtrack. Upon its release, it did well in terms of sales, but the critical response to it was mostly ambivalent and many felt that it simply didn't offer the kind of value that was a consistent trait of previous releases. The Beatles themselves were simply disinterested in the project as a whole and agreed to an animated film simply because it meant the most minimal commitment from them.

Personally, this album was my introduction to the group, at least in a way that left an impression on my very young mind. I couldn't have been older than 5 or six when a babysitter brought the LP over and played it for my brother and I. I was immediately enthralled by it, and it became my touchstone for my first impressions of the band. As such, it has a certain sentimental value, even though it's likely their least significant record.
 

LED ZEPPELIN @ 55

 

Released on January 12th, 1969, the debut eponymous LP by Led Zeppelin turns 55 years old today. Rising from the ashes of The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin would lay out some of the most important foundation stones for heavy metal & hard rock and become one of the biggest bands in the world throughout the following decade.

Jimmy Page, the man at the centre of the band, spent most of his career in the '60s working as a highly regarded session musician in the UK. In 1966 he joined The Yardbirds, then fronted by guitar legend Jeff Beck, as a bass player, but soon switched to guitar, doubling up on leads with Beck. Beck left the group the following year, putting Page at the helm for their final album, Little Games (1967). By 1968, other members of the group were burning out from touring and also wanting to go in a more acoustic folk oriented direction. Page's penchant for hard and heavy blues put him at odds with that. With contractual obligations still necessitating a number of remaining tour dates, the departing members of The Yardbirds agreed that the group could temporarily continue on stage as the "New Yardbirds", with Page assembling a fresh band.

Page's initial conception was to create a super-group with Jeff Beck, plus Keith Moon and John Entwistle from The Who, and possibly vocalist Steve Winwood or Steve Marriott. This never materialized as all his picks for vocalist turned him down. Instead, he found himself being referred by another declining first pick vocalist, Terry Reid, to a relative unknown by the name of Robert Plant, who in turn brought along drummer John Bonham. Bassist John-Paul Jones, who was someone Page knew from session work, auditioned for the group at his wife's behest, thus completing the lineup. With the four members in place, they fulfilled the touring requirements of the Yardbirds before heading to the studio to start working on some recordings of their own.

With the Yardbirds name no longer legally available for them to use as a recording entity, they began to consider alternatives. At one point, Keith Moon had commented that Page's "super-group" concept would go down like a "lead balloon", disparaging that it would be less than successful, but the irony of the concept appealed to Page. At the suggestion of manager Peter Grant, the name was modified to Led Zeppelin, dropping the "a" in "lead" so people didn't mispronounce it "Leed", and changing "balloon" to "Zeppelin", as it evoked the ideas of both lightness with heaviness as well as combustibility. That cheekiness would also express itself on the album's cover, which featured the famous shot of the Hindenburg bursting into flames. If it was going to be a colossal failure, they might as well have a sense of humour about it.

The band began recording their debut LP in mid September, 1968, completing recording and mixing in a mere 9 days, with production costs covered by Page and Grant. The material for the album was drawn from mostly original songs worked out during their transitional touring phase fulfilling their commitments to the Yardbirds, with some traditional blues material having been percolating within the predecessor group while Page was in charge. With most of the songs well worked out during their contractual obligation tour, they were able to get them down on tape in the studio with little fuss.

Page used a "distance makes depth" approach to production. At the time, most music producers placed microphones directly in front of the amplifiers and drums. For Led Zeppelin, he developed the idea of placing additional microphones some distance from the amplifier (as far as 20 feet) and then recording the balance between the two. The technique would provide Zeppelin's signature sound and flew in the face of the dry-as-bones productions that dominated throughout the 1970s. It wouldn't be until a full decade later that this methodology would become common among the mainstream of rock and pop producers.

Peter Grant then set about nailing down a record contract for the band, and thanks to his bullish determination and a recommendation by Dusty Springfield, managed to secure a deal with Atlantic Records, which included a whopping $143,000 advance, the largest ever paid for an unknown band, sight unseen. The deal included exclusive rights for the band to have complete control over their touring and recording schedules, as well as creative control of all aspects of their products, including mixing, production and album graphics.

Their debut album was released while the band were on their first tour of the US, with the album peaking on the American Billboard charts at #10, and #6 in the UK. Throughout the year after its release, they would tour the US and UK four times and release their sophomore LP before the year's end. It was a blitzkrieg attack on the rock world that set the industry on notice that something massive was about to dominate the world of rock 'n' roll, redefining its sound for a new era.

Initial critical reception for the album, surprisingly, was often negative and harsh. The group emerged at a time when "super-groups" were all the rage, while their bloated promises of greatness mostly turned out to be over-hyped bullshit. As such, the critical tides were against them and they suffered a few slings and arrows before they could prove themselves. Retrospectively, the album has shaken off any and all of the detritus of those early critiques and reigns as one of the band's most highly regarded releases. Its raw energy and intensity have made it representative of the band at their fiercest, most primal peak.