THE ROLLING STONES (England's Newest Hit Makers) @ 60

Celebrating its 60th anniversary today is the eponymous debut LP from the legendary Rolling Stones, which was released in the UK on this day, April 17th, 1964. The slightly altered US edition came out on May 29th. While The Beatles were selling a relatively wholesome "mop top" version of the looming "British invasion", The Rolling Stones were digging deep into the grit and grime of American blues & R&B to fashion their "bad boy" counterpoint.

With roots that go back as far as 1950, when Keith Richards & Mick Jagger first became classmates and friends, the real genesis of the band would come in 1961 when the pair would reacquaint themselves on the platform of the Dartford railway station. Jagger was carrying records by Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, which revealed to Richards a shared interest. A musical partnership began shortly afterwards, a relationship that was solidified when the pair responded to an ad in the music press from Brian Jones, who was looking to put together a new band after having split from his previous group.

For the next two years, the band would build their following, taking their cue from The Beatles, but self-consciously crafting their image so as to contrast against the "fab four". While they initially dabbled with the whole "matching suit" look, their manager quickly abandoned that approach and realized that the Stones could benefit by cultivating a style and aesthetic that was counter to The Beatles more approachable & family friendly vibe. Instead, the Stones would go for a messy, unkempt and raunchier look and feel, coming off as the kind of lads parents would definitely NOT want their daughters bringing home for dinner!

For their first LP, recording was completed in only five days scattered across January and February of 1964. At this point, the songwriting prowess of the Jagger/Richards duo was barely starting to take root, so only one of their compositions was included, and that was only on the UK version of the LP. There were also a couple of songs from these sessions credited to "Nanker Phelge", which was a pseudonym used by the band from 1963 to 1965 to designate songs they'd collectively written. The selection of covers reflects the group's focus on American blues & R&B classics. The US version had a slightly different track list, plus the subtitle, "England's Newest Hit Makers", which eventually became adopted as the official title for the album on later reissues.

While the group's sense of originality and identity were still developing, their debut LP still manages to stand as one of the best examples of the British blues scene of that era, full of vitality, rawness and edge. It became one of the UK's biggest selling albums that year, holding the #1 LP slot for no less than 12 weeks. And while it lacks the iconic hit singles that would soon define the band, it still represents the group in their early prime, poised to become one of the most important rock bands of all time. 

JAPAN - LIFE IN TOKYO @ 45

Released on April 13th, 1979, Japan's Life In Tokyo single turns 45 years old today. While it marked an abrupt course change for the group, it would need to be released two more times before it would become a proper chart hit.

With two albums under their belt, both released the previous year, Japan were in the midst of something of an identity crisis. They'd started out as a kind of patchwork of glam-rock, punk and funk, sporting teased-up, garish died hair & makeup, and looking like a slightly more put-together version of New York Dolls. But this approach had left them with little more than a burgeoning cult following in the country of Japan, based on their use of its name for their band. The group were quickly maturing and realizing that they'd miscalculated their stance and were looking to enact a major glow-up in order to set their house in order.

The first step along that path was getting connected with acclaimed and wildly successful electronic disco producer, Giorgio Moroder, who'd made his name working with the likes of Donna Summer, virtually inventing techno dance music with the breakout single, I Feel Love, in 1977. The arpeggio-pulse of his synth bass in that track had become a blueprint for dance floor domination and Mordor set about applying that trademark to the music of Japan, a move that would firmly inform the development of their next album, Quiet Life, recorded later that year.

Its initial release failed to garner much attention, however, but as Japan's prominence began to increase with the release of their subsequent albums: Quiet Life, Gentlemen Take Polaroids, and Tin Drum, the single was remixed and reissued two more times, once in 1981, and again in 1982. This last edition, propelled by the success of the Tin Drum album and Ghosts single, finally clicked on the charts, where it peaked at #28 in the UK.

Within the band's canon of work, Life In Tokyo remains as a critical linchpin between their early glam-punk beginnings and their shift into a sleekly sophisticated outfit that would become a major influence on the New Romantics scene beginning to evolve in the wake of punk.

Released on April 6th, 1984, the debut and final LP by Tones on Tail, Pop, is marking its 40th anniversary today. Though it was a short-lived bridge between Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, it remains a hypnotically enigmatic diversion within that musical continuum.

Tones on Tail originated in 1982 as a side project for Daniel Ash while he was still a member of Bauhaus. It began as a duo with Ash collaborating with Glenn Campling, an art school friend & flatmate who'd also worked as a roadie for Bauhaus. The band name came from the calibration tones traditionally recorded on the "tail" ends of reel to reel audio tapes. The pair released an eponymous EP in March of 1982, but by 1983, with the demise of Bauhaus, they were joined by drummer Kevin Haskins, making the group now a full-time project for the trio, who issued another EP, Burning Skies, in May of 1983.

With the release of the Pop album in 1984, the group scored a surprise club hit with a non-album single B-Side, Go!, which was on the Lions single. The group then embarked on a brief tour of the US before releasing a final single, Christian Says, in November of 1984.

By 1985, there were rumblings about a possible reunion of Bauhaus, which managed to get to the point of a water-testing jam session being scheduled, but when Peter Murphy failed to turn up for the session, and the other three members went ahead without him, they realized their chemistry was still quite strong, so they regrouped as Love and Rockets instead, putting an end to Tones on Tail as a functional unit.

The legacy of Tones on Tail may be somewhat dwarfed by that of the bands that bookend its existence, but that doesn't mean the music they created is any less worthy of attention. I have great memories of dancing to GO! in the clubs of the mid 1980s, and the sound of Tones on Tail has a distinctly eerie atmosphere, even in comparison to Bauhaus or Love and Rockets. In 1998, a double CD compilation, Everything, compiled their entire catalogue into one convenient package.

J.J. BURNEL - EUROMAN COMETH @ 45

Marking its 45th anniversary today is the debut solo album from Stranglers bassist, J..J. Burnel, with Euroman Cometh being released on April 6th, 1979. While it was only a modest success at the time of its release, it has become something of a cult favourite over the years for its distinctive combination of electronics and rock & roll.

The album started to take shape in 1978 while The Stranglers were working on their third LP, Black and White. At the time, Burnel was homeless, and ended up sleeping at the studio most nights. To pass the time after the band had packed it in for the day, he'd spend the evenings futzing about in the studio. There was a basic, preset rhythm box on hand, which allowed Burnel to set a groove to build on, adding bass, vocals, guitar and synths, mostly on his own. As his sketches began to accumulate into something that seemed substantial enough to play for other people, an album concept started to emerge to the point where he was able to get a green light from Stranglers' label, United Artists, for an album release. Burnel then brought in a few guest musicians to help flesh out a few details. These included drummers Peter Howells & Carey Fortune, guitarist Brian James & harmonica player Lew Lewis.

The album came together conceptually as something of a manifesto from Burnel on the potential and dangers of a European economic union. It was a concept that was becoming a legitimate and seemingly inevitable political possibility at the time. The album mostly contains songs both celebrating European culture as a whole, while offering cautionary admonitions against American style cultural imperialism.

The album cover shows Burnel standing, dwarfed, in front of the the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information (Public Information Library), a vast public library; the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which is the largest museum for modern art in Europe; and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. Its modernist, high-tech styling, with its complex layering of massive external pipes and scaffolding, provided an appropriately grandiose and imposing backdrop for the album and it's sweeping themes of uniting the European continent.

I've always been a big fan of this record because it is so idiosyncratic in its styling, with the frequent drum machine backdrop sounding somewhat brutal and crude along with Burnel's signature snarling baselines. The odd guitar and synth slashes and affected & processed lead vocals all create an obtuse, angular kind of edginess that had echoes in the work of DEVO and Bill Nelson's short-lived post Be Bop Deluxe project, Red Noise. It's decidedly distinctive, displaying very little resemblance to anything done by The Stranglers at the time, owing more to Kraftwerk and CAN. It's also been cited by Joy Division & New Order bassist, Peter Hook, as a major influence, which makes perfect sense to me.

 

MEET THE RESIDENTS @ 50

Celebrating its golden anniversary today, at 50 years old, is the debut LP from The Residents, with Meet the Residents being released on April 1st, 1974. While it was resoundingly ignored at the time of its release, struggling to sell a mere 40 copies within its first year, the album would eventually be recognized as the cornerstone product of one of America's most influential and innovative experimental multi-media arts collectives.

The residents had been fermenting in their home state of Louisiana since the late 1960s, mostly inspired by the avant-garde experimentation of artists like Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band. The relative success of that particular group was inspiration enough for the then unnamed group to send a demo of their early experiments to Beefheart label, Warner Bros, executive Hal Halverstadt, in the hopes of following in their wake. His rejection of the group, returning the tape to "Residents, 20 Sycamore St.", famously inspiring the band's name.

With that album being dismissed, the now named collective spent most of 1973 alternating between working on an ambitious film project, the never-to-be-finished "Vileness Fats", and recording fresh material for a proper debut. With thoughts of appealing to a major label now banished from their aspirations, they realized that creating their own imprint was the best way to get their work out there without having to be dependent on the whims of music executives. Thus, the Cryptic Corporation and Ralph Records were created, with the group members assuming anonymous identities within The Residents, while simultaneously using their real names to stand in as spokesmen for their freshly minted corporation. Thus, Hardy Fox, Homer Flynn, Jay Clem & John Kennedy became the corporate faces while claiming to have no relation to the mysterious, unidentified musicians responsible for creating The Residents' music.

At the time of their debut, the group had access to only the most basic instrumentation and recording equipment, relying heavily on acoustic percussion, piano, horns & reed instruments and guitar, along with a primitive form of analogue sampling, to create their strange fusion of experimental pop, jazz, blues and classical music. Layered with strange, heavily effected cartoon-like voices, the surreal results were unlike anything anyone else had concocted at that time. This was well before they would embrace electronics, synthesizers and digital samplers as their principal tools, yet they were still able to mutate their instruments into arrangements that belied their primitive resources.

The packaging for the album was a cleaver, hilarious bastardization of Meet The Beatles, the US debut LP by the "fab four". This association between the two groups would even lead to early rumours that The Residents were secretly The Beatles, working clandestinely to vent their more experimental ambitions. The initial version of the album, released in a mono mix in an edition of just over 1000 copies, sold extremely poorly, but was still reported to have drawn the ire of Beatles label, Capitol Records, who allegedly issued a "cease and desist" order on the use of the cover graphics, necessitating a redesign for the subsequent stereo mix reissue of the album in 1977. Whether this was actually true or just a promotional ploy by Ralph Records is up for debate, especially given that the reissue still incorporated many of the same design elements as the first pressing, and all subsequent reissues and special editions since 1988 reverted to the original design.

As mentioned, initial response to the album was virtually nil, and it wasn't until 1977 that the group began to develop a serious cult following, mostly riding on the wave of the burgeoning "punk" and "new wave" scenes, especially with the more adventurous artists of the era frequently citing The Residents as influencing their own excursions into the bizarre. Prior to the DIY aesthetics of punk taking hold, there simply wasn't any context for The Residents to be interpreted or understood. That all changed in the latter half of the decade as the group quickly became enigmatic underground darlings of outsider music.

Since its initial release, the album has received numerous reissues, including vastly expanded special editions, securing it a status as a foundational document of the group's early works, an era which remains the preference of most die-hard fans. No true aficionado would claim to appreciate the group without having this album in their collection. It's a visionary explosion of ideas that would provide the fertile ground for a career that has sustained itself for the past half century and, despite numerous personnel changes over the years (Homer Flynn remains as the only original member), continues to persist.
 

DARK STAR (1974) @ 50

 

Celebrating its golden jubilee at 50 years since its theatrical debut at LA's Filmax festival on March 30th, 1974, it's the directorial debut of John Carpenter with his weirdo science fiction hippie comedy, Dark Star. What started out as a film school project in 1970 eventually became a cult classic with the dawn of the home video revolution in the 1980s.

Dark Star began life as a rough concept by Carpenter while he was a film student at the University of Southern California. Dan O'Bannon was also a student there at the time and became a principal collaborator on the project, fleshing out the script, developing the production design and figuring out the special effects. Carpenter, in addition to directing and script collaboration, also created the soundtrack, utilizing his modular synthesizer system. Principal photography began in 1970 on 16mm film with a slim budget of $1000, a sum that would balloon to $6000 by the time they'd finished work on the initial 45 minute cut, late in 1972. The results of their efforts were enough to inspire the pair to try to push the film past the student production bar and towards an actual commercial theatrical release.

In order to get the movie to the level of a feature film, they would have to fill it out with roughly double the footage they had already shot, so a series of additional shoots were done in 1973 to add a number of sequences to the story. These included the asteroid storm, Doolittle playing bottles on strings as a musical instrument, the scenes in the crew sleeping quarters, the scenes in the hallways of the ship (Pinback with the sunlamp, Boiler with the laser gun, etc.), and, importantly, all the scenes featuring the beach ball alien.

John Landis, a friend of O'Bannon, got the pair hooked up with producer-distributor Jack H. Harris, who obtained the theatrical distribution rights. Once in his hands, he insisted on further revisions in order to get the production values up to professional standards, demanding extensive cuts of numerous scenes, deeming about 30 minutes of the film "unwatchable", including a protracted scene of the crew sleeping and ignoring messages from the ship's systems. He insisted on additional 35mm footage being added to the film, and mandated other edits intended to secure a "G" rating for the film's release. The end results may have created the best looking student film ever produced, but in terms of commercial professional Hollywood production standards, it barely passed muster.

Despite the shaky nature of the production, the visual FX still managed to create some striking imagery, especially in its depiction of the ship jumping into hyperspace as it kicked into faster-than-light speed. The imagery of the light rays bleeding past the ship as it accelerated are the first on screen representations of that process ever filmed. It's a depiction that would become common in virtually every science fiction property in later years, from Star Wars to Star Trek. Then there was the ludicrous "beach ball" alien, something that was intended to be comical, but which ultimately served as the foundational inspiration for O'Bannon when he worked on Alien.

The story of a rag-tag group of dispirited astronauts on a 20 year long mission to destroy rogue planets using "smart bombs" was one that flew in the face of the more glamorous and inspirational depictions of life in space that had dominated the genre for so long. There was nothing heroic or exciting about their work. It was protracted drudgery that ultimately drives even their AI enabled bombs mad. And while its initial theatrical audiences didn't get the joke and the film failed to garner any significant box office upon its release, when the home video market sprung into life at the dawn of the '80s, film nerds looking for something different in the sci-fi section quickly discovered its quirky charms, propelling it to the realms of cult classic within a few years. Critics were also surprisingly generous with their reviews, with Roger Ebert giving the movie three stars out of four, writing: "Dark Star is one of the damnedest science fiction movies I've ever seen, a berserk combination of space opera, intelligent bombs, and beach balls from other worlds."

Its influence on later films is also impressive, not only in terms of the aforementioned visual FX, but also in the production of other comic science fiction properties. Doug Naylor has said in interviews that Dark Star was the inspiration for Dave Hollins: Space Cadet, the radio sketches that evolved into his popular science fiction sitcom, Red Dwarf. For its creators, while the project may have suffered some during its journey towards its final form, it's legacy remains as one of the more beloved oddities of the genre created in the heyday of '70s science fiction adventurism.

MUTANT THROBBING GRISTLE @ 20

 

Marking 20 years since its release is the Throbbing Gristle remix compilation, Mutant Throbbing Gristle (aka, Mutant TG), which was released on March 29th, 2004. The project was conceived as a way to help celebrate the unexpected reunion of TG for what was intended to be a one-off performance at the ATP event, RE:TG. That event was cancelled due to unforeseen organizational issues with ATP, but TG, nonetheless, were intent on performing again, so they scheduled a replacement performance at the Astoria on May 16 of 2004.

Rescheduling aside, after the release of the two mammoth and exhaustive live box sets, TG24 (2002) & TG+, issued in January of 2004, it only seemed appropriate to help refresh people's appreciation for TG by issuing a compilation album collecting various remixes of classic TG tunes, created by friends and admirers of the band. The collection featured remixes by Carl Craig, Hedonastik (Marc Harrison, Marc Rowntree, Steve Keeble), Andrew Weatherall & Keith Tenniswood (Two Lone Swordsmen), Bryan Black & Olivier Grasset (Motor), Carter Tutti & Simon Ratcliffe. The set brought some dance floor friendly funk to tracks like United, Hot On the Heels of Love, Persuasion, What A Day, Hamburger Lady and Still Walking. Along with a soon to be released "best of" compilation, The Taste of TG (issued on May 4th, 2004), this refresher course in Industrial music signified the beginning of a new phase of activity for the band, a renaissance that would carry them through to the end of the decade, with new studio albums, numerous live performances, art installations and a variety ephemeral novelty products, until it all fell apart again when Gen bailed and then Sleazy died at the end of 2010.