THE B-52'S @ 45

 

Released on July 6th, 1979, the eponymous debut LP from The B-52's turns 45 years old today. At a time when "punk" had broken rock music back down to its basics and "new wave" was looking towards a more adventurous and experimental future, The B-52's offered up an anachronistic slab of nostalgia for an era of polyester beach parties and piled high hair-dos, with hyped-up teens twisting in the dunes with aliens from other worlds and creatures crawling up from the surf. Like The Cramps, who evoked a vintage, retro-kitsch obsession with B-movies and trash culture, The B-52's were a throwback to another era, with their twanging surf guitars, teeny wheezing organs and infectious back-beats. But where The Cramps offered up a soundtrack for lascivious late-night back-alley bar crawling, The B-52's were an upbeat party band, born in a beach hut and destined to make you dance.

The group came together in Athens, Georgia, in 1976, emerging at the dawn of the punk revolution, but rather than building their aesthetics from safety pins, leather jackets and spiked hair, they went to the thrift store and raided the leftovers of '60s hipster party dregs, snapping up the towering wigs that gave the band its name. They popularized the introduction into youth culture of the queer inspired "trash-couture" that had been festering in the midnight movie screenings of the films of John Waters. He and his cohorts had set the tone for the band with their pink flamingo lawn ornaments and other trailer trash accoutrements. It was all done for pure fun and was impossible to resist once you got a taste of it.

The band recorded their debut at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, with Island Records founder Chris Blackwell producing. His approach to recording was to capture the band as cleanly and closely as possible to their live sound, so there was very little use of studio effects or even overdubs. The result was a bright, spacious sound that captured all of the dynamics of the group with no frills or distractions, creating an immediacy that pushed the impact of their music to the fore. It was a perfect approach to take as you get to hear the band in a completely unadulterated presentation where the listener can connect as directly as possible for a studio recording.

The album became an immediate commercial and critical success, catapulting the band into the spotlight, with appearances on shows like SNL helping to secure the group's spotlight. I have a very clear recollection of spotting the album on the new release display wall of my local record shop back in 1979. I was all over anything new and weird looking, being a 16 year old on the prowl for anything odd and "out there". Seeing that bright yellow cover with the cutout photo of this wild looking, big haired band was an instant eye-catcher, and I had no hesitation about plunking my hard earned money down for a copy. And I was most definitely not disappointed when it hit my record player. The twang of those surf guitars, the cheesy organ, the whip smart drumming and the kinky vocals were all so fresh sounding, though also bizarrely nostalgic. They definitely had a sound that was all their own. It's still an album that holds up after nearly half a century of listening. It can't age because it's so perfectly preserved in its own amber.

IGGY POP - NEW VALUES @ 45

 

Released in July of 1979, Iggy Pop's third solo studio LP, New Values, turns 45 years old this month. After a duo of relatively successful "come back" albums produced by David Bowie during his "Berlin" era in 1977 (The Idiot & Lust for Life), Iggy opted to work with former Stooges collaborator, James Williamson, as producer for New Values. Iggy had last worked with Williamson on the Kill City album, which was an attempt to revive the Stooges that kinda burned out before it could really catch fire, albeit it has since become a cult favourite in Pops catalogue. Though Williamson was previously known for his guitar work, that job would predominantly land in the hands of former Stooges piano player, Scott Thurston. Both Williamson and Thurston would contribute to the songwriting on the album. Their collective efforts would result in an album that won a lot of critical praise, but its commercial appeal lagged behind what Pop had achieved with his two Bowie produced prior LPs.

New Values was my gateway into the world of Iggy Pop, thanks to seeing the videos for I'm Bored and Five Foot One on The Midnight Special. Those were enough to get me to pick up the album, and once I did, I was further psyched by its ferocious title track, which remains one of my all time favourite Songs by Iggy. With its blistering guitar riff and ambivalent lyrics, it was perfectly apropos of the era's burgeoning "Gen X" sense of disconnection with the morals and priorities of a world that was about to dive head-first into a decade of "Reaganism" inspired greed and sociopathy.

NICK DRAKE - FIVE LEAVES LEFT @ 55

 

Released on July 3rd, 1969, the debut LP from Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left, turns 55 years old today. While initially met with critical and commercial ambivalence, in the wake of his tragic death only five years after its release, its status has become elevated over the past half century into being recognized as one of the greatest folk rock creations of the era.

Drake suffered from depression and anxiety, which manifested in the deep melancholy of his music, with his recordings affecting a much more introspective and haunted incarnation of Donovan. His singing style, to my ears at least, contains that same kind of wispy delicacy, though his lyrics turn into existential insecurities, as opposed to hippy idealism. It's the kind of morose introspection that, a decade later, would find a welcome home in the post-punk-turned-Goth malaise of performers like Robert Smith of The Cure.

The album was produced largely via fully live performances with no overdubs. Drake would set himself up in the middle of the studio where he'd perform his vocals and acoustic guitar while being surrounded by the other musicians in a semicircle formation, utilizing the studio's tiered layout to create unique acoustic environments through the positioning of players on different levels. The title of the album is a reference to a particular brand of cigarette rolling papers, which had the message "five leaves left" stamped on the appropriate paper near the end of the pack.

Upon its release, it received mostly lacklustre commentary from the critics of the day. Disc and Music Echo described the album as "interesting" and said, "His guitar work is soft, gentle and tuneful; his voice highly attractive, husky and bluesy—but his songs uncertain and indirect." It concluded, "It's more a restful album than a stimulating one." Perhaps the subtlety of Drake's style simply failed to make an impact at the time, but age has revealed its true depth and passion, allowing the emotional complexity of his songs to grow and find the appreciation they rightly deserve.

Drake's career would prove to be sadly short, with the artist only releasing two more LPs before withdrawing from performing and recording after the third in 1972. He retreated from the music business to his parent's home in rural Warwickshire, where he was eventually found dead of an overdose of antidepressants on November 25, 1974. He was only 26 years old. While his career was active, he gathered only limited attention from music collectors, remaining an obscure, mostly forgotten artist through the remainder of the decade, but that all started to change with the release of a retrospective compilation in 1979. Since then, he's received many accolades for his work, with his catalogue receiving numerous reissues and critical reappraisals.

I only discovered these works in the early 2000s as I was on the lookout for unfamiliar music from the late 1960s. Once I heard these albums, I couldn't believed I'd never encountered this music before. Since then, Nick Drake's music has become a go-to whenever I'm looking for something to put me in an introspective, plaintive mood.

PARLIAMENT - UP FOR THE DOWN STROKE @ 50

 

Celebrating its golden jubilee at 50 years old is the sophomore album from George Clinton's Parliament, Up for the Down Stroke, which was released on July 3rd, 1974. While the band had released a debut LP in 1970, Osmium, classic Parliament really begins with this album, which was their first release on Neil Bogart's freshly minted Casablanca Records. Along with KISS, Parliament would help bring that label to unprecedented heights of success in the later half of the decade, with Parliament's massive stage show positioning them as the black music equivalent of their makeup masked heavy metal peers on that label.

The album's title track was released as a single and helped begin the group's rise to stardom, remaining one of the most iconic and recognizable tunes from the entire P-Funk discography. The album also proved to be a pivotal reunion with bass master, Bootsy Collins, who'd taken a two year hiatus away from the P-Funk collective prior to recording this album. His return to the fold would solidify his position in the group and he would remain an integral contributor throughout the band's entire residency with Casablanca. Parliament would run their career in tandem with Funkadelic, along with numerous other side projects, throughout the decade, building a massive P-funk network of performers and products.

THE CRAMPS - GRAVEST HITS @ 45

 

Celebrating 45 years on the shelf this month is the debut EP from The Cramps, Gravest Hits, which was released in July of 1979. The 12" EP compiles both of their prior 1978 released 7" singles, Human Fly b/w Domino, & Surfin' Bird b/w The Way I Walk, and adds a fifth track, Lonesome Town. All of the included recordings were produced by former Big Star front man, Alex Chilton and were all recorded in 1977 at Ardent Studios in Memphis, TN. Collectively, these recordings constitute some of the earliest examples of the rockabilly revival, which would later be characterized as "Psychobilly" due to its grafting of sleazy horror and science fiction B-movie themes with this foundational genre of American 1950s era rock 'n' roll.

Lux Interior (born Erick Lee Purkhiser) and Poison Ivy (born Kristy Marlana Wallace) met in Sacramento, California, in 1972. In light of their common artistic interests and shared devotion to record collecting, they decided to form the Cramps. Lux took his stage name from a car ad, and Ivy claimed to have received hers in a dream (she was first Poison Ivy Rorschach, taking her last name from that of the inventor of the Rorschach test). In 1973, they moved to Akron, Ohio, and then to New York in 1975, soon entering into CBGB's early punk scene with other emerging acts like Suicide, the Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, Blondie, Talking Heads, and Mink DeVille. The lineup in 1976 was Poison Ivy Rorschach, Lux Interior, Bryan Gregory (guitar), and his sister Pam "Balam" (drums), later replaced by Nick Knox (formerly with the Electric Eels) in 1977 by the time they started recording their first singles.

I remember when I first spotted this on the shelves of my local record shop, which was in a small strip mall next to the Burger King I worked at in 1979, when I was 16 years old. I glanced at that cover for weeks, every time I popped into the shop before or after work, and always felt vaguely uneasy about it, though also intrigued, until I finally plucked up the nerve to give it a shot. I was into "new" music at that time, "punk" and "new wave", but these folk didn't seem to fit into either of those slots. There was something "out of time" about them that didn't quite align with the other trends of the day. I wasn't even sure when the record was actually recorded. It looked like it could have been something from another decade. And the band were SO gnarly looking, especially Bryan Gregory, who looked like he was 60 years old, with his gaunt menacing glare and that shock of grey hair hanging down the side of his sunken, ghoulish face.

When I finally brought it home, Human Fly sounded so fucked up that I wasn't even sure what speed to play the record at. After I got that sorted, I immediately became enthralled by the odd spookiness of it all. The fact they had no bass guitar, but instead used duelling twang vs fuzz guitars, with only Knox's kick drum anchoring the bottom end, gave their sound a distinctive edge. What was even more surprising to me was the day I came home from school to find my mother had been listening to it! She was once a teenage bobby soxer in the '50s, so their rockabilly vibe caught her ear. It was quite a surprise to me when she actually dug one of my freaky records!

Years later, I got a chance to see them live, twice in the 1990s, which immediately reaffirmed why I've always loved the band, ever since this amazing record found its way into my collection.

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD - DEATH DISCO @ 45

 

Released 45 years ago today, it's that harbinger of mutant disco and Public Image Ltd's second single, Death Disco, which was released on June 29th, 1979. It was a glimpse into the striking new direction the band were heading for their soon to be unleashed Metal Box album. The single fused the otherworldly sound of dub with a furious disco 4x4 rhythm, underpinned by Jah Wobble's sonorous bass and over-arched with Keith Levene's Tchaikovsky cribbed furious guitar scraping. Weaving about within the maelstrom was John Lydon wailing away, exercising the demons of having recently witnessed his mother's demise from cancer.

The single was released in two forms, a 7" backed with No Birds Do Sing on the B-side, and a 12" extended "1/2 mix" of the title track on the A-side, and an instrumental revamp of Fodderstompf from their debut LP, titled "Mega Mix" on the flip. This B-side is the only recording to ever emerge from a planned re-recorded version of their debut album that US label Warner Bros had demanded after refusing to release the original version due to its uneven production values. The re-recorded "First Issue" never materialized, however, and the LP remained unreleased in the US for decades, with only this alternate version of Fodderstompf ever surfacing.

Drums were played by David Humphrey, who was the first to replace original drummer, Jim Walker, after his early 1979 departure. Humphrey was gone by the time No Birds was recorded, which features former 101er, Richard Dudanski, on the kit. He lasted through some of the Metal Box sessions and one live gig before departing, eventually being replaced by Martin Atkins.

The sleeve design for the single was taken from an original drawing by John Lydon. The 12" mixes remained unique to that release for many years until they were finally reissued in a couple of CD box sets, Plastic Box (1999) and The Public Image Is Rotten (Songs From The Heart) (2018). There is also a super-extended "1/2 Mix" variant on John Lydon's The Best Of British £1♫'s DVD (2005).

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & HIS MAGIC BAND - TROUT MASK REPLICA @ 55

 

Released on June 16th, 1969, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band's third album, Trout Mask Replica, turns 55 years old today. Whether you truly love the album, name drop it for coolness brownie points, or consider it an unlistenable monstrosity, its mere mention is bound to stir up controversy and everything from profound admiration to disdainful outrage.

Beefheart and Band had a historically rocky relationship with record labels, resulting in a tremendous amount of confusion and disappointment for their first releases. First they were dropped by A&M after their first couple of singles failed to chart, then their label for their debut LP took a hard turn into bubblegum pop, leaving Beefheart on the outskirts again. Then sessions for what would eventually materialize as Strictly Personal and Mirror Man resulted in a backlog of recordings the band weren't sure would ever even see the light of day. Enter friend of Beefheart, Frank Zappa (who gave Beefheart his name), with an offer to release an album on his newly established imprint, Straight Records, and the promise of complete creative autonomy.

With that offer in hand, Beefheart and Band set up shop in a small, somewhat rundown rented house in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. There, they set about the task of interpreting band leader Don Van Vliet's vision, with drummer, John "Drumbo" French, acting as principal translator of his compositions, which were often communicated through piano and vocal recitations. Van Vliet had never played piano before as his main composition tool, so given he had no experience with the instrument and no conventional musical knowledge at all, he was able to experiment with few preconceived ideas of musical form or structure. Van Vliet sat at the piano until he found a rhythmic or melodic pattern that he liked. John French then transcribed this pattern, typically only a measure or two long, into musical notation. After Van Vliet was finished, French would piece these fragments together into compositions, reminiscent of the splicing together of disparate source material on Marker's tape.

During the band's residency in the house, Van Vliet became a musical and emotional tyrant, creating something akin to a small cult, restricting the activities of the musicians and demanding adherence to his instructions to the letter. At various times, one or another of the band members were put "in the barrel", with Van Vliet berating him continually, sometimes for days, until the musician collapsed in tears or in total submission to Van Vliet. According to John French and Bill Harkleroad, these sessions often included physical violence. Their material circumstances also were dire. With no income other than welfare and contributions from relatives, the band survived on a bare subsistence diet. French recounted living on no more than a small cup of soybeans a day for a month, and at one point, band members were arrested for shoplifting food (whereupon Zappa bailed them out). A visitor described their appearance as "cadaverous" and said that "they all looked in poor health". Band members were restricted from leaving the house and practised for fourteen or more hours a day. This went on for eight long months before Van Vliet deemed that they were ready to go into a recording studio.

Zappa originally proposed to record the album as an "ethnic field recording" in the house where the band lived. Working with Zappa and engineer Dick Kunc, the band recorded some provisional backing tracks at the Woodland Hills house, with sound separation obtained simply by having different instruments in different rooms. Zappa thought these provisional recordings turned out well, but Van Vliet became suspicious that Zappa was trying to record the album on the cheap and insisted on using a professional studio. Zappa would say of Van Vliet's approach that it was "impossible to tell him why things should be such and such a way. It seemed to me that if he was going to create a unique object, that the best thing for me to do was to keep my mouth shut as much as possible and just let him do whatever he wanted to do whether I thought it was wrong or not." Van Vliet once told drummer John French that he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and he would see nonexistent conspiracies, which in hindsight, may have explained some of this behaviour.

Once it was time to head to the studio, the band had ingrained the arrangements and their parts so deeply through their endless rehearsals, the recording process was able to proceed extremely rapidly, with songs frequently requiring only one take. In one session, the band completed twenty instrumental tracks in a single six-hour recording marathon. Van Vliet spent the next few days overdubbing the vocals. Instead of singing while monitoring the instrumental tracks over headphones, he heard only the slight sound leakage through the studio window. As a result, the vocals are only vaguely in sync with the instrumental backing; when asked later about synchronization, he remarked, "That's what they do before a commando raid, isn't it?"

From a commercial perspective, the album stood well outside the bounds of what was considered "popular music", and though it held shards of blues, jazz and rock, those reference points were all shattered and smashed, and the pieces were glued back together in angular, disjointed collages of rhythms, notes and non-sequitur vocal phrases. It was a kind of alchemy where listeners were often repelled by the record on first listen, then agonizingly drawn into its clutches until it became impossible to disregard it. Simpson's creator, Matt Groening, has famously recounted his experience with the album in exactly such a manner, describing his total disdain upon initial exposure, followed by an infectious obsession with it after subsequent listens. Yet it doesn't actually constitute something that was ahead of its time. That time has never come and it continues to stand outside of any time or referential context. It is simply singular in its idiosyncrasies and originality. It occupies its own world and refuses to integrate with any other.