SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES - JUJU @ 40

June 6th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Siouxsie & The Banshees’ Juju LP, issued on this day in 1981. It was their fourth studio album, overall, and their second of a trilogy of albums they’d release while constituted in their “MK II” configuration of Siouxsie Sioux, Steven Severin, Budgie & John McGeoch. It is perhaps the best of this trio of brilliant albums.

While the prior album, Kaleidoscope, deliberately worked towards differentiating each song from the others with no consideration for how they’d be performed live, and the subsequent album, A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, delved into psychedelic, orchestrated arrangements, Juju was conceived primarily through live performance. A result of this process was that the record organically manifested as a sort of concept album, delving into themes of darkness and subversion that created a common thread through each of its nine compositions.

Musically, Juju represents guitarist John McGeoch at his most inspired and experimental. After his somewhat tentative participation in Kaleidoscope, due to his still being a member of Magazine, Juju found him now fully ensconced in The Banshees where his presence infused and informed the album. As a post punk manifesto, his guitar work rivals that of Keith Levene in PiL in terms of innovation while offering up a much more melodically driven wall of sound. It’s no surprise that John Lydon would eventually recruit him to fill Keith’s shoes after his ouster. Vocally, Siouxsie achieved a warmth and depth to her voice that were a step above anything she’d accomplished before and her tone was duly enriched by the lyrical intensity she brought to each song. The album jars and stuns with striking imagery in song after song. “Ripped out sheep’s eyes. No forks or knives” or “Don’t forget when your elders forget to say their prayers, take them by the legs and throw them down the stairs” are just a couple of examples of verses that reach out of the density of the music and wrench the listener into the darkness of the album’s concepts. This is real “shock and awe” song craft.

But don’t undervalue the contributions of the powerhouse rhythm section provided by Budgie and Severin. They deliver a churning tribal shudder that provides a whirling yet unshakable foundation upon which McGeoch can embellish with his guitars and Sioux can swoop and dive through with her voice. Indeed, the interplay of the quartet is entirely seamless through every song and I’m certain this is largely the result of the compositional process and their being worked out in live settings before being brought into the studio for their commitment to recording tape. The resulting tapestries of sounds are so tightly woven that there’s really no separating them out into discrete components.

This era of Siouxsie & The Banshees was arguably the peak of the band’s prowess while this lineup persisted. Sadly, McGeoch’s struggles with alcoholism would result in him being fired from the band after touring for Dreamhouse and the group was never quite as influential again. The music they made during their first two incarnations (1978-1979, 1980-1982) would offer up sounds and styles that would influence generations to come in terms of post-punk, Goth and a variety of other branches of the alternative music tree. Personally, Juju and the other two albums made by this lineup represent the definitive set of essential recordings by a band that came out of the original London Punk scene and then were one of the first to go beyond its simplistic nihilism and shine a light through the darkness into places where new sounds could be found.

THROBBING GRISTLE - LIVE AT KEZAR PAVILION, SAN FRANCISCO @ 40

 

It's the 40th anniversary of the terminal performance of Throbbing Gristle, which occurred on May 29th, 1981, in San Francisco at the Kezar Pavilion. Commemorated on the LP release, Mission of Dead Souls, it was the last time TG would take to the stage until their eventual reunion, 23 years later in 2004.

At the time TG were struggling under the intense pressure of strained and fractured personal relationships which centered on Cosey's relationships with Chris and Gen. This had been a source of friction for some time, but Chris had reached a point of no longer being able to tolerate Gen's hostility and manipulations and has recently assumed responsibility for being the instigator in terminating their mission.

Though the personal relationships in the band were percolating in the toxic zone, they still managed to channel that antagonism into one of their most intense and harrowing performances. Also captured on video and released on VHS by Target Video, the live footage clearly shows the effect on the audience as evidenced during the finale of Discipline where one audience member can be seen undergoing some kind of transcendent freakout.

As a parting gift to their audience, TG's last exit from their inaugural era remained a stark reminder of their influence and power for over two decades as the ripple effect of their existence spread out into the underground of alternative music. Their eventual reformation in the 21st century's premier decade was a critical reminder of what was possible when you put four such intense personalities together and give them the keys to unlock another dimension of sound.

THROBBING GRISTLE - DISCIPLINE @ 40

 

Marking 40 years since its release in June of 1981, Throbbing Gristle’s Discipline 12” was the last official TG single released before the group disbanded after their final performance in San Francisco in May of that year. The dissolution of the project was officially announced via the mailing of the infamous “Mission is Terminated” postcard on the 23rd of June, 1981. The single was issued by Fetish Records and was their first TG release that wasn’t a reissue of material previously published by Industrial Records.

The single contains two separate recordings of Discipline, a track which was never captured in a studio recording. The A side is the debut performance of the song, which was essentially composed on the spot with Genesis inventing the lyrics based on Cosey’s suggesting the concept before the song started. It was recorded at the SO 36 Club in Berlin on the 7th of November, 1980 and is a Digital recording. The B-side was recorded live at the Illuminated 666 Club in Manchester on 4th December, 1980 and is a binaural recording.

The front cover photo is by Stan Bingo and shows TG standing outside the ex-Nazi Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin. It uses a double exposure effect to make the group look like ghosts in front of the building. The rear cover features a photo by Peter Christopherson of a shirtless Val Denham holding a Hitler Youth dagger. The text around the photo reads “Marching Music for Psychic Youth” and is a hint of where Genesis was moving with his idea of forming a cult-like organization which would eventually manifest as Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth. This organization would form the core support system for Psychic TV, Gen & Sleazy’s post TG regrouping along with Alternative TV guitarist, Alex Fergusson. The runoff groove of the B-side also features the phrase “Psykick Youth Squad”. The A-side runoff groove has the phrase, “Techno Primitive”, scratched into the surface, which would reappear as the title of a Chris & Cosey LP in 1985.

The first time I ever listened to this single was in December of 1984, one evening when a friend and I dropped some blotter LSD called “Flash”, which appropriately featured a lightning bolt print on the tab. We listened to a lot of TG that night and Discipline stood out in particular as it sounded like we were being swept up in some kind of manic cyclone that eventually turned into a human blender with nothing but the screech of spent whirling blades as the song ended and the last remains of human flesh were ground out of the metal.

The single was never re-pressed after it’s initial limited edition run of 10,000 copies was sold out. It was eventually included as bonus tracks on the Mute CD edition of 20 Jazz Funk Greats in 1991. After it’s inception in Berlin, it became a staple of TG live performances, both during the final days of their initial active period in 1980/81 and during their reunion from 2004 to 2010. Though it was never recorded in studio, it has become one of the most iconic representations of TG at their most fierce and confrontational. It’s not uncommon to see it propel audience members to transcendent states of ecstasy, as can clearly be seen in the final minutes of its performance at TG’s San Francisco show in 1981 and during the Astoria reunion show in 2004 where Jhon Balance can be seen undergoing some sort of altered state during its performance. It captures their raw intensity like nearly no other song in their repertoire.

QUEEN - A KIND OF MAGIC @ 35

 

June 2nd marks the 35th anniversary of the release of Queen’s 12th studio album, A Kind of Magic, which was issued on this day in 1986. It was the first album to be released after Queen’s groundbreaking performance at Live Aid in 1985 and the last album the band would promote with a world tour before Freddie Mercury’s health issues would make it impossible for him to perform live anymore. The album began as the soundtrack to the Highlander feature film, though it evolved beyond that constraint as it began to take shape and eventually grew into a proper album with additional material not used in the film and even the pieces that were used ended up being remixed and slightly reworked from their original cinematic versions.

With the recognition from Live Aid putting fresh wind in Queen’s sails, the album became a major hit for the band, especially in the UK where it reached the number one album slot and lingered in the charts for a whopping 63 weeks, racking up 600,000+ unit sales there alone. Though it was a commercial success, critically, it received mixed reviews. Critics found it lacking in focus and direction, though there are a number of songs on the album which have come to be viewed as essential in Queen’s canon of greatest hits. This includes songs like One Vision, which was directly inspired by Queen’s Live Aid experience, at least as far as Freddie’s interpretation of the track. While it began as a Roger Taylor composition referencing Martin Luther King, Freddie reworked a lot of the lyrics and brought in a bit of camp humor with lyrics like "one shrimp, one prawn, one clam, one chicken”. Who Wants to Live Forever would eventually take on a far more poignant tone in light of Freddie’s struggles with HIV, which would eventually take his life in 1991.

Personally, it’s an album that came along at a time when I was very far away from following the band. While they were a favorite in my teens in the late 1970s, by the mid 1980s, I was deep into some very experimental, obscure musical territory and Queen were pretty well off my radar. As such, I’ve only given this album a glancing blow in terms of paying it much attention. What better time then to give it another listen?

THE RAINCOATS - ODYSHAPE @ 40

 

Released on June 1st, 1981, The Raincoats sophomore album, Odyshape, is celebrating 40 years since its release. Though the Raincoats had already set themselves in a league of their own with their debut album, they somehow managed to step outside their own self-delineated sphere with this followup.

Just about every aspect of the record sets it outside the colouring lines of punk, post-punk, alternative or folk music, though it touches on all of these genres and more. The instrumentation, performances, compositions and arrangements all defy classification and refuse to adhere to any kind of established norms. Like The Shaggs before them, The Raincoats managed to reinvent music for their own purposes, though in this case they actually had some formal skills to build upon, albeit they pushed each and every technique to the brink of being unrecognizable.

The band were flying somewhat “without a net” when conceiving this album as original drummer, Palmolive, had departed and her replacement, Ingrid Weiss, bailed just as they began working on the album. As such, they began the compositional process mostly without a drummer and it seems that what might have been a constraint actually turned into a source of liberation as the resulting songs all manage to find their way in the most fluid manner, unhindered by concerns for strict tempos and consistent beats. Once they had their landscape somewhat laid out, they brought in a number of drummers and percussionists to ride along their roads and find their way through the organic musical countryside they’d cultivated. These included Richard Dudanski, who had played with Joe Strummer’s 101ers and contributed to PiL’s Metal Box on a few tracks, Charles Hayward (This Heat) and Robert Wyatt (Soft Machine).

The results of these unfettered efforts also opened the floodgates for the girls to express themselves vocally in a manner that exposed their fragility and intimacy in ways rarely heard on record. The honesty and vulnerability that was laid bare in these songs made them feel like listening to them was an invasion of privacy. There’s simply no holding back the emotions here and they took full advantage of their position to explore subjects and attitudes that were distinctly female, yet universally comprehensible.

The fact that the girls all swapped roles and instruments also helped to bring out the unexpected and the intangibly spontaneous in each piece. You never know where a song is going to go from one moment to another. There’s no sense of “verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus” structure here. No “beginning” or “end”. Songs and sounds manifest like a wild garden, growing up from the soil and then receding into the distance as the listener moves along in their journey.

I remember being drawn to The Raincoats after reading somewhere that they were the only band John Lydon would admit to liking. After hearing their first album with it’s raw primitiveness, I was intrigued, but when this second came along, I remember being completely blown away by it. It was an album that stood its own ground, separate from every other genre and trend happening then or since. It remains self-contained and inviolable in its uniqueness and singularity. It still has the power to fascinate and inspire on the deepest emotional levels. It refuses to be subsumed by any categorization and that is why it will remain timeless for the foreseeable future.

THE MONKEES - GOOD TIMES @ 5

 

May 27th marks the fifth anniversary of the release of The Monkees 50th anniversary comeback album, Good Times!, which was released on this day in 2016.

It’s strange how a mere five years seems like a lifetime ago now. Back then, we were teetering on the precipice of the decent into hell that would be the Dumpo presidency. It didn’t seem possible, yet it happened and now we’re in this surreal pandemic dystopia looking down the barrel of potential social, economic and climate collapse. I remember when this album came out, it was a slap in the face to all the toxic pessimism that was rearing its head at the time. It was like the most revolutionary thing that you could do was to put out an album of unassailable joy.

There are simply so many inexplicably marvelous facets to this album, but it could easily have been something so much less than it was. It could have been nothing more than maudlin nostalgia and rehashed, recycled cliches of 1960s “summer of love” bullshit. Yet somehow, the right people came together at the right time to make this happen. They were able to unearth some foundational bits and pieces from the Rhino archives and then carefully stitch them together with contemporary extrapolations and augmentations which did far more than simply recollect the past glories of this cherished pop phenomenon. They effectively re-birthed it with an inexplicable sense of vitality and freshness that belies the half century legacy of the product.

Shortly after its release, Micky Dolenz summed up the extraordinary nature of its success by trying to imagine someone from 1916 revitalizing their career in 1966. The cultural gulf between those two eras is so clearly great from our contemporary retrospect that it starkly puts into perspective the idea of The Monkees reviving their essence so successfully for this sophomore decade of the 21st century. This was all made possible by a carefully assembled collection of creative professionals who not only understood what they were working with, but imbued it with a sincere passion and love that pushed it beyond mere marketing and consumer exploitation. They found the FUN in it again and infused every aspect of this project with it, from the first track to the last, including the clutch of bonus tracks that were sprinkled in various editions along the way.

For me, it became the soundtrack to my summer that year, a season which culminated with the opportunity to actually see The Monkees perform live for the very first time when they came to Vancouver’s PNE on September 4th of that year. What a painful irony it was that I would end up having to duck out of the last 15 minutes of the show due to medical issues which would end up resulting in my having to undergo heart bypass surgery on Sept 12th, the exact date when The Monkees TV show debuted on NBC back in 1966. That coincidence has never been lost on me and forever ties all of these events together into the strangest package. Fortunately, I’m still here to write about it and recollect the release of one of the best Monkees albums since their heyday in the late 1960s.

DOLENZ, JONES, BOYCE & HART @ 45

 

May 29th marks the 45th anniversary of the release of the eponymous titled debut album by Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. That is: Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart.

For all practically purposes, this was a reunion of The Monkees, but in 1976, the legal rights to use that name did not reside with any of the band members nor the song writing duo who created many of their biggest hits. This was nearly 10 years after the debut of the TV series and almost exactly 6 years since the release of the last official Monkees LP, Changes. Since that time, the value of their brand had taken a nose-dive and the world was still nearly 10 years away from the infamous MTV marathon of the TV show, which would kick-start a massive wave of nostalgia for the band. But in 1976, to be a Monkee was to be a has-been; forgotten and often despised and ridiculed. Yet enough time had passed that a little nostalgia for the boys was percolating to the point where principal lead vocalists, Dolenz & Jones, and the creative core of the songwriting and production team, Boyce & Hart, felt that they might be able to tap into the old vein one more time. Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were both approached to participate in this, but declined.

To record the album, Boyce & Hart recruited many of the same musicians who’d been part of their house band at the time they did their original hits. Chip Douglas, who had produced the band for several albums after the ousting of Don Kirshner, also came onboard. Together, they managed to craft a pretty nicely updated version of The Monkees, even though they couldn’t call it that. They’d embraced the sounds of the times and the vocal talents of Dolenz & Jones were always reliable. The selection of songs is quite good with maybe one or two exceptions. Overall, they created a very enjoyable and listenable album.

Sadly, the public weren’t quite ready for it and not even the help of a tour and a number of national TV appearances could help push the record into significant sales. The album pretty quickly dropped from sight, but it still managed to get Peter Tork to change his mind and join Micky and Davy to record a Christmas single, Christmas Is My Time of Year, released in time for the holiday season of 1976. Again, however, the spark of sales didn’t quite ignite and, after the tour, The Monkees went their separate ways again for the next decade. They’d bide their time on solo projects until that fateful day in February of 1986 when the world would rediscover them and set ablaze the Monkeemania that would continue to flare up again and again to the present day.

While the D, J, B & H LP vanished into the ether for many years, eventually, aficionados for the band would dig it back up from its grave and it would see a reissue on CD in 2005 and is now readily available on streaming mediums like YouTube. Fans of the band have recognized its value after all these years and it is widely accepted as a legitimate part of The Monkees canon of albums. And it deserves this recognition since it is a full fledged representation of the people who were always a part of the project, even if the name is missing.