ELVIS COSTELLO - MY AIM IS TRUE @ 45

 

Marking 45 years on the shelves today is the debut album from Elvis Costello, My Aim Is True, which was released by Stiff Records in the UK on July 22nd, 1977. Though it was recorded before his band, The Attractions, were assembled, and the production is a bit on the brittle side, it is still considered one of the strongest debuts to come from the late ‘70s punk/new-wave movement.

Before he was Elvis Costello, he was Declan Patrick MacManus and he’d been slugging around the clubs of Liverpool and London trying to get his career off the ground since 1970. By the time his demo tape caught the attention of Stiff founders, Dave Robinson and Jake Riviera, he was performing under the name of D.P. Costello, a name chosen to honor his great-grandmother. He was also paying his bills by working a day job as a data entry clerk for Elizabeth Arden.

Though Costello was the first artist to sign to the newly minted record label, he did not release its first title. Robinson & Riviera felt they needed to work on his image to get him into a position which would leverage the burgeoning punk scene that was taking the country by storm. Costello’s performances were considered lackluster and without a sense of edginess or anger and he basically looked like a mild mannered computer geek. To remedy this, they decided to exaggerate his appearance and got him some heavy Buddy Holly style glasses, tight blazers and turned up strove-pipe jeans. The transformation was completed with the D.P. dropped and replaced by “Elvis”, a move most considered insane given its connection to the legendary Presley. But Costello was into it and the method of the madness would prove itself sound as it gave record buyers pause when encountering him in the record bins.

When it came to putting together a band for the album, Costello had no money to support musicians, so the label recruited a San Francisco country-rock band named Clover who’d managed to gain something of cult following in the UK and had moved there to take advantage. They were based in Headley Grange, where Costello would travel for rehearsals before coming back to London to record. While the band were competent and Costello would later praise them for their skills, creatively, they didn’t always see eye to eye and, ultimately, their association with Costello would end after the sessions for the LP were completed. They were not credited on the album either due to contractual disputes with another label. Interestingly, the lead singer for Clover at that time was none other than “The News” future front-man, Huey Lewis, who didn’t take part in the LP sessions, taking a vacation while the rest of the band worked on the album. Besides the creative frictions, Clover didn’t fit in with the “punk” aesthetic the label were courting, looking like American West Coast hippies, so they were replaced by what would become The Attractions before Costello began performing in support of the album and its singles.

The album was recorded during a series of six four hour sessions booked from late 1976 through the beginning of 1977 with the band often cutting the bed tracks live and in one take. Costello continued to work his data entry day job during the sessions, but would call in sick when he needed to rehearse with the band. The songs for the album were written by Costello over the course of a couple of weeks. The album was produced by Nick Lowe, who also contributed musically to the album on bass and some backing vocals. The LP was recorded at Pathway Studios, which Costello described as a “phone booth” due to its cramped size. It must have been a pretty basic facility because the album does suffer slightly from underproduction and shrill sound, especially compared to the crisp, full bite of This Years Model the next year.

Despite weak production, the quality of Costello’s songs and the energy of his performances won over critics, though the fans took a little longer to catch on. The death of Elvis Presley in August of that year, less than a month after the release of Costello’s album, gave sales an unexpected boost and suddenly record buyers were getting converted to the spindly bespectacled troubadour with anger issues. That name change started to pay off with the record buying public getting curious about this fellow with the audacity to use that sacred name!

Personally, it’s not my favorite of his early albums, those being This Year’s Model and Armed Forces, but it does have a clutch of really great songs, especially the back half of the record and the bonus single of Watching the Detectives, which was not originally on the album, but came as a single that was later included in reissues. It still showcases Costello’s raw power at it’s beginning and many continue to appreciate and praise it as one of his best albums. It certainly made a great statement for the times as an important young artist first making his mark on the world.

HAWKWIND - QUARK STRANGENESS AND CHARM - @ 45

 

Marking 45 years in orbit, Hawkwind’s seventh studio album, Quark Strangeness and Charm, was released on June 17th, 1977. Coming in at a time when the UK was besieged by the punk revolution, it saw the group tightening its sound into a more concise attack while struggling to keep the cohesion of the group following a number of upheavals in personnel.

In terms of the group’s lineup, the biggest change was that this was their first album without co-founder Nik Turner. His departure was followed by drummer Allan Powell, while bassist Paul Rudolph was dumped from the band in the middle of recording the album. All these changes put the focus on Robert Calvert as the groups primary front-man, who stepped up to the plate in fine style, offering a distinctive voice for the group backed by inventive lyrics with a deft sense of humor. In fact, according to some critics, he upstaged the band with the quality of his work. But that’s a bit unfair as guitarist Dave Brock kept his riffs tight and economical in a manner that was appropriate for the times and Simon House offered up some fine violin parts. The rhythm section may have been a little disjointed as the replacement bass player had to overdub his parts, replacing the recordings Rudolph had laid down for the bed tracks with the new drummer. As such, the linking between the drums and bass may not have been as aligned as it could have been if they’d been able to record together.

Despite all the upheaval, the album was well received both critically and commercially and still holds up as a notable entry in the group’s canon. I find it sticks to its melodic hooks with a firm grip while steering clear of the jam band meandering which defined some of their previous works. For “space rock”, the "trips" feel to the point and solidly conceived. As an updated and slightly stripped down version of the band’s sound, I think it works exceptionally well and has stood the test of time, musically.

ROXY MUSIC - ROXY MUSIC @ 50

 

Released on June 16th, 1972, the eponymous debut LP by Roxy Music is celebrating it’s 50th anniversary today. It’s an album that managed to bring the worlds of art-rock and glam together by combining the group’s eccentric musical approach with their extravagant fashion sense. That fusion would end up providing fodder for near future movements like punk, new wave and new romantics within the following decade after the album’s release. Each scene would have reason to reference Roxy Music as source material with bands like Japan and Duran Duran taking their cues from this progenitor and pushing those genetic building blocks to new heights.

Formed in 1970, Roxy Music went through a lot of personnel shuffling before they stabilized into a cohesion which was able to record their first LP. Though they rehearsed the material for a few months beforehand, they had to power through the recording process in no more than a week with the studio time financed by the band’s management. The album was in the can and had it’s cover designed before they had even signed to a label, but Island Records stepped in to pick it up shortly after completion and it gained chart traction quickly after its release.

The band’s music incorporated a number of different styles, but tied them all together with a bravado and panache which was offset by the bizarre interjections of Eno’s synthesizer work and elements of free-jazz via Andy Mackay’s reed work and Phil Manzanera’s guitar experimentation. It was progressive in execution, but still held close to pop conventions of catchy hooks and melodies, making it weirdly accessible without sacrificing the eccentricities that made it distinctive. CREEM’s Robert Christgau said: "From the drag queen on the cover to the fop finery in the centerfold to the polished deformity of the music on the record, this celebrates the kind of artifice that could come to seem as unhealthy as the sheen on a piece of rotten meat. Right now, though, it's decorated with enough weird hooks to earn an A.”

DAVID BOWIE - THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS @ 50

Celebrating a half century since landing on the planet Earth, David Bowie’s breakthrough LP, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, was released 50 years ago today, on June 16th, 1972. Bowie’s fifth studio album would prove to be the one which finally broke through on the charts and launched his career into the stratosphere.

Bowie had been slogging away in relative obscurity since the mid 1960s, releasing his first album in 1967 and gradually navigating his career towards a position which would ultimately set him apart from his peers. He’d do so by creating a distinctive character which transcended the mundane boundaries of mere pop stardom and cast him in the role of a mythological alien-savior. While his previous incarnations had tried to exploit his “freak” potential, the idea of creating a fictional alter-ego was the key to putting him in a context which maximized his eccentricity while making it more palatable by virtue of its other-worldliness.

Before Ziggy, he blurred the lines of gender on his previous effort, Hunky Dory, where he lounged in his long hair and gown like Lauren Bacall or Greta Garbo. That sort of gender-bending ultimately had limited appeal and the album flopped on the charts despite good reviews. Part of the problem was that it was recorded with new label RCA when they’d already got wind that he was planning a major image overhaul, so the label stalled on their promotion in anticipation of his transformation. Hunky Dory & Ziggy are musically extremely closely linked. The songs were all written at the same time, the musicians are mostly the same on both albums and they were recorded nearly consecutively with only a brief gap between them. But by the time Ziggy was ready to release, the label were finally ready to commit to Bowie’s new concept and appearance and they were prepared to promoting him with some vim and vigor.

Even though Hunky Dory and Ziggy were closely aligned musically, Ziggy had something else going on that wasn’t developed on the previous record. It was this conception of an alien being coming to Earth in an attempting to save it as the planet was facing an apocalyptic near future, only to become corrupted by fame. This worked to envelop the project in a coherent narrative. This was further reinforced by the look and sound of the band, which took the glam-rock glitz of Marc Bolan and cast it as extraterrestrial chic. The character of Ziggy Stardust also borrowed from Bowie’s American friends and inspirations, Iggy Pop & Lou Reed. He managed to fuse elements of all of them and more into his characterization and it worked brilliantly to help shroud Bowie with a stature and mystique that effectively made him seem like a superstar even before the fans had picked up on his presence.

Once the album hit the shops, it wasn’t long before it started to gain momentum with its traction largely increased once the band made a pivotal appearance on BBC’s Top of the Pops. It was one of those historic moments when any kid with a TV and latent aspirations of rock stardom was gonna find a fire lit in their soul once they saw Bowie confidently strutting his stuff in front of the camera. One can imagine little Sid Vicious, Peter Murphy, Gary Numan, Bono and dozens of other future stars glued to their sets and feeling the switch get flipped that would propel them into the careers they’d have in a few short years thanks to having seen the Starman on their TV.

Since its release, it’s become recognized as one of Bowie’s most influential and significant works. Not only did it set him up for future success, it retroactively pulled a lot of his back catalogue out of obscurity, foisting albums like Hunky Dory and singles like Space Oddity into hit status as well. And while a lesser artist would’ve become trapped in the Ziggy persona, Bowie quickly transitioned to other characters in order to establish his chameleon like nature as a trademark, setting fan expectations to be prepared for his wild and frequent shifts. In many respects, it remains his most iconic work and a starting point for many when beginning the journey of exploring his career.

Personally, his success at this stage also came at a cost and signaled the beginning of his own private decline into drug abuse, something he’d ultimately have to overcome within a few years, but fortunately for him and his fans, he managed to pull out of that spiral. In a way, he lived the life of Ziggy maybe a bit too closely, so it makes sense he’d want to change out of that wardrobe and try on another suit quick enough.

THE RED KRAYOLA - THE PARABLE OF ARABLE LAND @ 55

 

Released in June of 1967, the debut LP from Texan trio, The Red Krayola (initially spelt, “Crayola”), The Parable of Arable Land, turns 55 years old this month. At the time of its release, it was labeled a “psychedelic” album, but hindsight has revealed that it was more of a progenitor of experimental musical styles which would surface nearly a decade later. There are various aspects of the album which more closely resembling “new wave” and “industrial” music from the late 1970s than fuzzed out wah-wah psyche-rock from the late ‘60s.

The album is idiosyncratically structured around alternating between two primary recording sessions. The principal songs for the album were recorded by the core band members on April 10th. This session featured Mayo Thompson on guitar, Steve Cunningham on bass and Rick Barthelme on drums. Roky Erickson of 13th Floor Elevators plays organ throughout as well. Six songs resulted from these sessions and they form the musical framework of the album. They are strung together by a series of impromptu “freak out” jams by "The Familiar Ugly”, which was a conglomerate of up to 50 friends of the band who were recorded doing free-form improvising on April Fool’s day prior to the principal song sessions. The band essentially instructed the “Family” to do whatever they wanted and adhere to no formal structure. The resultant hours of cacophonous chaos were then edited into introductions and bridges before and between the proper “songs”.

The end results of this fusion of relative “order” and “chaos” produced one of the most original and radical pop music albums to come from the late 1960s. As previously stated, it operated in an arena that may have been somewhat kin to psychedelia, but had so much more visionary significance in terms of predicting future directions in avant-garde music. To say it was ahead of its time is an understatement and it stands next to Silver Apples in terms of forecasting the course of modern music in the decade to come.

STAR TREK II - THE WRATH OF KHAN @ 40

 

Forty years ago today, on June 4th, 1982, Paramount Pictures released the second feature film in the Star Trek franchise, The Wrath of Khan. After the disappointing critical and audience response to the first film, The Wrath of Khan not only proved there was still life in the stars, it helped revive the franchise and give it a foundation to build on that would keep it on both the big and small screens throughout the remainder of the 20th century and into the new millennium.

Star Trek, in the early 1980s, was struggling to get itself together after the failure of the first film. With so much hype and expense invested into its production and release, its lack of action or a compelling antagonist left many bored with its self indulgences. Scenes like the opening Enterprise beauty shot that goes on far too long and the 2001 derivative extended light show when Spock penetrates the inner sanctum of the mysterious “V’Ger” entity left audiences feeling impatient and frustrated. These excesses put Paramount in the position of relegating Gene Roddenberry to the mostly honorary role of “executive consultant” on the second film, even though he’d written a treatment where the crew travel back in time to stop a Klingon plot to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That idea was outright rejected and Paramount were determined to keep everything on a tight leash. The fan base were readily apparent for the material, but it was necessary to bring something to the screen that could reach beyond that cult following and into the wider general public.

To this end, the studio hired Harve Bennett, a new Paramount television producer, to helm the project. Bennett assured the executives he was used to working with tight budgets and that he could come up with something better than the first movie. However, he’d never watched the original series before, so he was starting off at a disadvantage where he needed to familiarize himself with the material quickly. So he set about viewing the original TV shows with an eye towards finding something which he might use as a springboard for his film. He found what he was looking for when he came across the episode, Space Seed, which featured Ricardo Montalbán as the genetically engineered totalitarian tyrant, Khan Noonien Singh. Bennett had recognized one of the first films biggest deficiencies was in its lack of a compelling villain and Khan immediately stood out as a character he could use to create some engaging conflict.

With the central antagonist in place, the next step was to nail down the story, which went through a few iterations before it came to its final form. Initially, the idea was for Kirk to investigate a rebellion on a distant world and discover that his son is the leader of the rebels. Khan is the mastermind behind the plot, and Kirk and son join forces to defeat the tyrant. Then they came up with an idea of Khan stealing a devastating new weapon from the Federation, but that seemed too negative for the Federation to be involved with. Eventually it was suggested the device be changed from a weapon to a means to transform a dead planet into a living one, with the caveat that it could also be misused to destroy a living planet. With that concept the Biblical titled “Genesis Device” was born.

The other key element in the story was the death of Spock, something which had been essential to convince Leonard Nimoy to be part of the project. He wanted his character to have a spectacular ending in order for him to agree to be in the movie, so this had to be integrated into the conflict in some way. Early versions of the script had this happening too soon in the film and, when it was accidentally leaked to fans, caused an uproar of disapproval. Overall, the theme of the story had a lot to do with aging and death, so the demise of Spock had to be carefully integrated so as to maximize the emotional impact and allow the character to have a suitably climactic ending.

Getting Ricardo Montalbán to reprise his role as Khan was an easy sell as he was thrilled to have the chance to return to the character and deliver a performance which he would consider the highlight of his career for the rest of his life. Montalbán loved that Khan was more than a simple evil-doer. Khan was, at his core, driven by goals which he believed to be just and right and good. He was not disposed to do evil for the sake of power alone. He was a character who sought to build a society according to his perceptions of courage and bravery and strength, but he was abandoned by Kirk and the Federation on a doomed planet and forgotten there. As a result, he became obsessed with a need to seek vengeance and retribution for his fate. To this end, the writers drew heavily from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. This reference climaxes in the final showdown between Kirk and Khan with literal quotes from the book.

After the film’s completion, Montalbán only expressed one regret for not having the chance to work directly with William Shatner. There was no scene in the film where they were in the same location, so all their interactions were remotely done through communications technology. As a result, their scenes were shot independently with Montalbán having to play off the readings from a script girl. The fact he was still able to emote with conviction is a testament to the quality of his work in the film.

Upon its release, the film scored big with both critics and fans, breaking box-office records and establishing the Star Trek franchise as truly bankable. It ended up becoming the start of a trilogy of features including The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home. With the success of Khan, Spock’s demise became somewhat exaggerated as they managed to convince Nimoy to return by granting him directorial control over the remainder of the trilogy. Those films ended up providing the impetus to extend the franchise into a set of new TV series which would continue into the beginning of the new millennium. Though there was a lull after the failure of Star Trek Enterprise and the last Next Generation film, the Star Trek universe burst back into action after the release of a rebooted film trilogy starting in 2009 and a slew of new TV series kicking off since the launch of Discovery in 2017. If it weren’t for The Wrath of Khan, none of that legacy may have taken hold and the Star Trek universe may have faded into no more than a mid 20th century cultural curiosity.

PSYCHIC TV - HELL IS INVISIBLE - HEAVEN IS HER/E @ 15

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the release of the debut album by the reconstituted Psychic TV, aka PTV3, Hell Is Invisible...Heaven Is Her/e, which was issued on June 4th, 2007. It represented the rebirth proper of Psychic TV after over a decade of dormancy and was part of a pantheon of Throbbing Gristle related releases that year. These included a new TG album as well as new works from Carter Tutti, Thee Majesty and Sleazy’s Threshold Houseboys Choir. A banner year for TG fans to be sure!

After the release of Trip Reset in 1996, an album recorded while Genesis was recovering from severe injuries resulting from his escape from a near fatal house fire in California, PTV effectively ceased operation. No new recordings were release and only reissues were hitting the market, often of dubious provenance given that Genesis had sold off most of the PTV rights for cheap while desperate for cash, which put many titles into a nebulous state, opening the doors for less scrupulous labels to take advantage. PTV’s Roman P. even ended up in a Volkswagen TV ad where they obviously were oblivious to the songs condemnation of Polanski and his dalliances with underage girls.

During this time, Genesis mostly moved away from the music world and focused on fine arts, photography, poetry and installations. There were occasional live appearances, including a reunion of PTV’s founding members when Alex Fergusson joined Genesis and a few other members from the mid 1980s era PTV for a special one-off show in London in 1999. This event celebrated his return to the UK after his “exile” in 1991 after a scandalous TV tabloid piece accused him of Satanic abuse of his children. P-Orridge had also started working with Bryin Dall for the spoken word project, Thee Majesty, which also performed that evening.

By the mid 2000s, Genesis and wife Miss Jackie / Lady Jaye were settled in NYC when Jaye and former Toilet Boys drummer, Edward ODowd, began working in tandem to convince Genesis to reactivate Psychic TV. After the reunion of Throbbing Gristle in 2004, Genesis finally decided it was time to bring back PTV and they set about filling out the rest of the band with local NYC musicians. The revitalized group began performing and working on new material which eventually lead to the recording of Hell Is Invisible… Heaven Is Her/e.

The album and the rebuilt group ultimately landed in a musical territory which had always been at the core of Genesis’ interests, psychedelia, but which s/he had only briefly managed a dalliance with in the mid 1980s during the “Hyperdelic” phase of the band with the release of singles like Godstar & Good Vibrations and the unfinished Allegory and Self LP. Almost from the first days of he/r exploration of music, Genesis had wanted to have a psychedelic rock band inspired by groups of the late 1960s. With this new version of PTV3, Gen went full tilt into that genre with unhindered abandon. The results of those efforts were not always successful, but the intent was certainly sincere and Gen never seemed more satisfied with the music that was created than by what PTV3 did. The album’s themes, while not constructed into a coherent conceptual album, roughly chart the progress of death and rebirth while also incorporating concepts of gender ambiguity, which had been at the core of Gen’s relationship with Jaye for the preceding decade.

The album was the only one to feature Miss Jaye before her tragic death later that year. The loss of Jaye was a devastating blow for Genesis and put the project into turmoil for a couple of years before they could fully regroup and get back to proper touring and recording, which they did for the next decade until Genesis became ill with leukemia, a condition which ended he/r life early in 2020. Of the PTV3 era releases, this album may not be their best but it does “set the controls for the heart of the sun”.

P.S. Oops! Almost forgot to censor the cover so I don't get dinged by FB's algorithms. Can't have those naughty bits visible!