Tuesday, July 27, 2010

newtown #1 | take two



That is thing with new towns. Architectural interventions. Less than ten years on, the paint is worn; the litter and graffiti proliferates. Thirty years on, and the third generation has evolved its own indecipherable mother tongue.

Postscript

On 19th September, 1977, Arianna Forster, Viv Albertine, Paloma Romero, and Tessa Pollitt - collectively The Slits - recorded four tracks with Tony Wilson at BBC studios.
 

Three of those songs would be later worked on in the spring of 1979 - by which point a suitably retiring Palmolive slipped on her raincoat to be replaced by Budgie - at Ridge Farm Studios. Produced by Dennis Bovell for Island, "Cut" eventually hit the racks almost two full years after that session's initial broadcast on The John Peel Show, 27/09/77.

"Vindictive" would not see a commercial release until its inclusion on the 1987 Strange Fruit EP release of that first session, five years after the group disbanded.

It was subsequently repackaged - alongside their second Peel session from April, 1978 (broadcast May 22nd) - as a budget LP and CD issued in November, 1988.


photograph, sans palmolive, by anton corbijn.

THE SLITS: NEWTOWN (19/09/77) from "The Peel Sessions" 12" EP (Strange Fruit) 1987 (UK)

3 comments:

ib said...

Ouch. I was defrosting the fridge when I slipped on those dates and almost broke my hip.

The lapse of concentration has been rectified.

WZJN said...

Nice slice from the Slits! Great to hear it again - thanks!

ib said...

You're welcome, WZJN. How have you been, man ?

I stopped by your place a couple of times fairly recently, but all seemed oddly quiet.

It was interesting to hear this version again. I love "Newtown" on "Cut", but I seem to remember hearing this when it was first broadcast and getting blown out of bed by the terrace anthem at the end of it. The Slits could lace those tribal rhythyms with some dark menace and chants, that's for sure.

And Tony Wilson did a great job of getting the sound on tape.