banksy may, or may not, have been here

Well. The origin of this post - the inclusion of this one song here, at least - is convoluted and curious. A matter of chance. Straightened roots. Jonderneathica - from Underneathica - certainly provoked, in part, this latest slide into phase 2 of the dub. With timely intervention and nod to Ari Up's mischievous association with On-U-Sound. Her continuing adventure in a black market cut. The role of Keith Levene in aiding and abetting.

And then, more specifically, there was the matter of my friend, Jon - the other Jon, the New Jersey refugee with Tillie from Asbury Park still breathing in his armpit - and his very recent account of how "Staggering Heights" provided lucid relief from "too much liquor, guns, drugs, unhappy girls, poverty and small town life."

Or absolute surrender to a script straight out of "comedy central". 

I did not recognise the sleeve. I did not stop to measure up, or try on the jacket.

In fact, were it not for yet more coincidence - the "Copper Shot Dub" of Roots Radic on a passing bus -  I might have never made the connection. And that would be an abysmal shame.

Recording "War of Words" for Adrian Maxwell Sherwood's London label in late '81, proto dub syndicate, Singers and Players was - loosely - a collaboration between various musicians formed out of celebrated Kingston session players, Roots Radics, and top flight superstars including Prince Far I, Bim Sherman, Mikey Dread. Guitarist, Eric "Bingy" Lamont and bassman, Errol "Flabba" Holt were seasoned professionals; contributing to a string of dance hall hits as part of Channel One house band, The Revolutionaries. Half a decade before the the departure of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare prompted a change of identity, if not direction.

The On-U-Sound back catalogue, mirroring those Kingston launched imprints Sherwood coveted, is an impenetrable tangle of poorly indexed releases. Myriad pressings. Mixes. Much of it, allegedly, incompletely represented in later compilations.

Sherman's "World of Dispensation" from "War of Words" - released through Ed Bahlman's NYC based 99 Records in the US - would be reprised on the dub, "Resolution (Part 2)" on the On-U-Sound sequel, "Revenge of the Underdog" in early '82, but by 1983 Ashanti Roy - formerly of The Congos - brought a wholly lighter flavour to the table. 

While the resulting "Staggering Heights" may be fondly remembered for Far I's splendid and fanciful, "Bedward the Flying Preacher", or Roy's "African Blood" - issued as an appetizer ahead of the LP - closer inspection reveals the following song to be something of a show stealer. Stripped to the bone and fleet of heel.

Gamely dodging bullets. Bouncing over cracks. Like The Clash shadowing Junior Murvin after a bright summer's drinking in the park.

And that is probably exactly how one should hear it, on balance. On a boombox. A ghetto blaster. Not basking in the shade in front of a finger smeared monitor on a Sunday afternoon, fatigued from god knows what or when. The bass tuned out a little, the brilliance of clarity dimmed by a yellowing blind.

Still. I made it to the supermarket. The chilled aisles packed either side with exotic fruits and choice meats. I bought a mango. I smoked two or three cigarettes between underground rides; I endowed my default browser with a new persona; I tidied my desktop.

I watered an orchid.

The skies are ablaze. I will share the mango when it has ripened on the window sill. The cigarettes I could do without, but can't.

Written and sung by Roydel Johnson.

▼ SINGERS AND PLAYERS: SNIPERS IN THE STREET from "Staggering Heights" LP (On-U-Sound) 1983 (UK)

a pinball in a machine, rusty james

Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton's "Rumblefish" - expanded in 1975 from her original short story first published in 'Nimrod: 1968', the University of Tulsa's literary journal - succeeded where its bigger budget sibling, "The Outsiders", so obviously failed. Shot entirely in the monochrome of REM sleep, save for those few frames with superimposed colour on captive fighting fish, the film through its parts achieves more than its end result.

A knowing homage to the French New Wave with its echoes of surrealism and the Expressionist cinema of F.W. Murnau and Robert Weine; in addition to the more familiar cinematographic borrowings of Orson Welles, "Citizen Kane" and "Night of the Hunter", in particular.

As a teen drama in much the same mold as "West Side Story", the finished article is a quiet triumph of superior casting - including Dennis Hopper - and atmosphere over narrative content, retaining the choreographed performance of a stage adaptation within a few nicely observed set pieces. Not so much a straight reworking of "Romeo and Juliet" as an epilogue of sorts where all the marginal characters have succumbed to less noble motives or dramatic ends. Concise and defined where "The Outsiders" is embarrassingly slight. And hysterical.









That's not to conclude that in totality it does not suffer from its own overblown dénouement. Those melodramatic flourishes, though, are largely forgivable. Despite this, it was resoundingly rubbished when it it premiered at the New York Film Festival.

Warner Brothers, reluctant to distribute "The Outsiders", passed on "Rumblefish" entirely. Paramount Studios, in turn, were shaken by how much the final edit deviated from the commercial norm.

The soundtrack by Stewart Copeland has worn better, maybe, in the quarter of a century since its original release.

Coppola was insistent that the score be experimental in tone. Recording ambient street noise in Tulsa - where both "The Outsiders" and its successor were filmed - Copeland later mixed the results over and under a battery of instrumentation, layering sequenced parts in synch with video footage and dialogue with the use of a Musync, the cutting edge of studio technology in the early to mid eighties.

Jesus. If I can forgive this film its minor conceits, I am prepared to forgive Stewart Copeland his role in The Police.

Buell Neidlinger: double bass;
Art Krahble and Lory Westin: french horn;
Mel Martin: saxophone;
Pavel Strings: strings;
Stan Friedman: trumpet.

Engineered by Bill Belknap; Jonney Jeronymides;
Kathy Morton; Richard Beggs; Robin Yeager.
Musync engineered by Robert Randles.

▼ STEWART COPELAND: BROTHERS ON WHEELS from "Rumblefish (Original Soundtrack)" LP (A&M) 1983 (US)

▼ STEWART COPELAND: FATHER ON THE STAIRS from "Rumblefish (Original Soundtrack)"
▼ STEWART COPELAND: MOTORBOY'S FATE from "Rumblefish (Original Soundtrack)" LP (A&M) 1983

easter parade

As I pontificated with regard to the 1980's the first time I posted a couple of cuts from Glasgow's The Blue Nile over on Art Decade:

"I hated the self-congratulatory stench of delusion. I hated the graphics. I hated the cheap looking suits and shady haircuts. I hated the flippancy of the music foisted on me in every bar and nightclub. And, above all else, by the end of the decade i wanted to grab Brett Easton Ellis by the scruff of his Armani Wall Street jacket and jam a copy of "American Psycho" right up his smugly winking arse."

I refuse to concede I was by any means too harsh.

I did like this album rather a lot, though. The band was originally commissioned by Linn Hi-Fi to publicly demonstrate the fidelity of their high-end audio equipment, as it goes.

Robert Bell: bass, synthesizer;
Paul Buchanan: vocals, guitar, synthesizer;
Paul Joseph Moore: keyboards, synthesizer;
Nigel Thomas: drums.

Written by Robert Bell and Paul Buchanan. Recorded at Castlesound, Edinburgh.

▼ THE BLUE NILE: EASTER PARADE from "A Walk Across The Rooftops" LP (Linn) 1983 (UK)

shore leave

The album on which Tom Waits first began to weave his poetic tales of dissolution around properly improvised avant-garde jazz motifs, and paid a fond farewell to the "Porgy & Bess" melodrama which had served him so long and so well.

Paving the way between the cinema bistro of 1980's "Heartattack and Vine" - his last for Asylum - and the lime lit sulfur contrasts of "Rain Dogs", "Swordfishtrombones" is a major artistic departure. The first Tom Waits long-player I recall purchasing which didn't sound suspiciously like it might have been composed for architects on a wine-tasting vacation. If his soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's "One From The Heart" smells a little too much of pinot gris or California red, this one is more about cold gin and gut-rot.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I had enjoyed Tom Waits for some years prior to this release, but the oft touted Kerouac affair was beginning to wear as thin as fast as the average waistline of his listeners was expanding; this album leaves one in no doubt that genuine menace lurks in the shallows where your last mouthful meets the dregs.

Recorded during August 1982, Sunset Sound, Hollywood.

Sour breath and the fetid stink of perpspiration. And goodbye, Ernest Hemmingway, at last.

"I never could stand that dog."

▼ TOM WAITS: SHORE LEAVE from "Swordfishtrombones" LP (Island) 1983 (US)

▼ TOM WAITS: FRANK'S WILD YEARS from "Swordfishtrombones" LP (Island) 1983 (US)

PURCHASE SWORDFISHTROMBONES

george jones: tears of a clown

george glenn jones at 77. born saratoga, texas, 12/09/31.



hey. what's in that trumpet, ya f@ckin' lush.

Okay. I know. I need to stop cribbing from WFMU. Thank you, Listener Greg G. I don't recall having heard this particular maudlin dirge previously. What fun!

Let's join in and lighten the load; George Jones celebrated his 77th birthday last week. With a bang.

Written by Curly Putman; Ron Hellard; and Bucky Jones. Produced by Billy Sherrill.

All children intuitively grasp that circus clowns are stumbling alcoholic depressives. It's like a family Christmas reunion with those relatives you didn't even know existed. I could have sworn the biggest circus in the world was in Russia, but apparently that accolade - for permanent circus, at least - goes to Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas, Nevada. After you've laughed yourself half witless at the spectacle of a trio of juiced divorcees falling over their feet and burning to death in a staged automobile accident, you can swap your ringside seat for one in front of the rows of one armed bandits in your hotel casino.

And once you've plugged in the last of those tokens, brothers and sisters, you better just pray that long-shot accumulator comes in.

George Jones, eh ? Even more of a gas than Merle Haggard. On acid.

I'll wager his grandparents were Scottish.

▼ GEORGE JONES: WINO THE CLOWN from "Jones Country" LP (Epic) 1983 (US)

PURCHASE THE ESSENTIAL GEORGE JONES: THE SPIRIT OF COUNTRY BOX SET