drop dub massacre

Two rare King Tubby mixes - date of recording unknown - which appear on the 1999 Culture Press CD release, "The Fatman Tapes", reissued as "Crucial Dub" the following year on the UK imprint, Delta Music.  

Dub be thankul for what you got.

Produced by Ken 'Fatman' Gordon.
Mixed by King Tubby.

Earl "Chinna" smith: guitar;
Gladstone Anderson, Winston Wright: keyboards;
Robbie Shakespeare: bass;
Sly Dunbar: drums.

▼ KING TUBBY: SOUNDBOY MASSACRE from "The Fatman Tapes" CD (Culture Press) 1999 (Jamaica / UK)
▼ KING TUBBY: DROP DUB from "The Fatman Tapes" CD (Culture Press) 1999 (Jamaica / UK)

zen and the art of public policing

illustration by ib.

There is a theatre company near here on the south side. For many years it was Glasgow's Transport Museum before they moved it to the West End. Willem Dafoe did some New York Studio workshops there sometime in the early 90s, I seem to recall. I did not attend. But it struck me as an improvement on Victor and Barry.

Anyway. Volunteers at the Tramway have worked over the years to build a kind of Zen Garden at the back. It is a nice space and the kids have always enjoyed it. Long before the indoor smoking ban was put in place, it was our habit to sit out with a glass of wine or two and let them run about.

It would be remiss of me not to point out that it is a theatre company. There have always been plenty of twee characters about. 

It has never bothered me any. 

The garden has a nice feel to it and more or less adopts the spirit of a public park. Once in a while you might see a gardener out there running a rake over the gravel or picking up the odd piece of debris.

It has always been my habit to carefully retrieve my dog-ends and dispose of them in a big metal dustin before I leave. This I do in any park, but the act of observing the man with the rake is admonition enough. He might not consciously make intricate swirling patterns in the gravel, but he attends to it very dutifully.

So. A couple of months back I stopped in there on my own after visiting the dentist several hundred yards along the road. It was late afternoon and the bar was wholly empty except for a young asian girl in her twenties. She ordered a tall glass of wine and stepped out to a table to read her book.

"Can you smoke out here ?" she asked me.

"Of course, " I said, and wandered off to sit on the long wooden bench running alongside the gravel trench. It was a pleasant afternoon. I nursed my own glass. Presently, I took out a cigarette and lit it.

I was about an inch in when a second young woman appeared - this one in dungarees - and hopped onto the concrete ledge just behind me. She was about eighteen or so. Going on forty. She sat there cross-legged with her face turned a little theatrically toward the sun. She was very pale and had a little skipless hat perched on her head. Her face was peppered with freckles.

She wrinkled her nose.

"You can't smoke in the garden," she said.

I looked at her. "Of course you can," I said. "We are outdoors."

"Yes," she allowed. "But this is a zen garden. Many people come out here to contemplate. Besides, it's not just disrespectful to Buddhists. There are all sorts of people who come here. People of diverse ethnicity and religion."

She enuciated each word as if passing sentence. Haltingly, and just a little condescending in tone. As she said it, she glanced pointedly at the young Asian woman scrabbling to extinguish her own cigarette out of sight beneath the table.

"What do you mean ?" I said. "I am a Buddhist. A Glasgow Buddhist. Virtually every Buddhist I know smokes."

"No they don't," she corrected me. "Buddhists don't smoke."

"Of course they fucking do," I retorted. "Muslims; Hindus; Sikhs and Christians. We are not in fucking church."

I was getting wound up in spite of myself.

"Listen," I said. "I just spent two pounds fucking fifty on this glass of house white. It tastes like piss. I am going to finish my damn cigarette. I've been coming here for years and you are the first person who has had any issue with my smoking."

The asian girl seemed aghast. The bitch in the dungarees was delighted.

"You're upsetting the other patrons," she told me. "If you continue like this you will have to leave."

I did, but not before finishing my cigarette. I did not enjoy it any. I was so incensed I left the butt curled up on the raised gravel where my foot crushed out its last gasp.

"You're not a Buddhist," she snapped at my back.

I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have ended it by turning the other cheek. Maybe the whole situation went tits up as a result of my engaging with her in the first instance.

That's the thing with religion. When it catches on, it starts a fire. More often by accident than grand design.

This post originally appeared as a comment by way of reply to friend and sibling, NØ, who much to my delight confesses to having used the wafer thin pages of numerous Gideons Bibles to roll a joint or two. Spiritual economy and recycling at its most considered.
 
▼ I ROY: BUCK & THE PREACHER from "Hell And Sorrow" LP (Trojan) 1973 (Jamaica / UK)

none too slim slow slider

Originally released on the 1975 Total Sounds Jamaican LP imprint - and again on Grounation in the UK in that same year - "Roots of Dub" lays down the 'law' at Kingston 11, Waterhouse, mixed straight up and round the corner in the delapitated bungalow which served as King Tubby's infamous studio; the 4-Track hub of heavily tampered with drum and bass, "Tubby's Home Town Hi-Fi", frequented by everybody from Bunny Lee and Lee Perry to Glen Brown and Augustus Pablo.

An electronics prodigy, Osbourne Ruddick - King Tubby - built his first, modest, amplifier (and radio transmsitter) in 1962 at the age of twenty-one; the pioneer to the sound system officially first put into action commercially in 1970, producing back to back 45 versions featuring Tubby's trademark echo, reverb and phase effects. A crowning achievement on the slider.

"Roots of Dub", produced by Bunny Lee, was only Tubby's second 'official' release, backed once again by house regulars, the Aggrovators. His debut, "Dub From the Roots", hit the streets a year after Lee Perry's 1973 co-produced dub classic "Blackboard Jungle" appeared on Perry's own Upsetter label. Tubby was encouraged to cement his growing reputation as master mixman with a follow-up issued under his own name, stepping out from behind the desk for a well received sequel and striking a regal pose.

The mid seventies finally saw him catapulted centre stage. Ragamuffin nobility, if not by Elizabeth's appointment.

His original Home Town Hi-Fi incredibly came under direct attack from the police at a Dance Hall in 1975 when he was investigated for performing publicly without a permit. Lacking sufficient funds merely to grease a few palms, the official response was to immediately put down the offending animal - his sound system - in a hail of government issued bullets. A riot very nearly ensued.

In similar circumstances to those shrouding Prince Far I, King Tubby himself was gunned down outside his home in 1989 by an alleged prowler. The culprit was never apprehended. It pays to travel incognito. Sovereign ghettoes or otherwise.

Produced by Bunny Lee. Mixed by King Tubby.

The Aggrovators:
Bass: Robbie and Fully; Drums: Santa, Carlton Barrett, Brother Benbow;
Lead Guitar: Chinna; Rhythm Guitar: Tony Chin, Family Man, Brother Bogga;
Piano: Touter Organ: Ossie Bongo, Brother Ian.

▼ KING TUBBY: ROOTS OF DUB from "King Tubby: The Dub Master Presents The Roots Of Dub" LP (Total Sounds) 1975 (Jamaica)

jah stitch in time, black lamb time

Ably backed by the Aggrovators, and recorded at King Tubby's Studio in Kingston, Jamaica; this diamond studded needlepoint from Melbourne James was recorded sometime between 1975 and 1977.

It neither appears on Stitch's 1976 Third World LP release, "No Dread Can't Dead" or 1977's,"Watch Your Step Youth Man" on the same label, but can be found on the 1999 CD retrospective on Culture Press - which began operating out of Buckinghamshire, England circa 1984, compiling a series of out of print releases; originally on vinyl - and more recently on the Don Letts' 2002 EMI compilation, "Dread Meets Punk Rockers Uptown".

Produced by Bunny Lee.
Engineered by King Tubby and Prince Jammy.

▼ JAH STITCH: BLACK HARMONY KILLER from "The Killer" CD (Culture Press) 1999 (Jamaica / UK)

blair witch project, after a fashion

Alan Bennett is drowning in his teacup; a surfeit of suburban semi-detached ennui posing as angst.

A whirlpool in a sweeping - suitably modest - driveway emptied of carp. No koi, then, just cloyingly demure. Petty resentments smouldering under doilies scattered like iced fancies. Or fossils behind chintz curtains.

Well, alright; as per usual it is simply the television to blame. The flat screen banshee in the corner stripped of cathode ray glimmer. The twins are dead. And so is the legitimate ghosting I have learned to endure on a Saturday night.

If Snatch were lost on the I.R.T., we are done. Screwed. A valve driven box with one knob missing. Reeking of Ameretto. Disaronno. Crushed almond over viagra, stiffly anticipating a verbose duel.


▼ THE CLASH: JUNCO PARDNER from "Sandinista!" 3 x LP (CBS) 1980 (UK)

kick it over weh

Disconcertingly, I remember well when those representatives of the Gideon Society turned up at my high school to distribute copies of their Holiday Inn paperback to my entire year. Now. I have never been much of a practising Christian, let it be known, but for some reason I recall being somewhat enthralled at the occasion.

Aged 12, it was something of a preemptive David Lynch moment. Pitched betwixt the holy and the unholy, I followed the train of 'students' as we marched leadenly down onto the stage to shake hands with that liver-spotted brigade. I might have even been grateful. My family did not possess a bible, seemingly, and I was curious to take it home and skip straight to the Book of Revelation.
I had already swallowed my fill of that Old Testament shit at Sunday School as a wide-eyed sceptic in elasticated mittens, but I admit was curious.

The elderly man who passed me my copy seemed vaguely haunted. His eyes appeared clouded and crystalline at one and the same time. Of course, I was expecting the faint waft of malt whisky but all I caught was breath mints.

At twelve years of age I could smell a rat.

I wondered if that Naugahyde bound volume had sufficient power to ward off vampyres. Or if a flotilla of vodka might strangle the stench of garlic.
In hindsight, he probably ran straight as a dye. My memories are no doubt fallible.

In any case, I kept that Gideon's bible for years. I delved into it late at night, an unlit cigarette clamped between my teeth, and I often wondered what might prompt one to engage with that society. To my uneducated mind they seemed every bit as esoteric or stained as the Rosicrucians.

Freemasons and geometric trinities. Straight lines from 'a' to 'b'.


There are no f@ckin' straight edges in nature.

Here is the Westway version of the Willi Williams classic 

alluded to previously. The ghost of Far I hovers.

▼ THE CLASH: JUSTICE TONIGHT / KICK IT OVER from "London Calling" Maxi 12" (CBS) 1979 (UK)

dub weh

cry tuff

Shot dead on home turf in Kingston, Jamaica in 1983 following a confrontation, seemingly, with an opportunistic armed intruder, Michael James Williams - aka Prince Far I - qualifies for an honorary season ticket on the Bleachers; no refund. The findings of any police enquiry in a city notorious for its 'higher than I' murder statistics can never wholly be taken at face value. What is certain is that his death was no small beans. A major presence and pioneer on the UK Dub scene and its influence on more commercial productions, Far I was every bit as cutting edge as the biggest names operating out of Studio One. Razor beats and stroppy bubbles.

Long before the bullet casings became prima facie evidence, the "Final Chapter" was written.

▼ PRINCE FAR I & THE ARABS: BLACK WEH from "Cry Tuff Chapter 3" LP (Front Line) 1980 (UK)

bl@ckhead

a curiosity only...

by deed of absurdist dissension, and conspicuously excluded from the 1984 Polydor release of Ian Dury & the Music Students' "4,000 Weeks Holiday", the executive decision to derail the project as the result of craven faint-heartedness prompted two years of bitter sparring between Dury and his financiers. Fearing legal action from the estate of Enid Blyton, or merely reluctant to yield to contractual mutiny, the label insisted on maintaining its censorial stance.

Dury was incensed and unrepentant.

Superficially a 'critique' on children's television, Dury's invective seems driven primarily as the result of childhood exclusion and his inability to forgive those moral tzars for papering over the cracks. His later experience as observer and educationalist seem to have infuriated him further. Provoked, presumably, by Blyton's inherent class and race division, and by the condescending remit of government licensed broadcasting in general, "Fuck off Noddy" is a return volley. The fury of a small child plagued by chanting bullies in the playground.

The chasm between projected ideal and reality.

Do I think he hit the nail on the head ?

Maybe. Not really. The BBC, virtually single handedly, wove my own security blanket as one of countless thousands of children regularly 'watched' by the box in the corner. A blanket with as many holes in it as unshakable convictions, maybe, it served both as genial babysitter and an eye into disturbing complexities revealed with little or no sentimentality.

Its impartiality in reporting current affairs. Its obligation to historical accuracy.

I am possibly as indebted to the BBC as any indoctrinated child of Stalin or Mao, but I don't believe the proliferation of political correctness over the past two to three decades has served that model well.

Do I think Polydor was wholly unjustified in imposing nonsensical standards of 'decency' on its contracted artist ?

Absolutely. Fuckin' A. I think Ian Dury - architect of "Spasticus Autisticus" (banned by the BBC in 1981); confrontational pearly king - was rightly pissed at seeing a bunch of suits hop from one foot to the other and urinate over each other like chastened whippets while he tore at the muzzle. In fact, it was probably Polydor's tacit refusal to throw its weight behind anything explicitly controversial after "Spasticus Autisticus" gathered condemnation during the International Year of Disabled Persons which prompted Dury's intransigence with regard to "4,000 Weeks Holiday" in the first instance. Beyond that, he was almost certainly fueled by resentment at the music industry's wholly successful bid to typecast him as curmudgeonly eccentric and rogue.

Or his own collusion to that end. Well. We've all of us painted ourselves into a corner at one time or another.

The cosiest liberals who initially championed him as a model of social inclusion were quick to distance themselves when his awkward utterances deviated from their own self-serving script.

Is it offensive ?

Only in so far as marionettes have cause to suffer indignation.

And wait. If one chooses to employ that same invective now, say, to channel contempt on the worst excesses of 'reality' programming - as in the X Factor - I suggest this casual barbed dart has almost certainly passed its flight test.

Fuck off, Jedward. Fuck off, Louis Walsh.

graphic by barney bubbles, 1981.

† IAN DURY & THE MUSIC STUDENTS: FUCK OFF NODDY (UNRELEASED) from "4,000 Weeks Holiday" LP (Polydor) 1984 (UK)

† Music link deleted under public nuisance act (1957) 2 QB 169. Repeated play may soften one's brain and/or shower with splinters.

anchor snapper

ANC 1021.

Lifted from their 1975 LP, "Elastique" - also released on the UK independent Anchor label - "Why Did You Do It ?" remains as taut and inviting a proposition as a 38" peach in a g-string.

Brassy white funk delivered without irony or criminal remorse. The last gasp of live circuit desperadoes drowning in Johnny Walker watered down with flat Cola served in plastic cups.

A hangover in a goldfish bowl doubling as a dressing room.

Fronted by Elmer Gantry - one time vocalist and guitarist in Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera as early as 1967, and session singer with the Alan Parsons Project on the track "Psychobabble" - it was his decision to team up with newcomer, 'Kirby' which directly led to their modestly securing a UK Top 20 hit. Buoyed by Steve Emery on bass and Jim Russell on drums, Stretch stepped into the studio and promptly laid down a number of Gantry and Kirby compositions. Produced by an aspiring Martin Rushent, a tide of journeymen horn players - including Mike Bailey and Ron Carthy - were brought in to further augment the mix. An inspired development.

The resulting 45, penned by Kirby, garnered more than its share of radio play and lingered in the UK charts for nine weeks without actually troubling the Top 10. It should have gone much higher, but them's the breaks; worn knicker elastic or not.

With no small thanks to 'Scarab' for reminding me why this originally was one of the very first songs posted on SibLINGSHOT ON THE BLEACHERS.

Hold the cocaine and stretch limousine. Keep the champagne on ice. "Why Did You Do It ?" was sadly a flash in the pan.

▼ STRETCH: WHY DID YOU DO IT ? from "Why Did You Do It ? b/w Write Me A Note" 45 (Anchor) 1975 (UK)

(i don't wanna go down to) the basement

not a rerun of the basement tapes, but an ear full of soot in the ink well.

brass necked plagiarism, above, by ib.

If you happen to be in the vicinity of Nashville, Tennessee this coming Sunday, December 13th, do not neglect to pay a visit to The Basement, 1604 8th Avenue South. Mixing up the medicine, while those not in the know aimlessly wander the pavement above, will be a promisingly engaging assembly - see above - featuring bleachers' regulars, Max and the Wild Things. Follow the link below for ticket details and availability, and if you come up short grab the man in coon-skip cap on the door and tell him SibLINGSHOT sent you. Or at least nudged you in the ribs.

What price a heady concoction with genuine pharmaceutical value ? Here, kitty.

official poster, above, by monkey ink design.

YOU GOT YOUR
+
a packet of three coming to the basement.

+
By way of an On The Bleachers only bonus, here is the Welcome to 1979
studio recording of "Without a Sound", originally featured in July in all its ragged glory;
live at The Basement from a previous appearance. With added horns.

MAX & THE WILD THINGS: WITHOUT A SOUND
from "The Grass Is Always Greener" EP (WT1979) 2009 (US)

MAX AND THE WILD THING @ THE BASEMENT, DEC. 13TH 2009, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

cornerman

tick... tock... tick...

Like my Polish grandfather, I find
myself preoccupied with watches.
Wristwatches, to be precise;
pocket watches, too. Silver oysters.

Clocks, on the other hand... twice
strike me with deeper forebodings.
The bronchial tick and tock, and dust,
the pendulum swing. The chime.

I have never been much of a one, all
round, for keeping time. Punching in.
Well-oiled or not. Sober or shiftless.

And even though I do my best to
keep up to date, from time to time,
I miss those Swiss mechanisms
once so fashionable and ubiquitous;
the delusion that somehow my
actions make an impact on the smooth
running through one day to the next.

My grandfather may once have held
ambitions to become a watchmaker,
I do not know. After the war he worked
the trams for a spell, sticking to the rails.
A year or so of this. He found his niche
behind a bar serving time-served men
on leave from the glow of welded rivets.

Setting down half gills and pitching out
drunks. Pulling pints and punches under
the huge brewery clock in his corner.

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

the lime in limerick

Back by popular demand. Well. In a manner of speaking. 

The following Learism - in the loosest sense - was originally posted last Friday and subsequently withdrawn by the taste police:


I could'a bin a sex pistol,
but I wasn't invited;
I could'a bin a contender,
but I wasn't from Detroit;
I could'a bin a banjo player,
but someone clipped my strings;
I could'a got out my f@ckin' bed
in the morning, but, then again,
I'm a genuinely lazy sod.

Suck my sock. Winston's dead
and I'm still sleeping.

Give me a motherf@ckin' moment.
I'm trippin' on the stairs.


zzzzz.

By way of an afterword, you may or may not remember that I mentioned some time back that my wife and I hatched a plot to paint the communal landing in our decaying apartment block.

Not just the plot, you understand, but the vaguely tiresome physical undertaking.

While not to everybody's taste, perhaps, we were subsequently approached by the authority in charge of maintenance - the very same body, in fact, which refused to furnish me with paint some five years previously - and lukewarmly thanked. As opposed to being threatened with eviction.

Well. I was expecting to be reprimanded at the very least.

What I was not prepared for, however, was their using our - accidental - colour scheme as a template and employing a team of twenty painters and decorators to 'refurbish' all twenty-three floors in the very same institutional hues. Including the back stairwell, I hasten to add.

Result. Although I gather a number of tenants are less than enamored.

Here's 2 by 4. Neither of which made it onto on EMI's "Entertainment!" in their original form.

There is no five year plan.

▼ GANG OF FOUR: ARMALITE RIFLE from "Damaged Goods" EP (Fast Product) 1978 (UK)
▼ GANG OF FOUR: DAMAGED GOODS from "Damaged Goods" EP (Fast Product) 1978 (UK)

fry and ham

And the curious thing is, I wasn't frying up 'Braveheart' beef slices over yesterday's post. I wasn't even particularly fond of that movie.

Out to lunch, is as accurate an assessment as any. Or old ham.

Chalk it down as an excuse to serve up some reconstituted Jamie Reid.

the lazy earl of wessex

Annotated as an "outtake"on the 2002 repackage, I can hear nothing here differing significantly from their definitive LP version.

The most recent accession, of course, to the Dukedom of Wessex is none other than 'our' Prince Edward; a tiresome brat harboring melodramatic delusions of grandeur. A dribbling imbecile racing from one knockout to the next. No Tad 'behemoth', he. More a sneering conduit of waste. The antithesis of Darwinism. As a Pictish heathen with a dash of Ghengis Khash running through my veins, I feel no allegiance whatsoever to the House of Windsor. And scarcely more to Holyrood. We'll suffer no whiff of borgeois monarchism here.

No small amount of atrocious snivelling.

We bring with us the ghosts of lepers and saints to staunch our mortal wounds.

▼ SEX PISTOLS: SEVENTEEN (Wessex Studios, NMTB Outtake) from "Box Set" 3 x CD (Virgin) 1977 / 2002 (UK)

bleak house music

Last night's attempt at poetry stank, quite frankly.
I woke up this morning and pulled the chain.
Not being one to flush the baby with the bath water,
I was loathe to disengage for the want of crying.

Spilt milk; gluey sex; oil pastels; empty bottles.
Bleeding containers of takeaway food. Sour spoils.

Ah well. I am inured enough to weekend ill tidings.
Salvation armies march on their stomachs. There is
a circle of concientious objectors stamping on mine:
pantomime sergeants; Presbyterian whingers.

Abandon your instruments of hope all ye who enter.
There's not a dry eye or house around here for miles.

blood oranges

in the court of the crimson orange.


In December 1436, on the occasion of his infant son's initiation into the Order of the Dragon - founded by the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, and modeled on the Order of Saint George - emissaries of Vlad II, Dracul, were discharged over the Western Carpathians from Wallachia on a mission to secure a great gift.

Five years earlier - just prior to the birth of his second son and eventual heir - Vlad II, in concert with a select number of princes and vassals, had been summoned to the city of Nuremberg. Sigismund's primary motivation was self-protection; by eliciting a statutory oath of allegiance to the Cross, the royal house sought strategic defense against potential invasion by the Turks. Vlad Dracul's position was to impose control on those outlying mountain passes between Transylvania and Wallachia.

In return, Sigismund pledged to support Vlad's blood claim to the throne. An ambition fully realized by 1436.

"The original Order comprised twenty-four members of the nobility, including such notable figures as King Alfonso of Aragon and Naples, and Stefan Lazarevic of Serbia."

The insignia of the Order, appropriately, was a a coiled dragon with the red cross of Saint George seared into its back. The blood of the Cross sealed in the blood of battle: blood begetting blood.

Dracul, then - derived from the Latin 'draco' - and the Order of the Dragon was adopted as the family crest. Coins were struck under Vlad II's reign bearing the emblem of a winged dragon. By the end of his heir's reign, however - that of Vlad III, or Vlad Ţepeş (the Impaler) - the name 'Dracul' was synonymous with barbarity and the devil.

Dracul-a - son of the dragon - ascended the throne stained by a thirst to avenge the Order and restore the House of Basarab from which he was descended.

A mere six years into his reign, Dracul was deposed by factions in league with Hungary and was compelled to turn to the Ottoman court for assistance. Reneging on his oath to the Order of the Dragon, Vlad II paid tribute to the Sultan in return for military support and went so far as to send his two younger sons into exile as a token of his loyalty. While his brother, Radu forged a lasting alliance with the Sultan's heir, Mehmed, and flourished in this distant corner, Vlad III felt only disgrace at his father's betrayal and defied all efforts to groom him as a devoted subject.

Imprisoned much of the time and roundly chastised, the young prince brooded and plotted.

in 1447, at the age of sixteen, Vlad learned of his father's death at the hands of boyars in league with the Hungarian regent, John Hunyadi, the self-proclaimed 'White Knight'. His elder brother, the heir apparent, was blinded with hot irons and buried alive in Târgovişte, on the right bank of the Ialomiţa in what is presently southern Romania.

What ensued from there directly as an attempt to expand Ottoman influence by imposing Vlad III on the Wallachian throne is well documented. Dracula was impervious to all efforts to manipulate him from afar.

His contempt for the Sultan ran so deep that he gladly entered into an alliance with his father's assassin to reinstate the old Order. By 1456, Wallachia lay all but ravaged by decades of constant war. Agriculture was ailing, his subjects on the brink of starvation, and crime was endemic. Even as the Ottomans advanced through Constantinople into mainland Europe, Vlad Dracula declared war on the Boyars and refused tribute to the despised Sultan, Mehmed. Desperate to impose stability on the riven economy he inherited, the methods employed were at once necessarily cruel and a product of an all consuming wrath.

Thousands were impaled. Entire forests laid bare as his kingdom burned in a crucible of his own forging. Once clear skies roiled with smoke.


And the Christmas gift for a dragon heir ?

Blood oranges from Italy. A small, tart fruit of crimson flesh; withered on the vine.

Were it not for more recent events in Kosovo and Belgrade, Serbia and Bosnia, it might simply read as some dark elusive fairytale. Personal crusades and genocide.

oranges is not the lonely fruit

What is it with oranges ?

Anthony Burgess and 'A Clockwork Orange'; Jeanette Winterson's 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit'; Mark E. Smith's 'I Am Kurious Oranj'.

Save it for evengelists high on fuzzy felted sadism. Bursting segments of citrus heresy.

Orange is Ludwig ripening in the sun. Jaundiced droogs and rapists. Pez dispensers and marching bands; orange is the colour of bigotry.

Well. Tangerine is a different matter, a connotation lacking in orange; a hint of marzipan and the exotic. Open your lips to speak of tangerine and one is carpeted away on an Arabic odyssey. An oud or its distant cousin. Tangerine sparkles with Christmas. Of cleavage and all the trimmings.

And then there are clementines. Blood red and faintly obseidian, whispering of Marrekech. The suspicion of inherited wealth. Paul Bowles and Bill Burroughs asleep in the garden.

It is a thin family line. The intermarriage between one fruit and and another. High yeller and damson orange.

I am a pallid Celt with Slavic leanings. Iberian appetites. Wan would be too polite.

silver tongues and crosses

Recorded in the studio and live at Filmore East and West - with el capitán, Dino Valente conspicuously in or out of the frame and serving a two year stretch for marijuana possession - "Happy Trails" is a saturnine tour de force of worming guitar and flowering intent.

Kings of the Bay Area, "Maiden of the Cancer Moon" is second guitarist Gary Duncan's crowning achievement; building seamlessly into the epic, "Calvary", which is given its definitive 'reading' live in the studio coming up on acid, laid bare at Golden State Recorders, San Francisco on November 19th, 1968.

Reap it and weep.

This is communion with more concrete seals than wafers or fish on the tongue.

John Cippolina: guitar;

Gary Duncan: guitar;
Greg Elmore: drums;
David Freiberg: bass.

▼ QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE: MAIDEN OF THE CANCER MOON from "Happy Trails" LP (Capitol) 1969 (US)
▼ QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE: CALVARY (LIVE 19/11/68) from "Happy Trails" LP (Capitol) 1969 (US)

TA-DA!

Four minutes, give or take, of transcendental triumph or trash. Take your pick.

This is where I pause and wish my wife many happy returns. Pounding on the keyboard while she sulks in the kitchen; not because I forgot her birthday - I didn't - but because it is Sunday and I am pounding on the keyboard.

There is precious little to say on this LP, save that Third Bardo also covered their "My Rainbow Life" and production is credited to Rusty Evans. Oh. And the sleevenotes, compiled by David Rubinson, make for some entertaining reading.

▼ PSYCHEDELIC PSOUL: ROSE OF SMILING FACES from "Psychedelic Psoul" LP (Columbia) 1967 (US)

spilt milk in rubber city

A mere two years after Booji Boy stiffed in their native US, and an overseas deal with Stiff Records soured in the UK, Ohioans Devo signed on the line with major league hitters, Warner Bros. The rest - as some say - was almost history.

Produced in Cologne, Germany, by Brian Eno on the recommendation - in part - of chums Bowie and Pop, "Q: Are We Not Men ? A: We Are Devo", the resulting album, eschewed the pummeling Geiger guitar mystery of Clevelanders, Pere Ubu in favor of instant self-gratification. Fiscally motivated, or just commercially astute, "Come Back Jonee" more than amply demonstrated that Devo shared no midwestern manifesto with those neighboring pioneers of "The Modern Dance " and "Dub Housing". Slick, disposable. As kitschy as David Lynch on the Autobahn.

Bob Casale: rhythm guitar, additional keyboards, backing vocals;

Gerald V. Casale: bass guitar, additional keyboards, lead vocals;
Bob Mothersbaugh: lead guitar, backing vocals;
Mark Mothersbaugh: keyboards, occasional guitar, lead vocals;
Alan Myers: drums.

Produced by Brian Eno and Chuck Statler.
Engineed by Patrick Gleeson and Conrad (Connie) Plank.

▼ DEVO: COME BACK JONEE from "Come Back Jonee b/w Social Fools" 45 (Warner Bros. / Virgin) 1978 (US)

tits, clips, whips and chains

john cooper clarke strikes a ridiculously cool pose, 1977.



inner sleeve, "suspended sentence" ep. TOSH 103.

This, as the BBC was once quick to retort, is little more than a lachrymose repeat.

John Cooper Clarke first released an EP on the Manchester based label Rabid Records in 1977, backed by a coterie of musicians named the Curious Yellows. Produced by Martin Zero for the "Criminal Gramaphone Company" - with artwork by Kirk Van Gough Studios - "The Innocents" EP first seized my ear like a fish hook whipping off the indecently turned cheek of a small boy on a weekend fishing trip. Casting off. A sinking feeling as feathers and lure sail out from the end of the pier and the line snaps.

☚ this is what happens when you pogo round your bedroom without due care and attention.

In equal measures punk poet and stand-up comedian, Clarke had few peers. In hindsight, he probably did more to ignite an enduring fascination with words than a classroom full of yellowing paperbacks. His modest three minute observations often packed more of a visceral punch than a Ken Loach film. And where Loach sometimes stumbled under a banner of self-righteous indignation, Clarke exhibited a lightness of touch more imperfectly aligned with the origami unfoldings of Mike Leigh. Not so much delicate as human and robust. Engagingly open ended.

As a result, I suspect, of HBO's clever placement of "Evidently Chickentown" over the closing credits to an episode from the final series of "The Sopranos", Clarke has enjoyed something of a renaissance of late. Deservedly so.

▼ JOHN COOPER CLARKE & THE CURIOUS YELLOWS: PSYCLE SLUTS (PARTS ONE & TWO) from "Innocents" EP (Rabid) 1977 (UK) [R]
▼ JOHN COOPER CLARKE & THE INVISIBLE GIRLS: THIRTY SIX HOURS from "Snap, Crackle & Bop" LP (CBS) 1980 (UK) [R]
▼ JOHN COOPER CLARKE & THE INVISIBLE GIRLS: SLEEPWALK from "Snap, Crackle & Bop" LP (CBS) 1980 (UK) [R]

PURCHASE WORD OF MOUTH: THE BEST OF JOHN COOPER CLARKE
JCC PREVIOUSLY ON ART DECADE
JOHN COOPER CLARKE: OFFICIAL WEBSITE

degenerative valve disease

ATV's fifth single release proper on Depftford Fun City - not including their "Love Lies Limp" flexi distributed free through issue #12 of fanzine, Sniffin' Glue, the last - "The Force is Blind" parts company with all time-served apprentices with the notable exception of Dennis Burns, but continues in the experimental vein carried over from the fractured mess of "The Image Has Cracked" onto "Vibing Up the Senile Man (Part One)" and their split live LP with Gong veterans, Here & Now.

More of the same messy fare. Dislocated and abrasive.

A chilly post-punk vibe genuflecting puddled bus shelters and urine spattered underpasses. Industrial ghettos navigated on crutches from South London to Manchester and beyond; the corrosive soundtrack of half lives played out in sips. Endless cups of milky tea. Dogs, hot or cold. Benefit cheques and betting slips.

Dennis Burns: bass, synthesizer;
Dave George: guitar, chimes;

Anno: vocals (a-side);
Wally Bril: organ (b-side);
Mark Perry: vocals, knocks, violin.

▼ ALTERNATIVE TV: THE FORCE IS BLIND from "The Force Is Blind b/w Lost In Room" 45 (Deptford Fun City) 1979 (UK)
▼ ALTERNATIVE TV: LOST IN ROOM from "The Force Is Blind b/w Lost In Room" 45 (Deptford Fun City) 1979 (UK)

C.S.I. [sic] van dyslexia, k.o.

Well. There is no ire like that of an angry mod. And maybe I am no angry mod.

▼ THE WHO: SUBSTITUTE from "Substitute b/w Circles" 45 (Reaction / Track) 1966 (UK) 
▼ THE WHO: THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT from "My Generation" LP (Brunswick) 1965 (UK)

why i refuse to twitter #2

"...ha-ha. Oh, Jesus, that's so f@cking hysterical!"

why i refuse to twitter #1

" A ha-ha-ha-ha-ha...."

sack full of silver, or sugary shit

a rather antique silver teething spoon.

On a somewhat rancorous note, I would like to lend a word or too of support to fellow Glaswegian, and stand-up comic, Frankie Boyle, recently censured by the BBC Trust.

By the same token I would like to register mild disgust at Stephen Fry's reaching for the smelling salts on quite jocularly being rebuked for Twittering like the ex public schoolboy that he is.

"Hurrah for curry" ? Just wash it down with lashings of ginger beer and keep on taking the Prozac.

Say what you like. Frankie is very often an wildly entertaining c*nt.

Fry, on the other hand, is a dull approval seeking cretin with Wildely tedious delusions of grandeur. Too polite to ever get into such a scrape over an ill-considered remark.

anorak or fishtail savagery; let sleeping dogs lie

... and

before the skies cleared over Boomland, there briefly existed a sometimes growling sextet, Bulldog Breed. Featuring all three key members of T2 - in what I gather was a fusion of two minor league English collectives, Gun and Please - Bulldog Breed lived long enough to see the release of one long player on the fledgling Decca subsidiary, Deram Nova.

Rationing nuances of the sort which would catapult ...Boomland beyond the run of the mill, the material here is a far more derivative distillation of live circuit blues rock fare studded with an occasionally brilliant facet of pure mod pop, informed by the ever excellent Small Faces and The Who; some very Keith Moon drum patterns, especially, on the track "Reborn", with guitar from Keith Cross which wanders from classic Townshend windmilling into some - briefly - glorious Ron Asheton riffing.

Nice on uppers but largely unremarkable.

Believe it or not, too - given my previous observation on T2's "History Man" stylings - the album even features a harp laden instrumental called "Top of the Pops Cock ?!?!"; a John Mayall piece of tired effrontery which almost put me to sleep. Alas. That was my bleeding eared wish.

And suitably, given Pete Dunton's uncanny resemblance to Dougal from "The Magic Roundabout" (circa T2), there is even a throaway slice of whimsy with the same working title - complete with "Laughing Gnome" faux jollity - which would not be at all out of place on a children's tv show. Lyrically ham-fisted and all the more baffling since side 2 ends on the pseudo penny dreadful which is "Austin Osmanspare"; an overblown slab of gothic posturing which not even Syd would have been able to salvage. Saucer-eyed on Mandrax, melting centre stage.

Made in England, with everything bar the kitchen sink included at a discount.

Peter Dunton: drums, vocals;
Keith Cross: guitar, keyboards, vocals;
Bernhard Jinks: bass; vocals
Rob Hunt: flute, vocals.

Luis Farrell: bass;
Rod Harrison: guitar;

▼ BULLDOG BREED: YOU from "Made In England" LP (Deram Nova) 1969 (UK)