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)

on the route of the 19 bus, again | a detour

Recorded sometime in the 1980s, the rythym track behind this dub appears to have been laid down by either the Midnight Rock Crew or Roots Radics; at Channel 1, Harry J's, or Dynamic Sound in Kingston, W1. The precise location is not so much shrouded in mystery, as clouded - I suspect - by amnesia.
 
Produced and arranged by Nkrumah "Jah" Thomas, the magic ingredient - of course - could only have been procured from one source. King Tubby's Home Town Hi-Fi. Never an exact science, despite what the label might read, Overton Brown cannot be faulted in his supporting role here as sorcerer's apprentice.
 
In the course of these burning sounds - compiling, in the main, compositions from Thomas - Tubby keeps the dub deep n' loaded, while Scientist's occasionally irritating electronic flourishes never truly underwhelm the mix. 

Their take on "Copper Shot", penned by Don Drummond Jr. and Tommy McCook, is for me the highlight in a wholly decent set.
 
Leaving even "Ghetto Dub" face down in the dirt. Like so many empty bottles.


▼ KING TUBBY & SCIENTIST: COPPER SHOT DUB (MUSIC IS MY OCCUPATION) from "King Tubby's Meets Scientist at Dub Station" LP & CD (Burning Sounds) 1996 (Jamaica)

attack of the rabbit hole

Produced by Bunny Lee. Written by Bunny Lee.

heh, heh, heh

▼ PRINCE JAZZBO: THE WORMER from "The Wormer b/w The Great Pablo" 45 (Attack) 1976 (Jamaica / UK)

out of the fish, a dark crocus emerges

According to those annals curated by Ubu Projex, Proto Pere stole under the wire into what was soon to become Ubuttoir De Facto in the city of South Euclid, Ohio sometime in late 1975. Therein seeding the earliest documented shoots of their "Heart of Darkness".

While drummer, Scott Krauss shares writing credit on its definitive coupling with "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" - released on Hearthen (Hearpen) in that same year - the dress rehearsal is anchored solely by Tim Wright's bass; the shadowy weight of an exploratory craft set adrift with one hand pummelling on its rotten hull.

Quite what the cargo is, or where it is going, is subject to conjecture.

Undecided. Agitated. It sails drunkenly on stagnant, uncharted waters. 

Underlining Conrad; foul orchids; the potential for misdirected violence.

In its protean form, it remained unreleased until its appearance on the terminal drive of Cooking Vinyl's "Datapanik in the Year Zero" some twenty-one years later. Its direct descendant, more than any other offering from Pere Ubu, perfectly anticipates the concrete chambers and valves of Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures". Muscle and tendon infused with lead.

Peter Laughner is restrained. Strung out. Focused. Pere Ubu, a coiled tuberous corm.

In one song - one might reasonably claim - stocking a reservoir of refracted dystopia for years to come.

Well. We have been here before, you will doubtless recall. I am infected with the unfolding of the crocus still:

"At times a virus infected spider scrabbling over shards of brittle glass, at others a bleak mushrooming nerve agent, the corpulent presence of Thomas and the nihilistic but hugely inventive experimental tones created by Laughner coalesced into a cold blue flame licking out broken windows in the seedy bars of Cleveland to ignite pockets of interest outwith even America."

That Pere Ubu's earliest Cleveland recordings continue to elicit fascination owes much to Laughner's part in the group dynamic, of course, but does not alone explain it. Those nutrients percolating down into the basement propelled Ubu out of the tombs into the blank triumph of "The Modern Dance" and beyond. Peter Laughner's tragic demise was a wound which Pere Ubu survived. In those days before David Thomas chased out Vachel Lindsay, or outwardly bore witness to Kingdom Hall, the forces which galvanized him seemed not so much biblical as tainted by universal pollutants.

Vietnam. Recession. Listlessness. Fright.

The interment of an irrational optimism which flourished briefly in the 1960s.

Much of the time, I find myself not so much in disagreement with any dire prognosis, as simply astonished that one day continues to follow on the last; an endless succession of crisis and war - disorder - a flipbook animation of human distemper travelling all the way back to Adam and Eve.

One holocaust after another.

So. Same as it ever was. A tangle of angels and words. Jihadi. Pulchritude. 

Mortal combat.

Endurance of the human condition through procreation rather than spiritual rebirth.

The 'p' in Hearpan might be Anglo-Saxon for 'th' - the whole a harp or lyre - but I hear mostly moist flutterings. A deluge of insects.

David Thomas: vocals; Peter Laughner: guitar;

Tim Wright: bass; Dave Taylor: EML synthesizer.

▼ PERE UBU : HEART OF DARKNESS (REHEARSAL) from "Disc V: Terminal Drive: Rarities (Datapanik In The Year Zero)" 5 x CD (Cooking Vinyl) 1996 (US)

white socks | lost in laundry

Just over a year ago, you may recall, I featured a still from photographer, Wayzata Camerone's 'Glendale Series' after stumbling on an enlightening piece on Nothin' Says Somethin'. 

Most people, I suspect - passing familiar with Camerone - will remember him as feverish vocalist and player with white L.A. rioters, The Braniacs. Nathan Nothin' also recalls that he ran a "notorious afterhours punk club frequented by X, Blasters, Plugx, Go-Go’s, Fear, Weirdos"; a rotating cast now almost as noirishly delinquent as 1950's mugshots. Flipped over on a sticky ringed bar.

Let's get lost.

Less well known, perhaps, is that Wayzata Camerone was himself an accomplished practioner in 10 x 8. Teaching F-Stop and depth of field in a class in Pasadena in the 90's. Perfecting, I waxed back then, "a hardboiled eroticism perfectly at home in the seedier Californian haunts once home to would-be Hollywood screenwriters and miscreants". Images snatched with all the delicacy of a safecracker in the thick of armed robbery.

Well. Posthumously, Wayzata deserves his share in the heist bankrolled by east coast upstarts of the calibre of a Richard Kern. Should anybody call on me as a witness, I will gladly attest to it.

The Wordpress blog, Wayzata Camerone, is an attempt to set the record straight by executors of his estate. Director, India Jennings recently got in touch with me to the effect that more negatives have been uncovered; "probably made between ’93 and ’94 at Wayzata’s cottage-studio in Glendale, or at a West LA apartment he rented from ’94 to ’95."

The above slice of tail is one of two original prints dusted out of a cottage he procured while on the run. From demons, maybe. A scarlet virus.

It is almost perfect. I would clap my hands, but the ghost of recalcitrance gets in the way. The gnawed shaft of a #3 wood.

Let's get crossed. Off everybody's motherf@ckin' list. 

I know a hit when I smell one. The perfect fairway strike continues to elude me.


postscript:
WDC is alive and swell. MCB. Not so much drunk with funk, as fine and finnegan; reconstituted in DC.

▼ CHET BAKER: LET'S GET LOST from "Chet Baker Sings & Plays With Bud Shank, Russ Freeman & Strings" LP (Pacific Jazz) 1955 (US)
▼ CHET BAKER: LOVE VIBRATION from "The Incredible Chet Baker Plays & Sings" LP (Carosello) 1977 (US)

a cruel and incontinent punishment

If I did not know it for the broken crock of shit it almost certainly is, I might hazard that my game is cursed.
 
For some time now, my son has been fond of golf. 

What began simply enough as idle simulation on a games console quickly gravitated to genuine curiosity on the green. Junior clubs were procured and for several months now he has been honing his skills on municipal courses.
 
Now. Golf is all very well - even old stooges have a weakness for it, I realize - and while its modern form may have originated here in Scotland, I for one have never truly graduated beyond a passing fancy for park life pitch and putt.
 
Shepherds knocking stones down rabbit holes on the site of the old course at Saint Andrews ? Sounds suspiciously like fallacy through the wrong end of the looking glass.
 
Anyway. Having previously demonstrated no fear on both the front nine and a driving range, last Sunday I ferried my son by bus to break his 18 hole cherry.
 
Since kids get in for free I could hardly argue. And since adults similarly enjoy a waiving of fees, providing they are merely there to escort a minor round said sprawl of urban wilderness, I settled on merely caddying. Besides, years of bad posture have taken their toll.
 
My back is not up to swinging a shortened stick.
 
As a family, I feel I must add, we also possess a forty year old set picked up in a thrift store, but these are "Ladies Clubs" - each one has this failing branded into the iron like a caution, even the woods - and while I concede there is no real justification for me to turn up my nose, one has to draw a line in the sand somewhere.
 
I would sooner desist from doing so with a ladies' wedge.
 
Well. The boy done good. He hit some more than decent balls. He did not tire, or peak too soon, he did not whinge. Nor did I cajole.
 
So. A good neighbour of ours caught us slouching home, weary but jubilant, and promptly made a gift of a set of full-size clubs. It was an offer I could not refuse, or accept on loan, he knocked on my door and insisted I take them.
 
For all my reservations, I was delighted. If nothing else, I could do with the excuse to get out there and burn off the bloat, as much as the shriveler's block.
 
He is a good egg, this neighbour.
 
Almost but not quite a novice then, I struck out alone to get in some practice.
 
On the first tee, I sliced my drive into the rough. I recovered with a shot straight into the bunker guarding the green. There ensued several woeful attempts to clear the ball. More buckloads of sand than Dylan on the beach. When I did at last make good contact, the ball sailed respectably aloft and onto the front of the green. My putting was adequate.
 
Close to exceeding my stroke limit, I did not bother writing up the scorecard.
 
The next two or three holes went by void of drama. And no spectators to witness me make amends.
 
On the sixth, a steep incline on a fairly short par three, the wind picked up. Once again I was fighting from the rough. I made the shot. My bag toppled over on the fairway behind me, spilling clubs like Pick Up Sticks.
 
I righted it and immediately saw that the vintage putter - a Fred Letters' Silver Swan, no less - had sheared clean through at the foot of the shaft. I have no idea why this might have occurred, unless there were some inherent weakness to it when it was cast. Still. It had clearly lasted decades without incident.
 
I soldiered on.
 
Somewhere between the seventh and the ninth I lost the vinyl cover to the No. 10 Driver. I retraced my steps half-heartedly but there was no sign of it in all that sea of green. I was glad my neighbour seemed entirely plausible in his largesse. I had no stomach to dwell on, less report, this second loss.
 
With every subsequent drive, my game deteriorated rapidly.
 
I made it to the 12th playing the same ball that I began with. At least there was that. Some teenagers appeared over the brow of a hill. Making off with the flag. Whooping drunkly like a tribe of native americans sold down the river for beads.
 
The green was pocked with litter and plastic bottles. I still made the putt in two.
 
There I stood on the 13th. "The Wave". A small pond choked with weeds. Farther on, an undulating sculpted feature right across the fairway.
 
I pressed in the tee and balanced the dimpled ball on it.
 
My arms and shoulders were aching now, my face and neck awash with sweat. On the 17th, to my left, a father and his two young sons were busy making inroads with a couple of well judged pitches. A pin-seeking chip. The youngest son cavorted cheerfully on the lip of the green while his dad remonstrated without much feeling.
 
I lit a cigarette and smoked it down to the butt before settling into the drive. Two afternoons previousy, my own boy had struggled with this one. It was a psychological thing. He fluffed two or three attempts before I stepped up to the plate and smacked it high up in the air, a good ten yards or so beyond the undulating horizon.
 
It felt good. Showing him how to rein in that fluttering dread.
 
I drew back on the stick and let fly with it. Ping! It smacked down in the water with an almighty splash. The six-year-old on the 17th stopped cavorting and silently watched me fish a second ball out of my trouser pocket. No matter. I was justifiably piqued, seeing as I had made it this far with the ball I started out with, but it was a minor gripe. Sploosh! The second ball fell dead in the water in the exact same spot. This time I could feel the second kid watching me. His father too.
 
I fidgeted my shoulders and lined up a third ball. Not counting that first ball, I had another five in the zippered pocket of my golfing trolley. What the fuck. I could make it on home with enough balls to spare.
 
Plop! went the third. The fourth. Now I was seriously pissed and sweating worse than before.
 
The father and his sons drifted away to tee off on the 18th - "Past Caring" - a little too hesitantly for my liking. I dug out the fifth ball and noticed there was no sixth. Between that distant first fairway and this one, I must have lost one somewhere in the deep grass. I did not remember, but I knew I set out with six.
 
That Sunday drive could not have been a fluke. 

I wandered down to the edge of the pond and spotted a fat white globe caught in the reeds. I plucked it out of the water and dried it off on the sleeve of my shirt. Well, all right. Now I had a backup.
 
I squinted at the three of them disappearing over the hill towards the clubhouse and teed up the fifth. An affluent looking bastard in khaki had by now taken their place on the 17th green. I hadn't seen him coming.
 
The fifth and sixth balls went the same way as the rest. I was out of balls. Humiliated. Emasculated.

I was relieved, then, my son was not beside me to share in any of it.

I stashed the clubs away and heaved the bag up on my back. It felt heavy as lead. Heavier than an unsorted sack full of mail. I have worked for the Post Office, too, you know. I have tossed crates around for the odd paycheck between meals; here and there, this way or that, but never once freshly slaughtered slabs of meat.
 
Well. I lumbered off that golf course under my cross and carted those clubs the extra half mile or so to catch a bus.
 
On the way through the gates I stooped to pick up a single ball lost between the vege and chain link fence. I could not leave there empty-handed.
 
More circumspect men than me might have gone to pieces. As it was, I arrived home to a conveniently empty house and hooked up the hog to get it all down. For posterity. Austerity. An absence of silverware, winning smirks.
 
There is no home run, I find, in the long run home.

red army fetish

Judy Nylon, now sixty-two years old, arrived in London sometime in 1970. 

Between the death rattle of the swinging 60s and the arrival of glam rock, most of the British Isles - the media would have had one believe - was deep in the grip of a very public mourning over the demise of The Beatles.
 
Beards predominated, as Nick Kent - and assorted terrified children - observed. 

Dense thickets of facial hair deep enough to hide a monkey in.
 
Divorce and therapy became the order of the day. A primal scream or two, if one could gather together enough coin. While up and down the country everybody's mum and dad was stroking their chin and brooding over Alex Comfort's "The Joy of Sex", I was still getting off on "Meet the Monkees"; glueing my fingertips together in the struggle to get an Airfix B-52 off the ground.

Look ma, no prints.
 
Patti Palladin took a little longer to scrape together the airfare. Connecting briefly with Nylon via a transatlantic telephone conversation; leaving New York City three years after John & Yoko moved in, nailed the windows shut.
 
By 1974, of course, the complexion on and around the Thames was a good deal more refreshed. The popular charts were once more ablaze with spots. Teenage acne. Jimi Hendrix was dead, and his closest living relation was a diminutive imposter who had not long since traded his white swan for a metal guru. 

Jim Morrison's beard floated south in a bath tub in Paris back in '71, and by 1974 even Marc Bolan no longer seemed quite so elfin. Of course, by then he'd been on the game for close to ten years.
 
Suzi Quatro from Detroit was in vogue. Paper Lace. Mud. The Rubettes. 

A predatory paedophile called Gadd. 

In hindsight, there was really very little fairy dust being flung around. Snorted. Despite all the glitter. Nothing remotely glamorous. The London which propelled Snatch out of obscurity into more of the same was a soot bricked Dickensian warren of shysters; apprentice Fagins peddling smack on the side; swarthy entrepreneurs from the Midlands resembling Fred West.

In fact. The beards might have been shorn but, underneath the undrneath, it was all still business as usual.

Look a little closer and one is hard pressed to unearth a single genuine teenager lurking near the top slot. Just a bunch of corseted paunches masquerading as puppy fat. Propping the stage door open to usher in an endless procession of wan underage meat.

Between 1974 and the emergence of punk commercially, any blushing roué on stacked heels was virtually guaranteed an audience. Just chauffeuring the Glitter Band radiated enough of a spark to leave an adolescent open to persuasion.

I suspect.

Well. It might not have been Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Butt. A steel capped size nine in the seat of the pants was nevertheless just what the doctor ordered.
 
"I.R.T.", back to back with with "Stanley" on Lightning Records and Bomp in 1977, may have basked a little in the receding spectacle of a sweet jane disappearing into the dark maw of the subway painted on "Loaded", but really it had more to do with those fluoroscent tunnels trailing under Piccadilly Circus; a blinking strip light in Finchley Central.
 
Rumour continues to circulate that The Damned's Captain Sensible makes his presence felt on "Stanley", but so far as I'm aware it has never been corroborated. Exactly who plays on it subject to speculation. Judy and Patti have never openly dispelled the myth, but The Heartbreakers play a later documented role in their fabric of conspiracy.
 
In 1978, Snatch very nearly scraped the bottom of the UK Top 40 with a double A-Side - "All I Want" b/w "When I'm Bored" - featuring ex New York Doll and one time Heartbreaker, Jerry Nolan on drums. It got to No. 54 and promptly sank without a trace. Nylon and Palladin appeared unperturbed.
 
There followed a collaboration with Brian Eno. Another single: "R.A.F.". By then I only had time for Hurricane fighter planes.

In 1983, Pandemonium Records compiled a string of demos and those all too few 45 releases titled, simply, "Snatch". Irritatingly, although it includes versions of the tracks which appeared on the 1980 Fetish issued EP, "Shopping For Clothes" - their final release, produced by John Cale - those versions differ markedly from the (uncompiled) original Fetish product.

The Pandemonium curated mixes are a good deal crisper, more commercial than the Fetish issue. Interesting, but only by way of contrast.
 
Now. I did not buy into this snatch of vinyl first time around. "Shopping For Clothes" passed me by. The following vinyl rip(s), then - so far as I can gather now completely out of print - were cribbed from the now defunct Direct Waves.


▼ SNATCH: JOEY from "Shopping For Clothes b/w Joey / Red Army" 12" (Fetish Records) 1980 (UK)
▼ SNATCH: RED ARMY from "Shopping For Clothes b/w Joey / Red Army" 12" (Fetish Records) 1980 (UK)

a fluttering of owls

Some years ago, too many years ago, I was arguing with my then partner over breakfast. I no longer remember exactly what prompted it or where it went from there. I had arrived somehow in my thirties - a good way past the stain of the big "3-0" - without hitting the panic button, and I couldn't summon the energy to do much more than grunt.

We were sat at the table - me in my boxer shorts, she in my boxer shorts too - and the grey light shone like a beacon through our tenement window. The table was big and round, dressed with some kind of cloth to protect the faux teak, and for all our squabbling the setting was fairly civilized.

"Listen," she might have said, "you are turning into some kind of old fart."

"Well," I retorted, "You can gripe all you want. If I don't wash the dishes and occasionally drag the hoover around we would be up to our knees in shit."

Perhaps she had returned back from a night out with her friends to find me darning a hole in my jacket pocket. That might have torn it. That, or the fact I was content to do my drinking at home.

The last gasp of punk rock. Mending holes. Needlepoint.

The words were washing over me when I noticed a lump on my thigh. I prodded the raised flesh, immediately fearing the worst, moving back in my seat to shed a little light on it.

"Sure," I said. "Uh-huh. Whatever you say, dear."

Actually. Bar the music burbling from the stereo, we more or less fell back into the not quite truce of silence. Each with our separate ashtray, a carcinogenic his and hers.

Well. I poked at my leg until I was all but certain it was merely a boil. I dug my fingers under it and bore down until I felt something give.

It did not so much erupt as ignite like an indoor firework. As fascinating to behold as these inocuous little brown pills which, when lit, keep going until they leap up out the box and hang like ripe intestines. As big in diameter as a plug of toothpaste.

"Dear Christ!" I exclaimed. "Just look at that thing!"

My partner got up and left the table with a dignified little snort of contempt. I did not give a fig. I felt only a peculiar sense of liberation. As if the accumulation of a decade or so of bad karma was being exorcised inch by inch. Drained out of me by invisible shamans. Operating at ceiling height, somewhere in the cornicing.

Chemicals, certainly, but more than that. Arrows. Slings. Toxic mutterings from an industrial zone in deep space.

The minute it was done, I jumped up and danced into the bathroom to splash what passed for iodine over the evacuated area. Oh, I was light headed; cleansed. And only the tiniest of indentations. Not even the trace of a scar.

Our cat, Biff - a gentle old tom who could be found most nights under the tables of the free house three doors down - lay grooming himself on the floor as I bathed the wound. Owlish, alert, but quite disinterested.

Of course. By two or three o'clock that same afternoon, I was back to pouring all that bad shit in, I did not hesitate or waver. What started out, quite benignly as some kind of karmic zit, quickly mutated into something more entrenched. 

Subcutaneous. Learning to conceal itself, slyly burrowing deeper.

What did you expect ? A happy ending ?

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)

silkwood, wormwood, taggart | ghetto defendant

My wife sat down to watch the latest instalment of "Taggart" last night, hobbling on to our screen with all the weariness of a geriatric nosing after a curled fish supper. I caught most of it out the corner of one eye. Preoccupied as I was with clipping my toenails.
 
It has never been the same since Mark McManus withered away in hospital. It was never really much to begin with, I suspect, but between McManus and the local topography it sometimes sufficed.
 
Last night's episode was filmed on location in the Gorbals. Right on my doorstep. Shored up with an implausible imported cast.
 
The topic, loosely, was one of urban regeneration.
 
One scene was even filmed in the high rise my wife occupied before we were married; the only vaguely successful attempt at refurbishing a twenty-two storey apartment building in two square miles.
 
"Look at that!" we exclaimed. Stupidly agitated at just seeing the tedious rejunivated on tv.
 
A clinically depressed woman sat frozen in her armchair drinking tea, the view west through her double-glazed picture window noticeably marred by a few indiscreet palm prints. Placed there, no doubt quite diligently, by some halm-fisted old fruit.

Let me tell you. That building is almost immaculate - sensibly maintained - but in the summer its tenants bake in central heating. Unhealthily indulged. Passing out between floors while struggling to escape for cigarettes. A loaf. 

The episode was filmed some time in winter, I believe. The housing association closed down one lift for the better part of two days just to ensure a few rampant egos were not compelled to rub shoulders with the great unwashed.

They could not have similarly enticed a pampered cast into our own freezing building. The windows leaking condensation and howling drafts; the coffin sized elevators stacked with junkies on gangrenous legs.
 
There is not enough shortbread or 12 Year Old Single Malt in Glasgow to bribe a unionised film crew to set foot in such filth.
 
Briefly, the backdrop was one of heroic politicking. A lone ranger riding side-saddle on behalf of a seething inarticulate mass. 

The truth is more a prosaic tale of design and procrastination by committee. The vacillation of the inept or plain corrupt as they waver between chasing awards and profit. The same the world over. That would have made for a genuine crime worth persuing. That might have made for good television.
 
Well. I might be a whingeing ineffectual bastard, I won't deny it; if you have made it this far down the page - and I have my doubts - let me pause and advise you that this post is distressingly long-winded. And I might as well warn you while I'm at it that I'm not about to let anybody off the hook by stapling on some oblique gem of a song.  

Just so you can scroll quickly to the foot of it and dispense with the reading.
 
There. I've said it. This is just another instance of my scraping three shades of shit off the chest. Unbuttoning my shirt and letting it spill. You might as well fuck off now while the going's good.

All right with you ? Good. See you later.
  
In January or February this year, we called in the buildings inspector.
 
"Before you begin," I said, poking a hand out between raised glass and drizzle. "Take a look at this."
 
I ran my fingers lightly along the sill and four or five inches of mulched wood came away without any teasing. A plague of wasps could not have made a more thorough job of it. The buildings inspector sniffed and examined the mould creeping along the perished rubber seal.
 
"No doubt about it," he said. "All the windows are rotten, subject to water penetration. I don't need to see any more to get a handle on it, but I had better do it by the book."
 
I was relieved. I had thought it might have taken more of a fight, but here he was, writing it up without argument.
 
"Listen, " he said. "I'll submit my report and you should hear word back in two to three weeks. They're putting in new windows, finally. They're putting up the cages to make a start on the worst of it."
 
Should might be the most overrated word in the English language.
 
The cages went up, but I could see little activity. Four weeks came and passed. I was about to pick up the telephone when two more men arrived without warning to measure up those bad windows. All the windows are uniformly the same dimensions, but what do I know ? At least things were progressing.
 
A month or so later and the cages came down. And not a new uPVC window in sight. I scurried about peering up at the building from every side but I could not detect any.
 
This would have been approximately the same time the foul smell appeared in the ground floor foyer.
 
The children would travel down in the lifts to set out for school in the morning and gag as they sprinted to the front door. My wife would hurry back with groceries and lock herself in the bathroom to vomit.
 
Twice, I telephoned the Ghetto Housing Authority.
 
"What's it got to do with you ?" a voice enquired the second week around. "Do you actually live there ?"
 
"Of course I live here, " I said. "That is the reason I'm telephoning. Maybe it's a bad mop. It smells like a bad mop. I'm not suggesting nobody is actively cleaning up in here, everyday I see pople pushing around a mop, but the smell is indescribable. Appalling. The same smell follows you into the lifts now too."
 
"It's not a mop, " the voice snapped. "Those mopheads are changed regularly."
 
"So I'm given to understand, " I said. "The woman I spoke to here last week told me the concierges are not permitted to use bleach, these days. Disinfectant. A health and safety ruling. Just what's the procedure with rotating those mops, anyway ? Do the concierges in our block have access to running water ?"
 
I have lived here for more than ten years, but I still have no clear idea how things work. Every second day or so I might see one concierge or another disappearing into a mysterious warren of rooms just off the ground floor lobby. I say hello, but that is as far as it goes. The job they do is far from pleasant. Unrewarding. Like most jobs.
 
The voice on the other end of the line had no more of an idea of shop floor procedure than me.
 
"How the hell should I know ?" the voice screamed in my ear. "I am a housing officer. Not a concierge."
 
"Listen," I said. "I don't give a rat's arse whether you breakfast at city chambers. This is the second time I've raised this same complaint. I expect something to be done about it. I'll bet that if there was a similar stink right outside your office it would disappear pretty damn fast."
 
I was close to losing it entirely. I barely managed to hang on to the phone.
 
"I'll get back to you," the voice rasped. The connection went dead.
 
That rat's arse was just a figure of speech, a little rash maybe, but as it was it proved queerly prophetic. One has to be careful when dealing with the GHA. They can use your own words to stitch you up as efficiently as a death squad operating out of a cubicle somewhere in Latin America.
 
Good for screwing dissenters out of their hovels. Precious little else.
 
The smell, you will have guessed, was later traced to a decaying rodent in a disused room.
 
One night, possibly late last summer when the foyer door was taken off its hinges and left yawning invitingly for close to two weeks, it appears it wandered in off the street and squeezed under the locked interior door. Its mummified remains discovered inside an open trunk only when one concierge grew so disgusted that he resorted to breaking and entering.
 
The irony is not lost on me.
 
Well. The smell gradually faded after the rat was dug out and disposed with. The windows, though. That's another story.
 
It is a well established fact that the roof of our building bristles with all manner of antennae and masts. From one mobile telecommunications industy to the next, the Ghetto Housing Authority milks huge annual profit from what goes over its tenants' heads. There is little doubt in my mind that those profits explain why this one building remains standing while all around is demolition; chaos; splinters and dust.

For years now I have idly wondered whether we all crackle radioactively from the unseen effects of sustained bombardment.
 
Those supplemented rents certainly explain why the GHA might be prompted to protect its investment. Raking it in year after year, spending next to nothing on the upkeep of core stock while projected demolition dates come and go.
 
And so, when they finally went ahead with the scheduled demolition of the building just adjacent to us, and all these people still living here, they had little option but to confront the unpalatable option of spending some of that cash.
 
"Let's give those radioactive little bastards some new windows," the minutes might have read. "Face facts. Too many fuckers are beginning to ask questions."
 
So. Where was Karen Silkwood while all of this subterfuge was going on ? who didn't blow the whistle when those cages came tumbling back down ?
 
Where was our local MP ? MSP ? City councillor ? That one man band prancing about on "Taggart" ?
 
As I mentioned previously when covering our recent flaccid general election, not one politician of any party or stripe appeared on our doorstep to canvas. Dance a little. Feign hard of hearing while cupping an ear. It is hard to pretend that a jutting twenty-three storey apartment does not exist, even should one chose to avert one's gaze.

A blight on the landscape. Inescapable.
 
Well. A little bird whispered to me that those cages came down when it was discovered the frightful network of satelite dish and transmitter had spread right across our roof like so much poison ivy.
 
They just could not get those cages in place where they were most needed.
 
And all the while the distasteful sight of more recently deployed uPVC windows being stripped out of that empty shell less than one hundred yards away. Rooted out with hammer and chisel. Jettisoned prematurely in advance of the plastic explosive.
 
We went down there to speak to a housing officer in person. Some of them coasting into retirement. Others just out of school.
 
"Well," a young woman responded. "We are still waiting for the Building Inspector's report. There's been some delay."
 
She was not at all discourteous. The job had not gotten to her yet.
 
"Jesus," I said. "That is some delay. He filed his report four months ago."
 
"You have to understand," she went on, "a lot of permanent staff have been on holiday. Some of our key people have just this month or so retired. We'll let you know as soon as we get word back. We'll keep you in the picture."
 
"Is there any substance to the allegation that those masts extend so far over the roof that the GHA can not carry out essential repairs ?" I enquired. Feeling more like Jimmy Olsen than Karen Silkwood. Less competent. Decrepit.
 
She pursed her lips.
 
"That's a new one on me. I've certainly not heard anything to that effect. There is, however, a funding shortage, as I'm sure you are aware."
 
And so. Yet more weeks fly past.
 
There has been so much rain here recently that I am reminded the winter will be upon us all too soon. They will evacuate us briefly to detonate the charges some time in September. We will be back inside for tea. The drilling will eventually cease just in time to welcome in the gales. Sheets of glass buckling under sheets of still more rain.
 
Water puddling under the sills. The sudden cold taking us by surprise again.
 
The absence of silence will get to you. The tension of it just makes things worse.

divided alien | kif-kif da bus

On the eve of Planet Gong's scheduled European tour through March to April, 1978, archastral projectionist, Dingbat Alien was allegedly assailed by dark forces set loose in the here and now. The doors of perception stood ajar but Alien's free pass was permanently revoked.

From Planet Gong:

"I couldn't actually get on stage. It was as though there was a an invisible curtain of force that was stopping me from going through the door. I threw myself at the open door and bounced back, off nothing. And this blew my mind so thoroughly that i just ran out of the theatre into the rain and started hitch hiking on the road with all my clothes, my stage clothes, my costume and face painted with fluorescent colours. And then a woman looked at me so strangely that i started thinking i was a murderer and i was hiding in the bushes. Finally i got picked up by somebody who had left the concert and was taken home, and then i had to realise that i had to leave gong, so that's the way it all ended."

The non event in Cheltenham - a centre of healing since mineral springs were discovered there in 1716 - marked the unforseen end of a chapter. Without fanfare, the alliance forged between Gong and Here & Now simply ceased to exist. In the material world, at any rate.

Allen decreed the band were free to continue to traffic as Planet Gong, but collectively Kif Kif, Steffe, Keith the Bass and singers Ano and Suze da Blooze elected to return the name first assumed squatting in Ladbroke Grove in 1974. Reclaiming the moment, regrouping and scouting Deptford Fun City for props.

Capitalizing - in the kindest sense only - on their sharing the bill with Captain Beefheart at the Paris Hippodrome a year earlier, and the subsequent release of "Live Floating Anarchy 1977", Here & Now embarked on a free tour with Mark Perry's Alternative TV. Falling into loose formation with Mark E. Smith and small wonder, Patrick Fitzgerald along the way.





Profit was never on the agenda. Between March and December, 1978, Here & Now committed to four grueling British free tours, playing several key festivals. Deeply Vale included. The sleeve to their shared live LP with ATV - "What You See... Is What You Are" - poses the family collective in front of their converted bus, No. 777, a motley tribe harking back to Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and the Incredible String Band of "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter".

Only Mark P. vents ambivalence. Stuffing his fingers into his mouth. A half-baked pantomime of self-induced vomitting.

Or merely scoring a jacket potato.

Frank Honest documents in his rediscovered "Gospel of the Free" that Deptford Fun City successfully sabotaged the first 1,000 pressings of the Here & Now / ATV joint venture; ensuring that the Ladbroke Grove side hit point of sale recorded backwards. My own heftily discounted vinyl copy - £1.75 - clearly left the factory after the jest was put right. Like their tour bus, though, it has not survived. Inveterate nostalgics may redress a similar loss in full by hyperlinking promptly to kill your pet puppy.

"It's not surprising that the details of that year are rather blurred. Not surprising really that, on the mid-winter solstice, on the way back in to London after the last gig of the last tour of 1978, our new bus broke down. But completely. The crankshaft had snapped from the strain."

"...thus endeth the Gospel of Free according to Frank Honest", and thus endeth a minor sin of omission.

 Postscript:

The Charly Records EP - released, I believe, in 1979, after "What You See... is What You Are" can be found on the 1996 French Spalax CD reissue of "Give and Take" with two other bonus tracks: "End of the Beginning" and "Choke a Kola".


▼ HERE AND NOW: ADDICTED from "Dog In Hell b/w Floating Anarchy Radio / Addicted" EP (Charly Records) 1978 (UK)
▼ HERE AND NOW: ADDICTED from "What You See... Is What You Are" LP (Deptford Fun City) 1978 (UK)

▼ PLANET GONG: FLOATIN' ANARCHY from "Live Floating Anarchy 1977" LP (Charly Records) 1978 (UK / France)

poche town

I suppose this might have been prompted by Beer and his travails with the French in Dope City. Or my own stubborn imperviousness to learning a second language.

A disinclination to hop on a bike and peddle green onions.

Joe Falcon got busy with an accordion from the age of seven. Born near Roberts Cove in southwest Louisiana, on the Bayou Plaquemine Brule, Falcon is credited with the first authenticated recording of Cajun music. Period. His "Acadian One-Step" is collected on volume two of Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music", issued through Folkways in 1952.

A bible of sorts for those with an ear for the arcane or overlooked.

On April 27th, 1928, Falcon and Cléoma Breaux - the woman he would later make his wife - arrived in New Orleans on the recommendation of George Barrow, a jeweler from Rayne, and recorded a number of songs for Columbia Records. "Allons à Lafayette", cut on 78rpm as a result, more than justified Barrow's nose for a diamond in the rough and sold beyond expectation.

Falcon and Breaux toured the dance hall circuit across Louisiana on the back of sales in the thousands, moving west through Texas before arriving in New York in August of the same year.

On the cusp of the Great Depression.

Wed on the anniversary of their New Orleans session in 1932, still more material was recorded in New York City; Atlanta; San Antonio.

Now. I am far from adequately schooled in American Folk Music and its provenance. My own ear twitches this way and that. Sometimes acute. Often hard of hearing.

I had always assumed that Cajun music was exclusively a French delinquency. Self-contained, immune to integration. It is curious that Rayne itself was not so much an Acadian enclave, but a "small German community". Old Weird America - a site I came upon when teasing out a little historical detail - documents that Cajun music was originally played on fiddle, but that the preferred first instrument of choice was supplanted by the accordion after it was introduced to Louisiana by German settlers.

And that the "fiddle was re-introduced during the Western Swing craze and soon Joe’s music became out-of fashion."

Cléoma Breaux died young in 1941. By this time, their popularity was already on the wane. The couple recorded their last session in San Antonio, 1937. Joe remarried and continued to perform with his second wife sitting in on percussion, but there are no archived studio recordings of his later Silver Bell String Band.

Still active in the 1960s, at the time of Cajun music's revival, Falcon refused to step foot back in the studio; citing disillusionment with the record industry as just cause to play only for cash money. Up front and in the hand. In that nine year period between 1928 and '37, Falcon and Breaux released forty-five records and little in the way of recompense.

It is not documented that Falcon directly held any one label accountable for Cléoma's death, but the implication is all but palpable in his refusal to accept the invitation from Chris Strachwiz to record again in 1962. Despite his contempt for unworkable contracts, a live performance, recorded at the Triangle Club, Louisiana by enthusiasts, Valerie and Lauren Post in 1963, was issued first on vinyl through the independent Arhoolie label and subsequently on a CD which corrects much of the earlier sound imbalance.

It stopped raining here this morning for the first time in two days. July is not a summer any more, but a ritual time of monsoon which continues long into August.

If I lean far enough out my window, I might get lucky and hook a catfish on a dangled length of string.

photograph: lake charles, louisiana, may 1948, by Michael rougier.


▼ JOE FALCON & CLÉOMA BREAUX: POCHE TOWN from "Cajun: Early Recordings" CD (JSP / The Orchard) 2006 (US)
▼ JOE FALCON & CLÉOMA BREAUX: ACADIAN ONE-STEP from "Anthology Of American Folk Music (Volume Two: Social Music) " LP (Folkways) 1952 (US)

handcuffs | restraints

'hassle', not 'haysil': april 29, 1936 - april 25, 2005.

"...I said, 'could I smoke ?'"

Uncharacteristically understated, on first inspection, the Haze nonetheless lets rip here - at 1'20", and towards the fade - with a chilling approximation of a police siren wailing. Just one of 7,000 reputed original compositions penned and recorded for various labels, not least Norton, between 1962 and his death as the result of vehicular manslaughter.

No manic cackling, sadly, or full tilt pulse laid out bare, but the a-side to this third outing on the Avenue label - operating out of Kentwood, Louisiana - still packs enough attitude to sink a latrine choked full of stools.

A casual mumbled eloquence Jagger might have sold his soul to emulate.

Both sides can be found on the 1985 Dee Jay Jamboree compilation, "Chicken Walk", named after Adkins' infamous 1962 release for Air Records, printed first in Miami, Florida.

photograph by ralph crane, 1969.


▼ HASIL ADKINS & HIS HAPPY GUITAR: DUNCENS from "Duncens b/w Jenny Lou" 45 (Avenue, La.) 1966 (US)

boone county feet | blisters and grass

I am hurtling through those backwoods in the company of Jesco White and Hasil Adkins, heads lolling and spooling drool, when we hit a fork in the road. A box elder stump with a 7 ½ lb axe embedded straight through its heart.

Spitting feathers. Entrails.

Well. I just about piss myself when White hops up on that deadwood and proceeds to dance. Flat foot to bounce and shuffle, the soles of both shoes skimming up a mess.

I fall back in a stupor. The jalopy listing in the ditch with both doors hanging. The radio pushing in and out. Adkins set to cackling.

That unhinged sound again. A Boone County fox loose among the chickens. Wads of fur knotted on the wire and a scrabbling of claws on shit festooned tin.

When I come to they are gone.

"What's that ?" I mumble. An evangelical booming of torment and a sulfer stink fading to a whisper on the AM dial.

The spirit is all but wasted too, and my stomach is hurting. I sit the empty bottle upright on the stump and vomit in the ditch. My eyes bulge like yolky eggs about to burst over my cheekbones and puddle on the grass. My trembling hands and knees belong to somebody else. I find a half smoked cigarette in my shirt pocket and smoke the rest while the insects lap at the sweat on the back of my neck.

I have no heart to swat at them or chase them away.

A couple of vehicles pass me on the road to somewhere else.

A small Japanese manufactured family saloon and an expensive 4 x 4 Dodge with scarcely a trace of mud on the sills. A smear of face peering out at me as gears shift and it nudges into the incline. Two shrivelled raisins jammed in sullen folds of flesh and a tiny downturned crease for a mouth.

Well. Forty minutes or so of this and I am ready to straighten out.

I unravel myself somehow. Stagger up like a new born doe; legs buckled, joints and ligament at sixes and sevens. I climb into the jalopy and start her up. Then switch it off again. I snatch the keys out of the ignition and eject the tape.

Slam it in first and walk away.

It is not too far, I don't think, to make it by foot. My socks have worked loose inside my boots but even hopelessly inebriated I have the instinct of a homing pigeon. No more hot dogs. My head is a rattling milk churn. My chest is packed with lard.

If I make it home in one piece, I promise to avail myself of healing. Pour a little water in that gin.

Some Quinton Claunch. Bill Cantrell.



▼ CHARLIE FEATHERS: I'VE BEEN DECEIVED from "Peepin' Eyes b/w I've Been deceived" 45 (Flip Records) 1956 (US)
▼ CHARLIE FEATHERS: DEFROST YOUR HEART from "Defrost Your Heart b/w Wedding Gown Of White" 45 (Sun Records) 1956 (US)

a mellifluous clash | a cobbling of posts

BYG 529.029. magick sibling, daevid allen. note the lower case.



gare de lyon train station, may 1968. on the cusp of toppling de gaulle.



smyth & allen remain in France. EMI insists on submission.

As the title suggests, this is in no small part a collision of two archived posts; from August 2008 and September of the same year respectively.

I have very nearly finished an often interrupted reading of Bob Chapman's "Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head". My own is muddied from the ill-advised combination of unhealthy preoccupation with the past and living in the here and now. Of revisiting the scene of an accident in slow motion while simultaneously avoiding pressing engagements.

Clowns and Jugglers; Chinese Whispers.

What makes for an excellent book is not its recounting the familiar, but the gathering of threads and dispelling of myth. An almost forensic shredding of layers of fabrication.

Nobody but a dedicated obsessive could have achieved what Chapman has.

So. Like several of the subjects Chapman interviews, I have often wondered what might have been had Syd managed to hook up with Daevid Allen. Not so much those members of The Soft Machine who contributed to Malcolm Jones' Abbey Road sessions, but the Daevid Allen of Gong, proper.

Painterly investigators of paranormal activity. Parachutists.

It's a big 'if', "Little Lib". Ad Libitum.

"I am full of dust and guitars".

Whatever the pop credentials of Syd's Pink Floyd - before it succumbed to its architectural bent - Roger Keith Barrett burned free form jazz. In later years, constricted. Living John Cage's "4'33"".

Inside a raging din.

Previously, September 24th, 2008:

More from London's Ladbroke Grove in the slightly gnarled (and bent out of) shape of original Australian Soft Machine member, Daevid Allen, a beatnik of wondrous pedigree and mischievous aspiration. Gong first chimed in early 1969 in Majorca with partner, Gilli Smyth, on the run from the police following the Parisenne student demonstrations of '68. Smyth and Allen drafted flautist, Didier Malherbe into their game, who they "claim(ed) to have found living in a cave on Robert Graves’ estate". Highly unlikely, but, in a world heaving with pothead pixies and governed by flying teapots, one can never absolutely rule it in or out.

Mr. Allen is a one man lighthouse keeper. A veritable Jonah The Baptist.

Written and performed by Daevid Allen and Gilli Smyth. Produced by Jean Georgakarakos and Jean-Luc Young.

Recorded September & October 1969 Studio ETA, Studio Europa Sonor, Paris. Plucked and pulled from the ether with intuitive guile.


▼ GONG: (FABLE OF A FREDFISH) HOPE YOU FEEL OK from "Magick Brother" LP (BYG Actuel) 1969 (France)
▼ GONG: COS YOU GOT GREEN HAIR from "Magick Brother" LP (BYG Actuel) 1969 (France)

nine weaves of being

through an enneagram darkly by ib. manett as herself.

Manett is all woman.

An "Enneagram 4" currently residing in Brooklyn by way of Guam.

She writes, "the organs sound kinda trippy dippy, I didn't mean for that but I like it. I didn't even write it with the organ riff, but when I got to my friend Mark's studio, he had this beautiful vintage keyboard, so I thought why not ?"

Why not, indeed. I had to look up 'Enneagram 4' to get a handle on the spectrum. A typology variously referred to as the individualist; visionary; or slacker. If you are acquainted with the scribblings of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff you may be familiar with the Fourth Way.

A school I nominally enrolled in once in an esoteric hour, and subsequently flunked. I have no idea which part of the model my own personality infests.

Then or now.

Not so much a five dollar question as a nine point conundrum.

Nevertheless, I like Manett's "Spider" immensely.

Just this side of dark and gently foreboding, Grace Slick on Quaaludes or Hope Sandoval liberated from them, and my spine just beginning to adjust to the chiropractic magick of laying flat for the first time in years.

If all this sounds a little "Blade Runner", let me assure you Manett is not to blame. Whether androids deliberate on electric sheep is of little consequence, save that I slept my first dreamless sleep these last few nights. Revelled in a little straight time.

The brief word Manett slipped me was a good deal more relaxed. Concise. And. Anyone who covers both T. Rex and the Voidoids in the blink of an eye is more than all right in my book.

I am a slave to tangents. Woven intricacies.


▼ MANETT: SPIDER from "Citholic" EP (No Label) 2010 (US)

MANETT@TUMBLR.COM

fetch me a rickshaw | our bed is on fire

arson scare. adpapted from a photograph by grey villet, 1960.

This post is a week behind schedule; the agony prolonged by the arrival of a mail order bed and the dismantling of the old. A brand new futon to be exact.

The sagging fold down sofa which formerly occupied house room grew just too torturous. Full of ominous creaks and organ jarring spills. Like a decrepit family pet dragging its belly across the floor, ultimately euthanasia came a shade too late.

In canine years, it had the stuffing knocked out of it before it could walk.

Cole from Max & the Wild Things emailed me last Sunday that their - equally - long overdue album is at last in the bag. And very fine it is too.

Where some of the songs should be familiar to long-term aficionados and regulars on the bleachers - in various incarnations, not least live from The Basement - the execution here is taut and farther refined. Tracked and mixed at Welcome to 1979. Mastered in Ohio.

More importantly, while the brothers Traynor and Clint 'Max' Wilson step up a gear with Sam Stewart on guitar, as a unit they shed little in the way of disrepair and attitude. The edges remain mercifully ragged; its volatile core undoctored.

100% analogue and 90 US proof.

From the outset I warned of "concrete evidence that Tennessee continues to distil raw proof talent of the calibre of a first rate Jack Daniels".

Well. The vat has merely matured.

I would have been forgiven for dragging out that old sofabed and shooting if full of holes. Instead, I almost broke my back hauling it away to be disposed of humanely.

I ought to have set it on fire and partied. Sitting on an upturned crate, licking the flames. Well. The walls around here tilt too close to boogie, wholesale arson was never on my mind. Still. I would have liked to watch it burn. Crackling with resignation; roaring without a sound.

Recorded & Mixed by Chris Mara @ Welcome To 1979.
Assistant Engineers: Bert Stone & Brandon Jaehne.
Mastered By Tommy Wiggins.

Produced by Mikie Martel, Chris Mara, and Max & the Wild Things.

▼ MAX AND THE WILD THINGS: GOT NO MONEY from "Max And The Wild Things" CD (WT1979) 2010 (US)

GET IT HERE

the last loose nickel

a doctored photograph by loomis dean, paris, 1959.

Previously:

"The CD, "Break Through in a Grey Room" comprises a collection of cut-ups recorded in the 1960's in various hotel rooms in New York, London and Paris... recorded circa 1965 with Ian Sommerville between the Chelsea Hotel; 210 Centre Street, NYC and London, and owes as much to Sommerville's technical innovations as Burroughs' readings. "

▼ WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: BURROUGHS CALLED THE LAW from "Break Through In Grey Room" CD (Sub Rosa) 1994 (US)

time added on

The game is two halves of uneven possession,
won and lost from corner to footstool. Coffee table
and kitchen sink. Dishes, ahtrays, spindle legs.

In my mind I am still smoking Navy Cut behind the
goalposts - a late substitution, an opportunist -
adrift somewhere between 1974 and four years on.

Avoiding the pitching cross, passing on the play.

Even now I take up position near the window. The
peddle bin. Coming up on the wing in the last five
minutes, hanging on to the ball for too long, the final
whistle halting the curve mid sentence. An ill timed
delivery inches too late in the back of the net.

The old Malagan possessed impeccable timing. Not
for the faint hearted. From bull neck to sable brush,
it was a signature theme. An admission of thrust;
a genius for the kill. Always closing, always closing.

Never without his audience. From studio to cashier's
transfer. His ability, his finish, was a thing of beauty.