A taste of sampling: ‘The Jezebel Spirit’ by Eno & Byrne (1981)
Posted: 04/04/2012 Filed under: Electronica, Experimental music, World | Tags: Byrne, Eno, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, sampling 7 Comments
Where would we be today without the mobile phone? It is such an intrinsic part of our daily life that it’s almost impossible to imagine a time before mobiles, a time when phones were firmly earth bound, tethered to the hall table. It is entirely probable that anyone born in this millennium would believe that Alexander Graham Bell’s first words spoken over the telephone in 1876 were ‘Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you. I’ve got to show you this brilliant meme’.
In much the same way, sampling is such an intrinsic feature of modern music that it seems always to have been there. While musicians took influences and ‘borrowed’ melodies from each other prior to the 1980s, it is only in the last 30 years that this has become the norm. Contemporary artists sample liberally, to the point where many ‘new’ songs lift their music track wholesale from an earlier song, while many modern listeners have no idea that what they are hearing is not wholly original.
The explosion of sampling over the last 30 years stands as an example of how technology unlocks creativity. As sound recording, storage and transfer became simpler and more accessible, so it became easier to import material into your music that had originated elsewhere. The first examples of sampling in the late 1970s were crude by today’s standards, with artists live scratching vinyl to add their favourite riffs into their own creations. This extended through the development of hip hop in the 80s, which sampled liberally from its funk inheritance. However, I would suggest that the world’s eyes were opened to the broader possibilities of sampling by the groundbreaking 1981 album, ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’. A collaboration between Brian Eno and David Byrne, this is another of those records that stunned on first listening, simply because it sounded like nothing we had ever heard before. Rather than plunder the treasures of other musicians, Eno and Byrne principally sampled the spoken word and wove it into the fabric of songs that also drew heavily on ethnic influences. A pair of eccentric eclectics, Eno and Byrne shared an interest in diverse art forms from a range of sources and their sampling was the musical equivalent of the use of ‘objets trouvé’ in fine art.
They may be unknown to younger audiences, but Byrne and, particularly, Eno, are major figures in the history of contemporary music. David Byrne was leader of the American ‘New Wave’ band Talking Heads (the name is the slang phrase for TV presenters of whom you only see a head and shoulders view), which released a number of excellent albums in the late 70s and early 80s before its members split to pursue their own projects. Byrne expanded his interest in ethnic music by recording with Third World musicians and setting up a ‘World Music’ label, usually working collaboratively to produce music that has rarely been less than interesting and has often been very danceable. Eno is one of the most important musicians and producers of the modern age. A member of the original Roxy Music before his flamboyant individuality became too much for Geordie miner’s son Bryan Ferry to stomach, Eno went on to have an incredible career as a recording artist and producer. Few will be aware of the extent to which he has shaped the sound of some of the world’s most famous artists, as the producer of hugely successful albums by Bowie, U2 and, more recently, Coldplay. His low profile belies his enormous influence.
Like so many great musicians of the modern era, Eno is a product of an art school education, but this background has been more evident in his work than in that of most of his peers. He has always shown a great interest in conceptual art, as both proponent and exponent, and has pushed the boundaries of contemporary ‘rock’ music. His own music varies in its accessibility: the spikey art rock of his early solo albums, ‘Here Come the Warm Jets’, ‘Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)’ and ‘Another Green World’, is an acquired taste. So is the ‘ambient music’ of ‘Music for Airports’ and ‘Music for Films’, although evidence for the success of these albums lies in how much they have been imitated and how they live an active life today – you will, ironically enough, often hear tracks from the 30 year old ‘Music for Films’ used in contemporary TV programmes. At the same time, Eno could create more ‘conventional’ music, such as the poignant and beautiful songs on his later album ‘Before and After Science’.
However, it is as a collaborator that Eno’s influence has been most marked. He was a critical component in the creative mix that gave birth to Bowie’s ‘Low’ in 1977 and which matured through the follow up, ‘Heroes’. When he produced Taking Heads’ third album, ‘Fear of Music’ he was accused by some of creative sabotage, much as he had been with ‘Low’, since it represented a change of direction into a more challenging musical style. It was after this that David Byrne and Eno went on to create ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’. The African rhythms and disco beats present in ‘Fear of Music’ reappear in the songs of this album, combined with Eno’s electronic noodling and the radical sounds of sampled voices, ranging from newscasters to Baptist Preachers. ‘The Jezebel Spirit’* is a prime example of this brilliant synthesis: an incessant rhythm track grabs your hips and the initially upbeat tone slowly changes into something much more disconcerting, as the music evolves in harmony with a distinctly spooky voice sample taken from an exorcism.
Sampling like this is no easy trick: the voices have to work with the rhythm, pace and mood of the track, and the sections of speech must be sequenced to create a sense of narrative, chorus and crescendo. It would have been easy to do badly: the brilliance with which it was done by Eno and Bryne is evidenced by how sampling took off after the album’s release. Hip Hop artists started to use the technique more adventurously and it is now a central part of much of modern music. I defy you to listen to ‘Help Me Somebody’ from ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’ and then the brilliant ‘Drop the Hate’ by Fatboy Slim, which came out 30 years later, and tell me they are not related.
In the world of music, Bran Eno is exactly the kind of Renaissance Man I love: someone whose interests and abilities transcend the boundaries of different musical genres and art forms; an artist who never stops learning and experimenting and who ploughs his own furrow regardless of the fashions of the age; a man whose enormous talent and big brain provoke and entertain in equal measure and who generously brings out the best in the people with whom he works; and a person who achieves all this with modesty, wisdom and humour. As such, he perhaps embodies the qualities I admire in people more generally… and is an inspiration to Baldies everywhere!
* IMPORTANT NOTE: if you want to listen to any of the songs that are hyperlinked in this and other blogs, they are stored in a DropBox folder that you can only access if you have DropBox account. Getting one couldn’t be easier. Just go to https://www.dropbox.com/ and download the software. It costs nothing and you get 2GB of online storage for free.
A Dancing Queen no longer: ‘Stayin’ Alive’ by The Bee Gees, 1977
Posted: 16/03/2012 Filed under: Dance, Disco | Tags: dance music, disco, Travolta 3 Comments
We’re at the Grosvenor House for the 1977 Ivor Novello Music Industry Awards. Cliff Richard stands before a hushed and expectant audience as he announces “This year’s award for Absurd Lyrical Gibberish goes to… The Bee Gees, for ‘Staying Alive’!” As the Gibb brothers walk proudly to the stage to collect their prize, the opening lines of their disco classic ring out across the ballroom: ‘Well you can tell by the way I use my walk, I’m a woman’s man, no time to talk’. Sure enough, The Bee Gees are deserving winners.
The lyrics may be Gibberish, but ‘Staying Alive’ represents a significant moment in my relationship with music.
I used to like dancing but, amongst my peer group, I was something of an exception. For blokes, doing anything on a dance floor other than heavy metal-style ‘head banging’, fist pumping or air guitar playing was frankly regarded as a bit ‘girly’, at least in 1970s suburban south London. Much as I would have preferred to freestyle to soul or funk, I used to limit myself to a bit of collective rocking to avoid seeming ‘suspect’. All that changed in 1977 with the release of the film Saturday Night Fever. Its star, John Travolta, made it cool for men to dance. He may have been prancing around on an illuminated dance floor, throwing dodgy disco moves in a white suit, but he was tough and a babe magnet. His was less a ‘walk’, more of a dude strut; he was unquestionably ‘a woman’s man’, even if this was usually manifest on the stained leatherette of his automobile’s back seat; and as for his time-restricted speech, it is true that conversation was not his strong suit. But since when was sparkling repartee a prerequisite for being COOL?
I read an article about Travolta just as the film was about to be released, in which he explained how he created the look, the walk and the attitude of Tony Manero, the ‘hero’ of the movie. I was particularly struck by the revelation of his discovery that opening his jaw slightly while keeping his lips together made his cheekbones look more chiseled, his jaw line firmer and his lips slightly fuller. It’s a top tip I’ve never forgotten…
The public flocked to the movie in droves. It was an X certificate (‘18’ in today’s money), so I blagged my way in with my older brother Peter. In subsequent years, I recalled the film as being really cheesy but, watching it again a little while back, I found my memory deceived me and that it is anything but. Saturday Night Fever is a serious and surprisingly gritty story about a lad from a dysfunctional working class immigrant family who tries to find his identity and self respect in the burgeoning New York disco scene. There is no romance or sentimentality – ‘Dirty Dancing’ it most certainly is not. What I do remember clearly is the impact the film had on me as I sat watching in the Odeon Wimbledon. I could feel a wave of joy wash over me as I realised that, after this, I would never have to feel self-conscious about dancing again. Key to this personal impact was my implicit understanding of the film’s social impact. Travolta had done a huge favour to all young men with an unruly dance gene. The world now understood dancing could get you girls and, perhaps more importantly, it could win you the respect of other men.
All over the country, people wanted to learn to dance like Travolta and straight men began to strut their stuff on the dance floor with pride. My mates and I started to frequent such glamorous venues as the Garth School Disco and even The Cat’s Whiskas in Streatham, and I hit the dance floor with a new confidence.
Dancing has been very important to me ever since. As someone who thinks for a living and cogitates for leisure, dancing is invaluable as a visceral and explicitly non-intellectual departure from ‘normal’ life. Places as apparently diverse as a club dance floor and a wind-battered mountain peak are for me united in their ability to touch a part of my soul that doesn’t get out much. I can trace a line of dance floor joy that started at Saturday Night Fever and moved on through: 18th birthday parties; Heaven and the Camden Palace; learning, teaching and performing Ceroc (French Rock n Roll); office parties, Subterranea; Ibiza; to my 50th birthday party. That line now spends most of its time meandering around my kitchen floor.
In the gay club, Heaven, in the 80s, people would ask if I had any more of the substances they assumed were giving me the energy to keep dancing for hours on end. I remember feeling slightly bemused: dance music was the only drug I needed. However, sometimes I struggled to keep the pace. At the Camden Palace I would take a time out, snatching 40 winks on a banquette so that I could return refreshed to the dance floor an hour later. Getting home at 4 in the morning on a ‘school day’ was a little tricky: on a Wednesday at work, having left Heaven’s ‘straight night’ in the early hours of that morning, I would usually sneak into a loo cubicle for quick kip when I could no longer stay awake at my desk.
Sadly, few of my friends have shared my manic enthusiasm for dancing. Some nights in the 80s saw me going out clubbing on my own, so desperate was I for the energy of a the dance floor. I love clubs. Quite apart from the music and atmosphere, they are great places for people watching. There’s a large part of me that wishes it could have lived the hedonistic club life. However, if truth be told, I don’t think it would have satisfied. For a few months in the late 80s I touched down on Planet Dance where the Clubbers lived, but my initial interest soon wore off as I found the natives friendly but disappointingly superficial. I’m certain that a passion for clubs and dancing need not preclude an interest in the wider world and the ability to think about it, but I have rarely found these diverse concerns happily coexisting.
Much to the embarrassment of my family, I have no plans to stop dancing. I might even learn something new – Tango classes in Buenos Aires appeal. So, as long as my rebuilt knees can stand the strain, I will be following Brucie and Tess’s entreaty to ‘Keeeeep dancing!’ However, I must go now: the glitter ball and smoke machine sitting on the kitchen table won’t install themselves, you know.
* IMPORTANT NOTE: if you want to listen to any of the songs that are hyperlinked in this and other blogs, they are stored in a DropBox folder that you can only access if you have DropBox account. Getting one couldn’t be easier. Just go to https://www.dropbox.com/ and download the software. It’s free and you get 2GB of online storage for free.
I’ve got 99 problems but a social conscience ain’t one: ‘You Haven’t Done Nothin’’ by Stevie Wonder, 1974
Posted: 03/03/2012 Filed under: Funk, Soul | Tags: funk, social conscience, soul, Stevie Wonder 5 Comments
Come and sit on my knee, and I’ll tell you about a time, long, long ago, when musicians wrote songs about social and political issues and cared about justice and human rights.
Now, why would they want to do that? Surely, it’s more fun to sing about money, sex, love, losing love, finding love, how cool you and your mates are, dancing, general hedonism… and money and sex?
These are, of course, all legitimate subjects for art, and I expect most of the tracks I cover in this blog will have such high-minded topics as their subject matter. But it does seem to me rather sad that we have left behind an important strand of music making that concerned itself with broader issues – music that wasn’t exclusively egocentric in its focus and addressed the plight of the less fortunate and the fight for justice, peace and understanding.
There were many artists in the 1960s and 70s, mostly Americans such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, who had commercial success with ‘politically aware’ material. There was plenty to protest about: the Vietnam War, corrupt politicians and state institutions, the over-arching threat of nuclear Armageddon, and widespread inequality. Some of the principal exponents of ‘music for justice’ in America were Black. To the issues already mentioned they could add racial discrimination: schools and, in some states, even shops and buses were segregated on racial lines, while Black people were systematically brutalised by the police and even lynched by mobs, simply on account of their race.
A powerful Civil Rights movement grew, led by Revd Martin Luther King, with the aim of abolishing segregation and establishing equal rights, while a vibrant and increasingly confident Black American culture actively promoted equality and social justice through its music. Many artists who had found popular, mainstream success amongst White audiences would sprinkle their albums with politically aware material and release beautiful ballads or funky dance singles with socially conscious lyrics, sneaking them under the White Man’s radar to be huge hits.
Stevie Wonder offers a fine example. His journey is an interesting one. Blind from birth, he early on showed a precocious musical talent and had his first hits as a child star. Under the moniker ‘Little Stevie Wonder’, he released jaunty, happy dance songs, as essentially a ‘puppet’ artist within the Motown stable. But his talent and intellect could not be contained, and as he matured he became his own master, writing music that was increasingly sophisticated and adventurous, both lyrically and musically. He always wore his disability lightly and is living proof, were it required, that talent and determination can overcome any obstacles.
You might expect songs about social injustice, political corruption, war and environmental threat to make for somewhat turgid listening, but a social conscience and fabulous music were not mutually exclusive for Wonder and a raft of other Black artists, from Marvin Gaye to Edwin Starr. ‘Living for the City’, ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Village Ghetto Land’ are all examples from Stevie Wonder’s catalogue that eloquently prove the point. His song ‘Black Man’ from ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ celebrates the unsung achievements of Black historical and contemporary figures in lyrics that entreat his fellow Black Americans to aspire, celebrate their success and take pride in their racial identity. In ‘You haven’t done nothin’’, from his snappily-titled album ‘Fulfillingness’ First Finale’, he expresses his cynicism towards Richard Nixon, the US President of the day, accusing him of lies and empty promises. Wonder was on the money: within a few years, Nixon’s corruption had been laid bare and he had been removed from office. However, this song is no po-faced slab of worthy social conscience: it’s so funky, it grips your hips as much as it bothers your brain.
It all seems rather quaint and old-fashioned now, contrasting markedly with the themes of much of today’s Black music. I might sound like an old man when I bemoan much of contemporary R&B’s lyrical focus on how you are wanted by hoards of pneumatic women, how other people fear or envy you, how flash your cars are and how you will deal with people who diss you. The contrast isn’t just with music by today’s Black artists, of course, but with all popular music of the modern era. The political anger of hit songs such as ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials or Elvis Costello’s cover of Robert Wyatt’s ‘Ship Building’ seems a lifetime away. The apparent political disengagement of most young people mystifies those of us who lived through the ‘60s and 70s, and it is clearly reflected in contemporary music, always a brilliant mirror of the zeitgeist.
Why has music lost its social conscience? After all, there are more than enough issues to be angry about: growing youth unemployment, corruption in politics and the media and increasing poverty, to name a few. With income inequality now greater than it was in the 1930s, I’m afraid, Jesse, it really is about the money, money, money. How did musicians come to be so numbed to these major issues? Are we all just too comfortable, now that no-one need starve and that buying a flat screen TV is easier than getting a decent education? Perhaps the lethargy and complacency of youth is a product of hopelessness. Or is it that people no longer see themselves as part of broader society, their egocentric perspective blinding them to the struggles of others? As Marvin Gaye put it, ‘What’s Going On’?
New Electronic Joy: ‘True Faith’ by New Order, 1987
Posted: 23/02/2012 Filed under: Dance, Electronica, Indie | Tags: joy division, New order, true faith 6 Comments
So, you don’t believe me when I claim that Bowie’s ‘Low’ was one of the most influential albums in the history of ‘Rock’ music**? M’Lud, I present Exhibit 1: ‘True Faith’ by New Order. There’s that crashing beat up front in the mix, in this fantastic song recorded 10 years later.
True Faith is one of those songs that’s just a joyous ride: it has a fabulous sense of momentum, propelled by that driving beat, a gorgeous melody, some lovely electronic noodling and even, if you listen carefully, some good old-fashioned rhythm guitar. The lyrics sound like they might mean something, but frankly I’ve never paid them a great deal of attention, Bernard Sumner’s voice playing a more important role as another musical instrument in a rich mélange of sound. In fact, I rather think Sumner relies of the production to get away with his vocals – I saw him guest with Chemical Brothers at Brixton Academy a few years back and, live, he can’t sing for toffee! But I’ll forgive him for these 5 minutes and 51 seconds of musical majesty, and for the blinding video that accompanied the song.
New Order were themselves a band of some significance, not just in their own right but as a chapter in an influential musical story that started with Joy Division in the late 70s, moved on through Electronic in the early 90s and endures to this day . ‘Joy Division’ and ‘New Order’, by the way, are very controversial names: the ‘Joy Division’ was the prostitution wing in Nazi concentration camps while the ‘New Order’ was what Hitler planned to establish once the ‘Aryan Race’ of the purified Third Reich had triumphed. I’m not entirely sure what one should make of the band members choosing these names: was it irony, provocation or ignorance?
Joy Division was a brilliant band producing ‘difficult’ music in the late 70s and early 80s. Their two albums are bleak, disconcerting, beautiful and an essential part of any serious music collection. They were released on Tony Wilson’s Factory Records, a seminal label in the history of contemporary music and a key part of the burgeoning Manchester music scene of the 80s. The albums were produced by Martin Hannet, the late brother of the lovely Mike Hannet, husband of my old friend Ruth and writer of the Paul Whitehouse Aviva ads I work on. Small world.
Joy Division’s lead singer was Ian Curtis, who always seemed a doomed figure, not least when I saw the band perform in Oxford in 1980 and he collapsed on-stage after a set in which he had been wheeling madly around like a trapped moth. I had no idea that he was in fact doomed – he hanged himself at home in 1980; the mood on those albums was clearly no act. The band’s last single, the poignantly titled classic, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ was released posthumously and is a fitting tribute.
We thought it was all over, but the other band members were made of sterner stuff and New Order rose from the ashes a year or two later. Probably the band’s most famous song is ‘Blue Monday’, 34 seconds into which I suffered my first catastrophic knee injury. I was at that stage teaching and performing ‘Ceroc’ (French-style Rock ‘n’ Roll’) with a semi-professional dance troupe and we trained two evenings a week at Pineapple Dance Studio in Covent Garden. The aerial back somersault move went wrong and, in attempting to break my partner’s fall rather than her neck, I tore the medial ligaments in my right knee. Dressed in black tights and ballet shoes, my knee ‘supported’ in a pink leg warmer, I was taken by ambulance to University College Hospital where I spent an hour in a treatment room with various junior doctors and nurses peaking through the door to giggle at the embarrassingly-dressed apparition lying prostate in agony on the emergency bed. 3 weeks in a hip-to-ankle plaster ensued, and I never danced professionally again!
Finally, some trivia: did you know that ‘Blue Monday’ is also the name given by some bright sparks to the day of the year they have calculated to be the most depressing: the third Monday in January? So, Ian Curtis’s legacy continues, but perhaps not quite in the manner he would have anticipated.
** Can someone help me here? What term would you use that could embrace: recorded music released since the dawn of Rock & Roll in the early 50s through to the present day, and which is not Traditional or Classical? I’m struggling to describe it even in those imprecise terms. I’m tempted to call it ‘Contemporary Music’, but a Bach Sonata was ‘contemporary music’ in its time. ‘Pop’ doesn’t work, because a great deal of the music I want to include has never bothered the upper reaches of the singles charts and would rarely, if ever, be heard on commercial radio. And ‘Rock’ really doesn’t do it for me, with its connotations of guitar driven songs within a fairly constrained format. Is there a term that can cover Rock, Disco, RnB, Electronica, Indie, World and Jazz? What title can embrace Beyonce and Bowie, Feryal Öney and Fever Ray, Tricky and The Ting Tings? I think I come back to ‘Contemporary Music’, for all its inadequacies. All thoughts welcome.
Breaking ground, Breaking Glass: ‘Sound and Vision’ by David Bowie, 1977
Posted: 21/02/2012 Filed under: Electronica | Tags: Bowie, electronica, Low, Sound and Vision 4 Comments
What profile does David Bowie have today in the world of music? Effectively zero*. It would be entirely possible for someone in their 20s to have missed out on Bowie altogether, not least because his back catalogue receives remarkably little airplay. Yet, Bowie was a huge figure in the world of music from the late 60s to the early 80s and is one of the most influential artists in the history of contemporary music.
By the late 70s, new album releases by Bowie were amongst the mostly hotly anticipated in the music world. The 1977 album ‘Low’ was no exception. The expectation was of yet another change in direction from an artist with a reputation as a musical chameleon who adopted different personas and musical styles with each album release. He had been a ‘singer songwriter’ with ‘Hunky Dory’, a ‘rock god’ in ‘Aladdin Sane’ (‘A lad insane’, get it?), a ‘blue-eyed soul boy’ in ‘Young Americans’ – and had convinced in all three roles. Although it contained some great tracks, his previous album, ‘Station to Station’ had marked time somewhat, with no clearly defined musical style. What would his next incarnation be?
We knew Bowie had been locked in a studio in Berlin with fellow musical genius Brian Eno, and we knew this would definitely mean a change in direction, probably less rock-y and more experimental – Eno had a reputation for being somewhat avant garde and an innovator in ‘electronic’ music – but nothing had prepared us for what we heard in Low.
I can clearly remember listening in my bedroom to my little radio cassette player as Bowie’s new album debuted on Capital Radio’s ‘progressive rock’ show ‘Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It’. From the very first bar of the opening track, ‘Speed of Life’, and continuing through ‘Breaking Glass’ and ‘Sound and Vision’ to the Side 1 closer, ‘A New Career in a New Town’, this was a unlike anything I had heard before: songs in which the basic rhythm was punched out by a coarse, crashing drum beat, right up front in the mix. As with so many musical landmarks, it is difficult to appreciate at this distance how radical this was at the time. With ‘Low’, Bowie pioneered a sound that is now so commonplace you would never imagine that it hadn’t always been around. At the time, however, it was so radical and so challenging that it was hugely controversial. Was this an experiment too far; had Eno corrupted Bowie’s musical sensibility; had Bowie simply lost his way?
Of course, it was none of the above. Bowie had defined the future sound of music, and dance music in particular; we just didn’t realise it yet. ‘Low’ took a while to get into but, once you did, you appreciated its originality and bravery – as well as some damned fine songs.
Or at least you did for Side 1. ‘Low’ was an album of two sides, metaphorically as well as literally. Bowie’s laying down of 8 ‘instrumental’ tracks on a 14 track album was regarded as perhaps even more transgressive than his crashing beats. Bowie, with Eno, was pioneering electronic music purely instrumentally as well as within conventional song formats. Again, it’s something we don’t even think about now, but it added to the controversy surrounding the album. This was Bowie’s ‘Dylan Goes Electric’ moment, the album’s name being a gift to sceptical journalists as they suggested that he had completely lost his mojo and been musically corrupted by Eno, the evil Rasputin figure in this story. How foolish those journalists look now – and perhaps Bowie too, who later referred in the song ‘Ashes to Ashes’, a retrospective look at his career, to “hitting an all time Low”. The album is perhaps uneven and struggles to reconcile its divergent styles, but for the new sound it ushered in and for a number of outstanding tracks, I think it must be regarded as a classic.
You can hear the influence of Berlin in the music. In 1977, this was still a divided city, defined by Der Maeur, The Wall, which separated Communist East from Democratic West and would do so for another decade. Stranded as an ‘island’ outpost deep in East Germany, West Berlin developed a very particular mentality. Encircled by threat, West Berlin’s uniquely claustrophobic, isolated and marginal situation incubated a defiant siege mentality and helped make the city a hotbed of creativity. Feeling burnt out after Station to Station and looking to rebuild after years of drug abuse, Bowie saw Berlin as the place to reconnect with himself and rekindle his art. Whether or not he and Eno really were locked up in a bunker-style studio in the shadow of The Wall, it’s the image we have of them, labouring through the night for months before they could bring this ground-breaking album out blinking into the light. There’s an edginess to the songs and a tension in the instrumentals that I think reflects the Berlin state of mind. Bowie’s second Berlin album was Low’s follow up, Heroes. It’s another masterpiece, which I will cover in another post.
Bowie innovated in ways other than music. He was one of the first artists to realise the potential of the Internet, setting up his own ISP, BowieNet. He also sold shares in himself so that people could invest in his future earning potential. Then there was his acting career. Bowie was never an entirely comfortable screen presence, but his other-worldly demeanour suited him to roles in ‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’ and, most notably, as the alien in Nic Roeg’s ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ (from which comes Low’s sleeve image). His most significant impact, however, is seen in the way musicians change their image with each album and present varying personas in their stage shows. Such change is now the norm but, without Bowie, the likes of Madonna and Lady Gaga would be rather more two-dimensional.
Finally, if it hadn’t been for Bowie making androgyny cool, I would have worn a lot less make-up in the 80s and never have fraternised with hair dye. I would argue that Bowie’s sexual ambiguity helped establish the foundations of a more accepting public attitude towards homosexuality. His career might be over*, but Bowie’s influence has been immense and, in many small and unrecognised ways – although no longer in my hair colour – we see and hear his legacy every day.
* Note, of course, that this post was written before the surprise release of Bowie’s very fine album ‘The Next Day’, in March 2013, which showed us very clearly that Bowie’s career was anything but ‘over’.
Trashing the apple cart: ‘God Save the Queen’ by The Sex Pistols
Posted: 09/02/2012 Filed under: New wave, Punk | Tags: anarchy in the uk, history of contemporary music, malcolm mclaren 4 Comments
What track should one choose by The Pistols: ‘Pretty Vacant’, ‘Anarchy in the UK’, ‘God Save the Queen’, ‘Holidays in the Sun? All classic songs from the Pistols’ one and only classic album, songs that together defined the new sound and the new attitude that punk brought us in the late 1970s.
In summer 1978, I went to Tottenham Court Road to buy a stereo to take to university, carrying with me copies of my two favourite albums of the time, ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ by The Sex Pistols and ‘Heroes’ by David Bowie – as any fule kno, it was important to check your favourite music sounded great on a system before you bought it. When I pulled out the Pistols album, the shop assistant called his mate over to check it out, so startling was the album cover and so surprised was he that a Sex Pistols fan was interested in purchasing a quality stereo system.
This moment just hints at the controversy and outrage the album caused. The Pistols had rapidly become notorious, swearing on prime time TV, branding the UK as a ‘Fascist regime’ and being banned left right and centre. Just as they liked it.
It’s difficult at this distance to appreciate quite what a dingy country Britain was back in the 70s and how limited were the sources of popular music. We had just 3 TV networks, commercial radio had only been introduced in recent years and there were no such things as music videos or portable music players. Youth culture was not an everyday part of mass culture as it is now. In terms of music, there was on one side the ‘progressive’ rock of ‘intelligent’ music and, on the other, dumb, production line pop filling the radio waves and the charts.
The Pistols were not a spontaneous outpouring of anger and rebellion, however. They were the brainchild of the late Malcolm McLaren, who must be regarded as one of the most significant figures in the history of contemporary music. McLaren ran, with his girlfriend, the designer Vivienne Westwood, a store on the King’s Road called Seditionaries, which sold punk clothes and artefacts but, more importantly, expressed the punk attitude of disaffection with society, disregard for the establishment and the desire to do its own thing, preferably in a way that would ‘frighten the animals’. He pulled together the members of the Pistols from his customers and pulled their strings through their short and explosive career.
The band’s notoriety was forged and sealed by their wonderfully disrespectful – and very funny – appearance with Bill Grundy on TV, their being fired by their record label, EMI (see the eponymous track on Never Mind the Bollocks) and the banning by the BBC of the single ‘God Save the Queen’. The ban was unjustified and juvenile, but it eloquently expressed the nature of the society that the Punks rejected, with its reverence for authority and paranoid defence of the status quo.
Punk not only overturned the world of music, it also had an impact on fashion and design that still resonates today. The ‘ransom note’ cut-and-paste artwork for the sleeve of Never Mind the Bollocks is genuinely iconic, infinitely imitated since but at the time completely novel. And we owe ripped jeans and T-shirts, chains, studs, tattoos, multiple piercings and spiky, coloured hair to Punk.
In truth, very few punk fans dressed like their heroes. Look at photos of the gigs and you will see the crowd predominantly has bad hair, tight cheesecloth shirts and flared jeans – they look just as style-free as all young people did in the UK in the late ‘70s. But they shared the sentiments of their heroes, if not the look. They too wanted to stick two fingers up at the establishment and say: “This is ours, and the fact that you don’t understand it makes it even better.”
The Pistols were at the spearhead of an outburst of creativity that restored Great Britain to the leading position in popular culture – music, fashion, design – that it had yielded to the States in the ‘70s. They were just as Rock ‘n’ Roll as they should be: bad behaviour, booze, drugs… and death. While Johnny Rotten (nee Lydon) was the band leader and spokesperson, the bassist, poor Sid Vicious, became the classic tragic rock star, dying of a heroin overdose before the New York Police could complete their investigation into the death of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. But not before McLaren could cast him as Frank Sinatra re-imagined as a Punk icon in an extraordinary cover of ‘My Way’, accompanied by a suitably anarchic video.
The Pistols inspired a number of ventures into film, most notably ‘The Great Rock n Roll Swindle’ by Julian Temple and ‘Dead on Arrival’ (‘DOA’). I have a mildly amusing story about the latter. I was in San Francisco in summer 1981 and, for reasons too dull to explain here, found myself staying in the spare room of a gay stranger. By pure good fortune, it happened to be the weekend of the Castro Street Fair, San Francisco’s huge annual gay festival. I went to Castro Street (seeing Sylvester perform, incidentally) with Del Gour, my kind host, and met some friends of his, amongst whom was a guy planning to catch ‘DOA’, which I was very keen to see. We arranged to meet later at the Polk Street Cinema to watch the movie.
We made rendezvous at the appointed time, only to find the film was starting an hour later and we had some time to kill. So, as you do, Del’s friend took me to a porn shop. As we walked in he announced, “Well Graham, on the left is the gay stuff, in the middle the lesbian stuff and, on the right, the straight stuff”. I made a bee-line to the right and ostentatiously thumbed through the magazines, lest Del’s friend be in any doubt about my orientation prior to our spending 1 ½ hours in close proximity to one another in a darkened room. Needless to say, I needn’t have worried – he proved to be a perfect gent.
Of course, the Pistols couldn’t last. I think ‘DOA’ documents the ill-fated US tour on which Sid died. With Sid gone, the band ran out of road. The other band members disappeared into the anonymity from which they came, but Lydon established Public Image Limited (PiL), recording a great eponymous single and one ‘interesting’ album. He went on to dabble here than there, adding his unique vocal style – Liam Gallagher amongst many others owe their slurry vocal styling to Lydon – to great effect with Africa Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force on ‘World Destruction’ and with Leftfield on ‘Open Up’, before slowly descending into sad self parody… advertising butter. Oh, how the mighty are fallen.
So: ‘God Save the Queen’ gets the nod. Why? Well, it’s a fairly random choice – ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ is simply stuffed with outstanding tracks and I could have happily selected any of the singles. However, maybe God Save the Queen best epitomises the attitude bomb the Pistols detonated in British culture. It’s the song that caused the greatest outrage and resulted in their media ban – how terribly naughty, dissing the Queen, isn’t that just the dizzy limit (I told you things were a bit different back then)? But it also just sounds great. Try to put aside the fact that Sid on base sounds like he’s struggling to keep up – on most of the album’s tracks, the momentum really comes from Lydon’s vocals and the guitar track, rather than the stumbling rhythm section – and listen to the cacophony and the melodramatic anger.
“No future”: the emblematic statement of the Punk perspective. “No future for you, no future for me.” This was widely viewed as the attitude of British youth at this time. In truth, I’m not sure this really bears scrutiny. To what extent did British youth feel any different to how it had since teenagers were “invented” in the 1950s? Pretty much from the start, Rock ’n’ Roll captured the notion that ‘teenage’ was a misunderstood and disenfranchised lifestage; were the Pistols expressing any more than had been articulated by their predecessors in the 50s and 60s, who were also seen as a threat by the establishment? How much more scary were their studs and Mohicans than the drape coats of the Rockers and the long hair and flared jeans of the hippies, in their own different ways? Punk certainly sounded and looked more aggressive, but maybe it needed to be for this generation of disaffected youth to be noticed above and beyond their forebears. In truth, they were largely pussycats. When Lydon sang “Get pissed, de-stroy” I don’t think he really wanted to tear society to pieces, but I do think he wanted to get pissed! There is a wry smile behind the smirk in many of the tracks on Never Mind the Bollocks, a degree of self awareness, a spoonful of irony to be swallowed with the stage-anger.
The question is certainly pertinent when you consider the role played by the Svengali like figure of McLaren. A genius media manipulator and musical magpie, McLaren arguably pulled the strings and knew exactly – albeit perhaps intuitively rather than consciously – what he was doing. For me, Lydon was never an entirely convincing misfit; he was in the right place at the right time, knew how to play the game and was a genuinely innovative vocal stylist rather than the deprived street punk of his image. What made the attitude stick was the context: a society genuinely in decline and in which it wasn’t just ‘the kids’ who felt they had ‘no future’ but pretty much all the working classes and, as we headed into ‘The Winter of Discontent’, most of middle class Britain too. Our nation’s colonial confidence was destroyed, the collective values that had held us together since the Second World War were being brought into question and our industry was being brought to its knees. Never mind “no future” for the youth, there was no clear future for Britain.
Regardless of whether the Pistols’ lyrics were heart felt or not, in one respect they had it spot on, with a line that is as relevant now as it was then: “There is no future in England’s dreaming”.
That was the year that was: the best of 2011?
Posted: 30/01/2012 Filed under: Dance, Indie, Soul | Tags: favourite music, Graham Booth 1 Comment
At the end of 2011, my old mate John asked me and some other fellow music lovers to give him their choice of the Top 10 Albums of 2011. I needed no further encouragement. What a great opportunity to pause and reflect upon the musical year, as well as find in other people’s lists some albums I’d missed in 2011, which I plan to check out this year.
Of my following 10 selections, one of these albums is a massive cheat and another is actually a single song! However, I hope you find the list interesting and enjoy discovering some music with which you’re not familiar.
Listing this Top 10 of course sees me digressing from the original intention of this blog after merely one entry! However, I suspect this may prove to be only the first of many sides roads explored on the long journey down Personal History of Music Highway.
Was 2011 a lean year for music? Well I certainly bought less last year than in any prior, but I suspect that speaks of too many distractions from the pursuit of musical magic than the quality of the fare on offer. So, a lean year for me, but probably not for music.
That said, boy was there a lot of mediocre stuff about (Laura Marling and her dull cohorts, for starters). Sometimes I worry that the limitations of the ‘rock/pop/contemporary music’ form mean that after just 60 odd years it’s a spent force: it’s all been done and there’s nowhere else to go. Then an album comes along that gives me faith once more. In 2006 it was Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Whatever People Say I Am…’ and in 2009 it was The XX’s eponymous release. But, increasingly, I find myself turning to music from unfamiliar places to refresh my jaded palate: the Middle East, Eastern Europe, India…
There’s a bit of both in this selection, as well as some ‘Western’ music with very clear exotic influences.
The album that came closest to reminding that contemporary music can continue to reinvent itself, albeit with an unmistakeable Oriental twist, was ‘Eye Contact’ by Gang Gang Dance. Some might describe this as ‘arthouse/experimental’ dance/disco, but I think it’s pretty unclassifiable – and it’s certainly much more groovy and enjoyable than such a ‘classification’ would suggest. The opener, ‘Glass Jar’, is a sweeping, almost orchestral 11′ 21″ of sublime beauty, soaring as it works its way through several movements. This is quite possibly my track of the year…
… along with ‘Watch me dance’, the title track of a superb album by DJ/producer Toddla T. I defy you to sit still to this phenomenally funky and gloriously gorgeous creation. It’s old school, hard-core disco thrown in the blender with modern production and a couple of kitchen sinks, emerging as a truly beautiful thing. The rest of the album’s pretty damned good too, as Mr T – clearly a man with an awesome record collection and a starry address book – takes us on a funk-filled journey through the nether regions of house, disco and reggae. It’s invigorating stuff, shot through with evident wit and a love for dance music in all its forms.
Elbow‘s ‘Build a Rocket Boys’ is about as mainstream as this selection gets, but none the worse for it. This is a band at the top its game, writing and performing songs of real beauty and craft. I was lucky enough to see Elbow up close at an intimate gig at Koko in March, just as this album was released, and it was one the year’s highlights. Guy Garvey is a poet with an enormous talent that he wears lightly. And, if his unmissable 6Music show on Sunday evenings is anything to go by, he’s also a lovely man with oodles of charm and humour, as well as a huge depth of musical knowledge. I’m not big on lyrics, but I make an exception for Mr Garvey. I can’t listen to ‘Open Arms’ with dry eyes: ‘We have open arms for broken hearts’, indeed.
Which leads me to my other more mainstream choice, Low‘s album ‘C’mon’. It won’t re-write the history of rock ‘n’ roll but it’s a lovely album, full of simple good songs and great melodies. It is unusual for having two equally strong lead vocalists, one male and one female, sometimes singing solo, sometimes in harmony, with lots of changes of pace and mood.
Now’s the time to start straying slightly from the straight and narrow. Here’s an album you need to own but you don’t have to buy – because you can download ‘Live at Eddie’s Attic’ free from the band’s website. I saw The Civil Wars on Later with Jools Holland and was seriously impressed. They are a young American duo, a man and a woman who are both married to other people and whose spouses should be very worried indeed: the chemistry is palpable. They’re sexy, talented and bright, as this album brilliantly demonstrates. I guess it’s a fresh take on American country/folk, with fantastic tunes, great voices, and cool lyrics.
‘Bon Iver’ by Bon Iver is one of those albums I bought on the back of its critical acclaim and took ages to get around to listening. But it was worth the wait. It’s a grower and turns out to be quite beguiling: strange, slightly ethereal, with surprising echoes of TV on the Radio’s ‘Dear Science’ – which was one the albums of 2008 and is therefore no bad thing.
Nostalgia 77‘s ‘The Sleepwalking Society’ was a bit of a surprise. This album’s jazzy, sleazy, late night, sexy shtick comes out of the blue: out of time, disconnected with current genres.
‘The Rip Tide’ is the latest album from my biggest discovery of 2011, Beirut, a band I was delighted to stumble upon at this year’s End of the Road Festival. Apologies if Beirut are old news to everyone else, but to me they’re a breath of fresh air. Led by an unusually well-travelled American, they combine all kinds of international influences in lovely quirky songs within which accordions (should that be accordia?), ukeleles and French horns feel entirely at home. ‘Nantes’ from 2007’s ‘The Flying Club’ is perhaps Beirut’s epitome song, but ‘The Rip Tide’ is up to snuff.
So, to number 9, and the track masquerading as an album. It is from an album, perhaps the first musical outpouring of the Arab Spring (see what I did there?), called ‘From The Kasbah/Tunis To Tahrir Square/Cairo And Back’. It’s a very diverse compilation, some of it great, some of it naff, but never less than interesting. However, the track ‘Revelation’ by Alia Sellami/Ali Louati is probably the single song that most took my breath away this year. And aptly so, since the only ‘instruments’ are variously filled bottles of water, over the necks of which the players blow. They combine with a gorgeous female voice to create an incredibly beautiful song: rhythmic, atmospheric and literally other-worldly. I heard this on Radio 3’s Late Junction, my major source of ‘world music’. If you haven’t discovered this show yet, you’re in for a treat.
And last: the massive cheat. 2011 was an incomplete year because there was no LCD Soundsystem album – and there never will be again. I was reminded of this sad fact as ‘Losing my Edge’ popped up on my iPhone’s random play today. This song is just one brilliant example of James Murphy’s subversive take on dance music. It’s wonderfully post-modern and full of wit, as he plays the role of the bleeding edge muso in denial of his failing powers. If you’ve not yet discovered LCD Soundsystem, yours is a shell of a life! Last year’s swan song, ‘This is Happening’, was album of the year for me, as characteristically diverse, groovy and literate as Murphy’s previous work. It contained last year’s killer track, ‘One Touch’, as funky, optimistic and downright beautiful as anything he’s done. Oh, he does do beautiful too, as amply demonstrated by the poignant ‘Someone Great’ on 2006’s ‘Sound of Silver’.
So, before a spiel that was billed as a simple Top 10 mutates into a rumination on the value of intelligence and literacy in modern dance music, I’ll say: thank you for asking, John, and goodnight.
Where it all began: ‘New Rose’ by The Damned
Posted: 22/09/2011 Filed under: New wave, Punk | Tags: favourite music, Graham Booth, New Rose, punk, The Damned Leave a comment
Music started in 1976.
At least, it did for me.
I grew up with pop music in the household. A feature of every Christmas was the playing of the latest albums my elder brothers had received as presents. My memory is of hearing the Beatles and, as the years passed, Lead Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Captain Beefheart and Pink Floyd. Mixed into this throughout the year were Soft Machine, Frank Zappa, Mike Oldfield, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Eno and Roxy Music. But very little of this did much for me. I found most of the music that was highly regarded at the time (by album-led artists, as distinct those populating the singles chart), be it ‘progressive’ rock or the music of ‘concept’ albums, frankly rather dull and bombastic.
Then came ‘New Rose’ by The Damned. Released late in 1976, New Rose was the first punk single I remember, and it changed everything. All of sudden, here was energy, excitement, noise – trouble. It was raw, it was passionate, it was short and intense, it felt home-made – in short, it was everything music had ceased to be and everything I realised music needed to be. I was on my way.
At last, here was some music that I could own: not my brothers’ music, but my music. Most people didn’t get it: they said the Punks couldn’t play their instruments, they were just shouting; it was just noise, there was no musicianship. By how far could you miss the point? The punks were as sick of the prevailing state of music as me. Inspired by the ‘do it yourself’ culture advocated by the ‘home made’ mag ‘Sniffing Glue’, disaffected kids all over the country were learning their three chords and starting a band. No need for the big house in the country, the multi-track recording studio, the references to classical myth. Let’s write about stuff we know, the world we know; let’s have fun, and let’s upset the grown ups.
And upsetting the grown ups was important. Punk came out of a youth culture that felt it had no stake in UK society (does that sound familiar?). Britain in the mid-70s was a pretty dire place. We were descending into recession as our traditional industries faltered and our leading position in the world crumbled. Youth unemployment was rising, there were social tensions and racial disharmony. Young people saw themselves as having no place in a grey, conservative society and no interest in a musical culture that belonged to their parents and their older siblings, one that had become bloated and complacent. They wanted to rip it up and start again.
‘New Rose’ was just the beginning. Music had changed forever and the trickle became a flood, as ‘Anarchy in the UK’ followed ‘New Rose’ to unleash a torrent of excitement that upset not just the musical apple cart but the whole cultural scene of the UK. Music would never be the same again; maybe Britain too.
As for the song itself… OMG. “Is she really going out with him?” Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thump-thumpa-thumpa… “Ughhh!” What’s not to like? A 2 ½ minute fall from the tallest building as heavy objects are hurled at you from the windows; there’s no let up; you hit the ground an eviscerated shell (see you later in Pseud’s Corner).
‘Dark Side of the Moon’ it’s not – and all the better for it.
A VERY personal history of music 