MUSIC:
You know
what’s astonishing? I’ve not been to a gig yet this year and I don’t imagine
I’ll get to one until the BMX Bandits play the Head of Steam on Saturday 18th
May. This is partly down to the fact that I’m predominantly working 2.00pm to
10.30pm shifts these days, but it’s also as a result of few, if any, acts on in
town appealing to me. There is a sad aspect to this situation as well, in the
sense that some of my very favourite bands have been on tour, but didn’t play
Newcastle, or anywhere accessible at the weekend.
Almost
exactly a year ago, Ben and I headed to Brudenell Social Club to see The Mekons
77 turn in an absolutely blinding set. This year The Mekons themselves returned
to the self-same venue for their closest date to me, but on a Wednesday night
and so I had to miss out. Thankfully, I have purchased a copy of their
brand-new album, Deserted.
My last couple of encounters with The Mekons,
live as Mini Mekons in 2015 and the sparkling Mekons 77 stuff last year, has
been incredibly positive. Allied to that, reviews I’d seen of Deserted were on the warm side of
ecstatic. Thankfully, this is with good reason as Deserted is possibly their strongest and most experimental release
since the gloriously eclectic F*U*N*9*0. The
cover and provenance of this album from the desert by the Joshua Tree had
prepared me for a revisit to the C&W tinged tones of The Edge of the World, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Alright, so lyrically there’s a reference to aridity and barren plains in just
about every song, but musically we’re closer to The Royal Park than The Grand
Ol’ Opry. In fact, we could be next door to The Royal Park as Deserted is the soundtrack for the best
night I’ve never had in The Brudenell Social Club, which is where thumping
opener Lawrence of California would
rightly bring the house down, with its more than glancing nod to Rock and Roll era Mekons. As yet In the Sun / The Galaxy Explodes isn’t
doing it for me; it seems too meandering, though it suffers by being in the
shade of the first solid gold classic of the 9 cuts available here.
How
Many Stars? first appeared on the Mekonville 12” in 2017
and, at the time, I felt it was a pale, timid effort compared to the Mekons 77
cut Still Waiting that was on the
other side. Lo and behold, my copy has a badly cut, woozy, off centre version,
whereas the proper version on the album is another in the litany of superb Tom
Greenhalgh crooners, harking back to English
Dancing Master in tone and with a guitar solo that is the cousin of Corporal Chalkie. I’m actually rather
irritated I’ve been robbed of knowing what a brilliant track we have here for
the past 2 years. Remember how I mentioned the crazy, off-kilter art punk of F*U*N*9*0? The wiggly, wriggly, trippy trance tones of In the Desert could be un homage to that immense release. This
is real lighters in the air, throwing shapes, out on the doors at Midsummer
madness; choral singing and the violin weeping with the sheer enormity of it
all. Fucking dynamite stuff.
Things don’t let up either. Mirage starts off like a tribute to At Home He Feels Like A Tourist and just
gets better. Tom and Sally screaming “This is as good as it’s gonna get,”
because the message is more than medium cool important and we need to listen; the
band prowling, ready to explode. The Mekons are the real swinging sixties,
chronologically speaking y’know… And then it just gets weird; Weimar Vending Machine with its tempo
changes (they couldn’t do that 40-odd years ago!!) and lyrical tribute to Brecht
and Weill, with trashy glam breaks that could come straight from Another Green World. The Caucasian
Corporal Chalkies squaring the circle, if you like. Two tracks left and it’s
time to calm things down; Andromeda is one of the most affecting, gentle numbers
the band have ever done, its fragility thrown into even sharper relief by the
uplifting final maelstrom of After The
Rain, bringing down the curtain on one of the band’s top 5 releases of all
time. In normal circumstances, we’d be declaring an end to 2019’s album of the
year contest, but we are not living in ordinary times.
I have to
admit, the dissolution of Trembling Bells last September hit me hard indeed. As
you’ll no doubt remember, the late Summer and early Autumn weren’t a good time
for me on any level, so the band I’d fallen deeply, desperately and enduringly
in love with on first listen in May 2010, calling it a day knocked me right
back on my heels, even more so than news of Gerry Love’s departure from Teenage
Fanclub. Unlike the TFC situation, there was no fanfare, no traumatic falling
out and no time to prepare. The end came out of nowhere, seemingly. The first
inkling any of us had was when Lavinia made a post on Facebook saying the late September gigs would be the last she’d be
doing with the band. It seemed such an unnecessarily definitive move; for the
whole time the band had existed, each and every other member had more
extracurricular projects to keep themselves busy than you could shake a stick
at. After all, Lavinia herself had started gigging with fiancé Marco and his
pal Stu from The Wellgreen under the moniker of Stilton. The only reason I can
offer for breaking up the band was a desire to have complete artistic control
over the production of their own songs. Perhaps that’s why we’ve got Alex Rex,
Stilton, Lavinia solo and Simon’s Youth of America project to consider already,
not to mention the 20,000 other things Alex has been up to this last fortnight
or so.
Clearly
once the departure of the most passionate, strident and swooping female
vocalist since (and you just know I’m going to say this) Sandy Denny had been
announced, it meant Trembling Bells would be no more and so it came to pass
with barely a whisper of dissent or discord. After a Sunday night performance
at Leicester Musician, the party was over after a decade during which they’d
released very finest quality body of work I can recall from any band, bar
Teenage Fanclub, The Wedding Present or The Mekons. September truly was the
month of death. Only a couple of months earlier, they’d dropped in to play The Cumberland on a boiling July
evening, ending the set with a new one; I
Am the King. The band that just got better with every subsequent release,
have moved on from the pastoral 1967 era folk rock of Carbeth to the psychedelic cusp of the 70s vibe of Just as the Rainbow to 1972 Sabbath
stylings on The Prophet Distances Himself
from his Prophecy showed that there was no way in which their parting of
the ways could have been because of creative bankruptcy. With this new cut, which
appears as the lead track on the 2019 Record Store Day split 10” they share
with Alex Rex, that acts as both epitaph and manifesto for The Bells and their
future plans, the band show themselves to have evolved into a version of 1973 Roxy Music, or Rexy Music perhaps?
Glorious though I Am the King is, it
is eclipsed by the beguiling avant garde
mixture of surrealism and nursery rhymes that is Medusas. We’re talking Henry Cow meeting Slapp Happy for the
purposes of genre hopping germination. Breathtaking stuff and, tragically,
another one I never got to hear live.
But what
we do have, and I want to say this in the strongest terms possible, is a
potential series of artistic journeys that will eclipse almost everything
they’ve done before. Not just what we heard across 7 albums by Trembling Bells,
but the output by Blackflower, Crying Lion, Death Shanties and everything else
the members have involved themselves with. As yet, Alastair C Mitchell has not
been spotted, which is somewhat difficult to believe if you’ve seen him.
Musically, he is yet to surface, while Mike and Solveig seem set for another
summer of rolling out their semi-stoned folksy gems from the back of a VW
campervan. Let’s hope for tangible releases in the not too distant future,
learning from the example of Simon Shaw’s Youth of America, whose YOA Rising album came out on January 1st
2019, which put them ahead of everyone else.
Having
dropped a teaser with the Night of the
Comet 7” a couple of years back, the album is a glorious melange of
bubblegum West Coast surf glam, with cutesy hooks and harmonies, not to mention
a seam of consciously late 70s powerpop running through it like a location
stamp through a stick of seaside rock. It’s properly lovely, completely summery
and it has as much in common with pastoral English baroque formality as diamond
has with carbon. This is heading to the beach fun, not tramping the North York
Moors or lighting a modest fire in a bothy out past Carbeth.
Now, like
any good pretend grandparent, I would never seek to rank the bairns in terms of
quality, but those freshly solo artistes who I have come to regard with the
kind of protective pride only an aged paterfamilias could know, have very
different qualities to recommend them. My prediction for the future would be
that Lavinia will achieve commercial success as well as artistic approval,
while Alex will come to be regarded as the finest musical polymath we’ve known
in decades. The Ginger Genius combines the finest and worst moments of Peter
Bellamy, John Cale, Cornelius Cardew, Bob Dylan and just about every esoteric
and arcane marginal figure in every genre of music there is.
So far,
I’ve only heard small snippets of Stilton on-line and I really like what
they’re doing. There’s still the folk sensibility of early Trembling Bells, but
little of the more dramatic, swooping sturm
und drang epics that came more to the fore as time passed. Stilton appear
to be a happy, upbeat folk rock band with a great ear for a tune and I look
forward so much to seeing them at The
Cumberland on June 30th, if Lavinia’s plans come to pass. Until
then, I will continue to play her sumptuous Waiting
for Tomorrow 7”, both on record and on-line, so I can get another glimpse
of the gloriously kooky video to
accompany it. The b-side All Seems Better
is a treasure too; less overtly jolly than Waiting
for Tomorrow, it is a highly promising slice of what Lavinia’s solo
songwriting, or tunes crafted in partnership with her significant other, will offer in the future. This is naturally
commercial, bespoke folk pop of the finest vintage. And that voice; I know I
will never tire of it.
And now,
I must write about Alex Neilson’s latest work. As I said earlier in this piece,
we do not live in ordinary times, not when there is an album such as Otterburn to consider. It is a record
that leaves the listener profoundly changed and chastened. The stunning,
unimaginably tragic inspiration for this record was the sudden, tragic death of
Alex’s younger brother Alastair who passed in his sleep just under 2 years ago.
In every possible way, the world would be a happier place if Otterburn, named after the houseboat
Alastair called home rather than the Northumbrian village, did not exist.
However, and I am still not sure I have the right to say this, as a tribute it
is perhaps the most moving and loving epitaph his brother could have been
given. There are words by Alex on this record that are the equal of Ben
Jonson’s On My First Son as a way of
articulating grief in a way that induces uncontrollable weeping. Musically, the
only comparable experience I have would be memories of listening to Joy
Division’s Atmosphere for the first
time, so profound and so total is the quality of sentiment and sound.
Otterburn is, of course, an album and so the music, as
well as the words and the cause for it to exist, must also be addressed. If we accept that Trembling Bells
encapsulated the entire gamut of English underground music from 1967 to 1974,
then here we have Alex as the Glaswegian Dylan placing his own blood on these
tracks, or even feeding his desire to keep heaping ginger on ginger, as the
wickedly ramshackle ensemble pieces veer from ersatz klezmer bier Keller
bawling on Amy May I? to the
introspective, melodious Always Already, the good time spleen venting of The Cruel Rule and the grief streaked
acapella of the closing Smoke &
Memory. I dare you to listen and not sob.
I am more
than proud, I am honoured to know Alex and it will be a source of lasting
regret that I didn’t get to see the Alex Rex Showband on his recent tour. The
only viable night was the Todmorden date, but it sold out so quickly I couldn’t
make it happen. However, I have Vermilion, Otterburn and, of course, his tracks on the I Am the King 10”to give satiating solace. They’re both
covers; You Know More Than I Know is a John Cale number, hitherto unknown
to me. Alex’s mam likes it, so he’s done a version for her, which is lovely.
However, and I hope I don’t offend; it pales into insignificance when compared
to his jaw-dropping, heartbreaking take on Luke Kelly’s Night Visiting Song.
Luke’s last ever performance was a version of Night
Visiting Song on RTE’s Late Late Show, a matter of weeks before his
death in 1986. Alex’s version is better. Without question. Alex had a dream
after Alastair’s passing that the two of them sang this song together as a way
of saying goodbye. This version starts like All Tomorrow’s Parties and
dwarfs even that magnum opus. Every single second of the 4 minutes 45 is
drenched in love and commemoration, with a band suitably chosen and playing at
the top of their game.
And yet there is more… The third Neilson brother,
Oliver, has made a video for Night Visiting Song, which includes a
central, repeated image of Alex walking along the High-Level Bridge from
Newcastle to Gateshead in the hours of darkness. The last building on the
Newcastle side is The Bridge Hotel. It was there, at the folk club
formed by Johnny Handle and Louisa Killen in the late 50s, where Luke Kelly,
who spent two years working on the sites around Tyneside and lodged in the less
than handsome bit of Bensham between Coatsworth and Whitehall Roads, first sang
in public. Not only that, one of Luke’s regular partners, duetting on
traditional songs from the 32 counties, telling of love, drinking, freedom and
rebellion, was my old fella; the late Eddy Cusack. Synchronicity makes you
think and Alex makes me weep, but every time I listen to his music, I feel
thankful his genius exists and is out there. Make sure you share this experience
sometime soon.
As well
as I Am the King, I made several
other purchases on Record Store Day. Unlike previous years, I did my research
properly and made a hit list to take with me. I had an early night, slept well
in the afterglow of Newcastle’s win at Leicester, set the alarm and struck out
for town. First stop was Reflex, which is my normal go to shop in town. I’m not
sure why, as RPM is far more friendly. Anyway, I didn’t get within half a mile
of the door of Reflex as the queue extended all the way to the corner where The Pineapple used to be. Inspiration
struck and I decided to head for Windows; the venerable music shop in the
Central Arcade that has been resolutely indie since it was established 111
years ago. The queue was minimal and the reception cordial. Within five minutes
I’d been in and out, leaving with the aforementioned Alex Rex & Trembling
Bells 10” under my arm, together with 12” singles by Jacques Brel and Suicide.
With the
bairn being unavoidable detained in his pit during the hours of daylight at the
weekend, I had a list for him as well; the Average White Band’s Pick up the Pieces 12” proved
unobtainable anywhere in town, but RPM, gloriously chaotic and boasting Lou and
Rob on the decks, came up with the goods as I snaffled the only copy of Bardo
Pond’s Big Laughing Jym. I’d
decided against getting the Dylan remix of Blood on the Tracks, as
paying just shy of £30 for an album I already own is indefensible. That said,
if I’d realised the Suicide 12” was north of £20 I’d not have bothered.
What about the music? The keynote purchase we’ve
already discussed, while the other two are just lovely bits of nostalgia that
fill gaps in my collection. Brel’s charmingly mannered torch song histrionics,
recorded live at Maison de la Radio in Paris in June 1965, are as beguiling as
the day Bowie, Scott Walker, Marc Almond and a dozen other camp, firebrand
artistes fell for them 50 years ago. The highlight track is Amsterdam,
of course; delivered en francais like the others as well, hammed up like
a Gallic Kenneth Williams. The three other cuts, especially the imploring Ne
Me Quitte Pas make this is a superb purchase.
Suicide were incredible, weren’t they? Cheree
Cheree backed with Frankie Teardrop on a battered second hand 12” I
picked up at Tynemouth Market for a couple of quid perhaps a decade back,
needed to be complemented by Dream Baby Dream and now it is. That
sleazy, claustrophobic minimalism harks back to the days when using a
synthesiser was a genuinely revolutionary musical act, rather than a shortcut
to mainstream success. The short version is brash and succinct; the long take
bewitching and hypnotic. A solid gold, all time classic that should have a
place in every serious collector’s haul. Too bloody pricey mind.
Despite
the usual prohibitive and indefensible expense, at least the purchases I made
on this year’s RSD were all by artists I already knew and loved, though I do admit
I am a sucker for buying stuff I’ve not heard before, simply because reviews
make it sound interesting. Hence an idle chat at work about House if Pain led
me, via the wonders of the internet, to investigate if there was an Irish Grime
or Drill scene. As ever with such organic street phenomena, YouTube is the prime source for a
plethora of shakily shot, largely inaudible camera phone footage of Hardy Bucks
throwing shapes outside several branches of Abrakebabra
and Centra in Edgeworthstown,
Limerick and Portarlington. However, I also came across the far more
aesthetically pleasing Soft Boy Records,
who have released several slices of Irish hip hop in physical form. I bought
the two releases currently available; Wastefellow’s Post Human Potential 12” and Kojaque’s Deli Dreams album. I’ll say straight off that Wastefellow isn’t for
me; I need to give it a second hearing, but my initial dislike of the dull
trippy beats and quasi Italian house piano fills was profound. I may be missing
something, but there’s nothing remotely intriguing on first listening.
In
contrast, the Kojaque album is brilliant. At one memorable moment, label
founder and lyricist Kevin Smith in his MC persona as the eponymous Kojaque,
announces that what we are listening to is “the Emerald Isle’s answer to The Chronic.” A pretty bold claim, but
one I’d imagine has been made by this cocky, talented visual arts graduate from
Cabra with his tongue firmly in his cheek. However, what we actually have here
is the Mike Skinner of Da Nort Soide, in terms of Smith’s ability to create a
plausible narrative, involving a rounded, central character. In this instance a
young bored worker, slaving away making paninis, burgers and chicken nugget
snackboxes in one of ubiquitous fast food sections of Irish newsagents and small
convenience stores, urban and rural. Lyrically impressive, verbally dextrous
and blessed with the gift of perfect delivery in an uncompromising DNS brogue, Deli Dreams is truly the sound of urban
decay and social dislocation from Parnell Square, Dorset Street and all points
north and west to Phoenix Park, the Royal Canal, Glasnevin and Fairview. A
truly astonishing record and one that appears to be giving Kojaque the leg up
his work deserves. Who loves ya baby? I do.
BOOKS:
As I
mentioned in http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-year-of-reading-vocariously.html it was a stated aim this year to read more
books. Unfortunately, not all of them have been great works of literature. Paul
Morley manages to outdo Tony Parsons in terms of being a smug, arrogant,
pseudo-intellectual, ex music journalist in love with the sound of his own
prose. He even breasts the tape ahead of Stuart Maconie in the supplementary
category of professional Northern twat. However, bearing all this in mind, I still
wasn’t prepared for the sheer pretension found within the 450 pages of shallow
piffle dressed up as scholarly hagiography that his deeply irritating The Ages of Bowie conspires to be. There
will be a book that describes how it felt to be a bit different growing up in
Stockport or some other woe begotten wool enclave in the early 70s and kicking
against the pricks by modelling your look and your attitude on Bowie, Ferry and
their ilk; this isn’t that book. While beginning as a self-justifying paean to
the importance of Bowie to his own dull youth, The Ages of Bowie then veers wildly off course, turning into a
sketchy, second-hand, unsatisfactory, distant biography.
Like
everyone else, Morley actually stopped listening to Bowie when the 80s turned
up; however, for the purpose of this wearisome tome, he’s done his copy and
paste research by giving a tiresome year by year rundown of albums he won’t
have listened to and films he hasn’t seen, judging by the glowing review he
gives Labyrinth. There isn’t a single sentence of analysis or
appreciation of Bowie’s work post Scary
Monsters, while the desperately sluggish tempo of the writing and unwieldy
structure of the book mean that Bowie’s final releases, The Next Day and Lazarus, are
discussed in the same shambling, leaden-footed way as everything else in the
book, meaning one’s reaction to Bowie’s untimely death is reduced to the level
of disappointment to be felt when your local branch of Office World closes its doors for the last time. I will never read
another line of Morley’s work in my life.
David
Pownall is one of those versatile, jobbing writers who has been churning out
300,000 words a year for half a century now. God Pekins is a short novel set in a failing provincial theatre,
around the battle of wills between the artistic director and the writer in
residence. Unfortunately, the sheer number of characters and the utterly
indistinguishable nature of their speaking voices, mean this is a baffling list
of names rather than a satisfying story. It ends with the louche layabout
dramatist slowly rowing away from the burning embers of the theatre, in the
company of his dea ex machina to the
utter indifference of readers everywhere. I found this book in the lost
property bin at work and I’m glad I didn’t buy it.
I’m
really glad I did buy Mike Carter’s All
Together Now though. In November 1981, Carter’s late father Pete, former
union full time official and Communist Party veteran, organised the People’s March for Jobs, when thousands
of unemployed workers marched from Liverpool to London, to highlight the
conditions endured by those without work. Almost thirty-five years on, just
before the Brexit referendum, Mike undertook the same journey, partly as a
research project and partly as a way of slaying familial demons. He’d long been
estranged from his late father and hadn’t been on the original march as he was
a student. His father’s death had provided him with a treasure trove of
memorabilia from the original march and this spurred him to do the hard yards
and explore how society had changed in the intervening period. This book is an
engaging blend of walking and talking, acting as a record of the journey he
made over four weeks and 330 miles.
With his
flat in Brighton and job in London, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw: the
food banks, payday loan shops, bookies, pawnbrokers and sleeping bags in
doorways. In common with the original marchers, he had done no training, but
there were half-days and rest days, and plenty of people to talk to, many of
them veterans of the original march, along the way. One of the first of them
was Kim; an unemployed single parent back in the day, who the organisers
initially blocked from taking part, saying it would be too hard on her
three-year-old. She argued her corner and within a few days, she was the human
face of the march; the Ellen Wilkinson of late 1981. Most of those Carter meets
have fond memories of the march: of the spirit of togetherness it engendered,
including a punk band from Birmingham called The Quads, who marched the whole
route. When Carter speaks on the phone to their lead singer, Josh Jones, he
discovers he’s now a priest in New Zealand.
The book
includes a lot of conversations, not just those Carter has with others but
those he has with himself, and us, as he analyses what he is seeing and
expounds his ideas. As for the walking, he is increasingly keen on what he
calls “desire paths;” shortcuts or long ways round, so as to avoid official
paths or roads with heavy traffic. Desire paths are about people going where
they please, regardless of others, much as his father had done, when he walked
out to start a new life, with a new family, who were affluent and middle-class,
four years before the march. Carter senior claimed his abandoning of his
parental responsibilities was a rejection of bourgeois ideals, though to his
kids it seemed then, as now, to be crass selfishness dressed up as
revolutionary activity, which is why Mike wouldn’t forgive Pete, even less so
when his mum died of cancer soon afterwards, as if killed by grief.
Over the
years, there were attempts at reconciliation, but his dad always pushed him
away. By the end Pete was living alone, on a canal barge, an alcoholic,
suffering from lung cancer and virtually destitute, but still bull-headed, so
much so that Carter lost it with him, reeling off the grievances he’d long held
back. It was the last exchange they had, and it weighs heavily on Carter’s mind
as he walks. Rather than berate his dad for wasting his life, he’s angry on his
behalf at what England has become.
Almost
everyone he talks to is a Brexiter, even young people, immigrants and those
from cities that have benefited from EU funding. They should be angry with
Westminster, not Brussels, but he understands their vicious need to blame the
wrong targets. It’s a depressing
picture, backed up by extensive reading and research. But the rhythm of walking
is therapeutic, and at the end, Carter is tentatively hopeful that the blight
of neoliberalism will pass. No less important, he has made a fragile peace with
his dad, which is something I applaud him for, because 35 years on, I can’t
forgive Militant for what they did to my family. They ruined my former cousin
John Hird’s life by indoctrinating him into what they call “The Organisation,”
but is really a quasi-religious cult, built on power and focussed entirely on
exploiting the weak and inadequate followers that are laughably known as
Comrades.
The best
analytical take down of the evil cult of Militant
is Michael Crick’s wonderful book of the same name. Released initially in 1986,
when the destruction of the remaining working class infrastructure of Liverpool
by Taaffe, Hatton, Mulhearn, Fields and their muscle-headed pals, was at its
peak, it forensically examines and destroys the credibility of every single aspect,
both organisational and ideological, of the homophobic, institutionally racist,
misogynist, workerist RSL cabal. The 2016 release with a dubiously argued
codicil about Corbyn’s followers, who drew more ire from Militant than any
other left grouping back in the day, seems an unnecessary rewrite of a document
that is perfect from start to finish. I just wish a mentally ill failure of a
person, currently residing in Vitoria Gasteiz, could bring himself to read this
and realise he may have lost 40 years of his life to “The Organisation,” but he
doesn’t need to waste the rest of it.
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