A couple of years back I used to be able to upset pretty
much every football fan in the North East in some way or other with one single
sentence; sunderland have got the best
fans, but Newcastle have the best chairman. Those dozen words caused
incalculable offence at every level among Mags and mackems, but sadly time
moves on and nothing dates quicker than humour, however vindictive. Ever since
Niall Quinn left his job as Wearside’s own Lord Haw Haw in circumstances that
have still to be adequately explained, there really isn’t any point in
dignifying the relentless mackem straw clutching they engage in as regards
their settlement’s standing in the regional pecking order. Regardless of the
criteria used; they really have been mastered by Black & White Bastards,
end of story.
However, while we accept that there’s no realistic contest
between the two in football terms (on the pitch or in the stands), then what
happens if we move the debate on to music? Without getting in to the historical
minutiae of the relative gig, band or club scenes of the two conurbations over
these past 5 decades or so, while graciously acknowledging the fact my cousin
Graeme’s band The Monoconics released a superb Comsat Angels flavoured 7” in
1981 when living in Hendon; the unvarnished truth is that there really isn’t
much of a contest in this realm either.
Wearside’s current allegedly finest beat combo are
apparently The Futureheads; purveyors of lame, identikit, indie by numbers and
famous only for an uninspired cover version of a Kate Bush song. Truly, they
are Lee Cattermole and Jordan Henderson with guitars; cheap plastic ones from
out the catalogue. Tyneside, of course, can boast of Heaton habitués Maximo Park as the entire
region’s current poster children; none of them come from Newcastle, but just
like NUFC’s squad, they comprise a talented, articulate, popular, multicultural
coterie of effortlessly effective, handsome individuals. They are not from
Tyneside, but they are of the culture that breeds such creativity. Singer Paul
Smith was apparently chosen for the role because of his eye catching dancing to
Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” at a student party. Times really do change; in
my day he’d probably have been started on by Garry Blythe or another of the
Felling Punks (FPX).
This summer, while my mind is more focused on Euros Childs
and The Wellgreen’s gig at the Star and Shadow than on the Euros in Poland and
Ukraine, the desperate devotees of the mackem cause are trying, and failing, to
market Albania on Wear as a kind of presumed regional rock hub, by cashing in
on SJP’s use as an Olympic football venue (another sporting event that won’t
cross my radar this summer), by putting on some gigs at El Stadio de Mierda.
Which ground-breaking acts are the dissolute cognoscenti from Downhill and
Plains Farm being asked to enjoy? Well, the first ones up were the frankly
appalling Coldplay, whose gig significantly coincided with 24 hours of
incessant rain mixed in with torrential downpours and a one day strike by Metro
drivers. If ever there has been such a definitive, localised example of false
consciousness and Gramsci’s theory of hegemony in the region’s recent past,
then I’ve missed it.
Local media outlets shamefully branded the strikers as cruel
tyrants, hell-bent on destroying “tourism” in the region. The idle of thought and
ill-informed of opinion took to the airwaves and internet, decrying these so-called
Labour aristocrats who earned a seemingly mind-boggling £32k a year for working
3 successive 12 hour shifts, with no say over rest days or work patterns, on a
public transport service that charges £70 a month; as if these drivers set the
prices! As if they are anything other than exploited workers! As if they are as
much to blame for the crisis of capitalism as the banking and bourgeois elite!
All they were doing was striking to save their pensions; if it coincidentally
meant several thousand people were saved from enduring the trite, smug
blandishments of Coldplay, so much the better. Mischievously, I asked Ben if he
fancied attending this gig; his response was “I’d rather shit in my hands and
clap,” which proves I’ve brought him up properly. Perhaps he is even better a
judge of audio quality than I am, as I’d considered the phrase “If they were
playing in the back garden, I’d shut the curtains” to be adequately contemptuous.
The next gig at SoS is the relentlessly banal Bruce
Springsteen, rolling up to trot out his blue collar dirges a mere 27 years
after he played the same set of ponderous banalities at SJP. I missed that one
away at University, but remember at the time several member emeriti of FPX bought carry-outs and
listened to Springsteen from the comfort of Exhibition Park band stand; “shite”
was Gord’s one word summary of The Boss. I have no reason to expect he will
have improved with age; Springsteen that is, not Gord. Finally, Sunday 24th
June sees the last night of the Pallion Proms, when The Red Hot Chili Peppers
take the stage, which is one gig Ben is actually going to. I’m not, but then
again, I did see them on 6th February 1990 at Riverside, for
considerably less than the £45 the bairn is shelling out to endure The
Futureheads as support. Here are edited extracts of the review of RHCP I penned
for Paint
It Red at the time, showing that the Decca employee who told
The Beatles guitar groups were on the way out may have been a distant relation
-:
This should
have been one of the gigs of the year; a sold out venue and a highly vaunted
band debuting in the city meant expectations were running high. However, the
gang didn’t deliver the goods and for 50% of the time, I was bored witless. The
supposed collision between Funkadelic and Big Black was only a pale imitation
of what The Beatnigs can offer. The vital spark of energy, that extra yard of
pace was missing and the whole set dragged. Ok, it was good to watch; crazy
haircuts, confrontational tattoos and 5 bare chests, but the sound was lost in
a sludgy mix. Indeed only a straightforward reading of AC/DC’s “Back In black”
for an encore salvaged anything from a disappointing night. I wouldn’t write
them off just yet, but I fail to see quite why so many people are frothing at
the mouth about them.
It was only much later we were to
learn that this tour coincided with the Chili Peppers at their drug fuelled,
lowest ebb, which presumably explains why they were so dire that night.
Personally I never really got in to them after that, other than “Give It Away,”
mainly because that one used to be on the Egypt Cottage jukebox about 15 times
a night in the early 90s, but I imagine they’ll put on a top quality show for
the eager Sixth Formers journeying to the dark place at the weekend.
I have to say that at 17, which is the
age Ben turns on 27th June, there is absolutely no way I would have
found myself attending a stadium gig, though 12 days before I turned 18, I went
to Gateshead Stadium to see The Gang of Four and The Beat support The Police,
in what was billed as Sting’s homecoming gig, though I was away out the door
long before that tantric charlatan took the stage. Frankly, I’ve always been a
wilful and contrary advocate of the obscure and, being honest, those of
questionable or even negligible talent, as well as an inveterate opponent of
the mainstream. From the age of 11 or 12, I used to spend inordinate amounts of
my school holidays leafing through records in shops such as Felling Square’s Pop
Inn. Poring over racks of unattainable vinyl (albums cost about £3; I
used to get £1 a week pocket money), the ones that appealed to me the most were
not releases by the famous or even the celebrated, but those unknown sounds of
recondite bands with intriguing names; The Amazing Blondel, Brand X, Henry Cow,
Snafu and a thousand other forgotten early to mid-70s outfits that never
received any music press or, in some cases, even a CD reissue. Those that did,
I sometimes bought a couple of decades or more later when spotting them in a
bargain bin or the back page of an unsolicited mail order catalogue. In
general, I listened a couple of times, before ruefully accepting that Social
Darwinism can have a musical edge to it after all. To this day, I will always
lend a sympathetic ear to the purveyors of Folk, Prog or Jazz Rock from 40
years distant, if I see a gig listed or a CD or album in a bleak corner of a
record shop or in a forgotten pile at a market stall; anything other than blues
or metal will command a degree of my attention and often a purchase. If you
feel yourself in need of a Matching Mole, Hatfield & the North or Lol
Coxhill album, just drop me a line.
As a young and enthusiastic observer,
on the periphery of music, Christmas Eve 1976 changed me, forever. I became the
involved and passionate consumer I still am today. Listening in to John Peel
that December night, as I’d also become accustomed to doing in school holidays,
he announced that tracks 50-41 of his inaugural Festive 50 would be played.
While the cut that came in at number 50, the decidedly pedestrian, if not
soporific, “And You And I” by Yes had no discernible effect on me, nor did any
of the other Festive 50 tracks, bar “Go to Rhino Records” by Wildman Fischer
that I eventually bought on CD in about 2001, one contemporary cut the great
man played altered my perception of what music is about and what it can do to a
person’s mind. The Sex Pistols “Anarchy in the UK” received its debut radio
play that show, but it wasn’t that record. Basically other than the eternally
adored pairing of The Clash and The Buzzcocks, the initial wave of British punk
left me cold. The Sex Pistols were glam rock, The Damned a cartoon
approximation of rebellion and the rest too tame for words. The Models?
Chelsea? The Cortinas? Perhaps not…
No, the record Peel played that exploded
my consciousness was Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ “I Belong to the Blank
Generation,” a snarling, insouciant arty drawl of a song; I loved it instantly
and still do. It sums up everything about how I felt and still do about refusing
to compromise or bow down to the mainstream; on 30th December 1976,
aged 12 years, 4 months and 19 days, I bought the “Blank Generation” EP on
Stiff and Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” inspired and intoxicated by Hell’s
NY punk attitude and the impossibly beguiling flights of imaginative fancy
weaved by “Desolation Row,” which was number 3 in the Festive 50 I believe. Two
purchases from Windows of the Central Arcade that I will never regret; the
combination shows my earliest embracing of the ethos DIY and studied incompetence,
as well as a profound love for imagination, innovation and an utter refusal to compromise;
“Blank Generation” and “Like A Rolling Stone” don’t just make the hairs on my
neck stand up, they make me stand up and cheer every time I hear them.
When I compare the music I love,
whether it be the work of any of those listed above (seriously, Matching Mole
were great!) or any or all of Teenage Fanclub, Trembling Bells, The Fall, The
Wedding Present, The Velvets, The Dubliners, The Clancy Brothers, Planxty or Christy
Moore, then by comparison, the RHCP seem dull and Springsteen utterly beyond
parody. Yet I don’t see either of them as evil in the way I view Coldplay as
being both profoundly wrong on every possible level. Anyone choosing to listen
to Coldplay, on the spurious grounds that their anodyne, supposedly inoffensive,
adult orientated, low-carb indie style pop pap, is offering an intelligent
choice for an ageing, but still trendy demographic is reinventing themselves as
John Major with an Ipod.
Whilst Edwina Currie’s Pooterish fuck
buddy said with a straight face that Little Chef restaurants provided the kind
of menu choices he liked best of all, ignoring a whole world of flavours,
tastes and experiences he was too weak, too shallow and too pitifully pathetic
to even imagine could exist outside his self-imposed cultural vaccuum, a swathe
of 30 somethings are his de facto social descendants a generation later, by
lapping up these trite slices of inanity. Those who seek to legitimise Chris
Martin’s continued presence in the world of contemporary music are either
pretending, or deluding themselves that Coldplay or the likes of Paul Weller
provide anything worth listening to. Frankly I’d rather hear a recording of a
boarding kennels full of Labrador puppies being napalmed than the Modfather’s latest
pointless twaddle. With his Bert Van Marwijk hair and performances, the man has
taken the apogee of wallpaper music in the Style Council and effortlessly
raised the blandness bar again and again over these past 4 decades. Someone
should stop him. Now!
Of course, Weller’s not the only one
who needs some kind of aesthetic intifada visited upon him; what about the
Stone Roses? Dull, plodding, pub rock performed by arrogant cokeheads with an
illogical, messianic belief they were The Stones reanimated. Though their first
album wasn’t bad, it was only really “What the World is Waiting For” and “Fools
Gold” that lifted them significantly above the workaday and the humdrum. What
possible reason other than unimaginably large piles of cash money could they
have for getting back together now? I don’t gamble, but I’d wager any
subsequent Stone Roses product that limps out won’t have the vibrancy, force or
integrity of, say, Wire’s “Red Barked Tree.” That 2011 album is the quality of
release that justifies a reformation, 34 years after “Pink Flag”; “The Third
Coming” simply won’t do that.
However much I object to Coldplay on
aesthetic grounds and The Stone Roses on moral ones, I feel it has to be stated
quite unequivocally that the very worst of the indie Uncle Toms are New Order
as, unlike the previous two ludd gangs, they did achieve absolute and utter
genius, though not under their current name. Unquestionably, Joy Division were
one of the greatest bands in the history of popular music; their music is both
timeless and impossibly brilliant. New Order had to exist to allow the members
to come to terms with the death of Ian Curtis, though after 1983’s “Power
Corruption & Lies,” they have been utterly irrelevant, even if the
occasional track, such as “Murder” or “Thieves Like Us” really did shine like polished
diamonds in a cess pit.
Twice this year, in Newcastle and in
Dublin, I’ve avoided going to see New Order, in the same way I ignored them at
Glastonbury in 1987. While their relentless flogging of a creative horse that’s
been certified as needing burial for over two decades, it isn’t as distasteful
as Peter Hook finding some session singer to do Curtis karaoke-style as he
tours with note for note recreations of “Unknown Pleasures” and “Closer.” In
Hook’s defence, at least he’s honest about trying to rake in the cash and has got
some publicity for his antics. The only time New Order were mentioned with
anything other than withering contempt was in relation to Canadian gay porn
actor and suspected cannibalistic murderer Luka Magnotta (aka Eric Clinton
Newman), who apparently slayed then dismembered his lover Jun Lin in a flat in
Montreal, before posting various parts of the corpse to Canuck political
parties. What does this have to do with New Order? Well Magnotta filmed his
grisly act and uploaded the video, entitled “One Little Ice Pick,” with “True
Faith” as the accompanying soundtrack. I wonder what the baldy, beer boys in
their Sports Direct leisure wear that make up New Order’s audience thought of
that; actually I don’t wonder at all.
So, if that is what we shouldn’t be
listening to (bearing in mind I’ve not even mentioned U2); what should we be exposing
ourselves to? If you check my earlier blogs this year, you’ll see I laud the
usual suspects: Fairport Convention, The Wedding Present, Trembling Bells,
Lightships, Snowgoose and Christy Moore. In the near to distant future, there
are gigs by The Fall, Patti Smith, Euros Childs, Plainsong, Half Man Half
Biscuit and Dirty Three to look forward to. However, being me, I still have to
have my Pop Inn moments, when the bizarre, the arcane and the downright
ridiculous grab my attention. In 2012, I have been dazzled by Pecker Dunne,
Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Cornelius Cardew; to whom I dedicate this blog.
In terms of fame and modernity,
Godspeed You! Black Emperor (note the positioning of the exclamation mark) are
the nearest of the three to being down with the kids. Possibly this
semi-ambient, avant garde, Quebecois, post rock, nonet may be known to some of
you. Having formed in Montreal in 1994, they released 3 albums around the turn
of the millennium and toured the UK in 2001, while I was living in Slovakia;
they probably didn’t play Bratislava as me and my mate Webby would have been
the only ones in the audience. After that, the band announced an indefinite
hiatus. In essence, I missed out on them first time round and it was only when
news of their reformation in 2011 spread that I began to take notice and
educate myself. Their three albums are: Yanqui UXO, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas
To Heaven and F#A#~ which includes their finest
moment, The Dead Flag Blues. How can anyone not love a song that has
these lyrics?
the car's on fire and there's no driver at the
wheel
and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand
lonely suicides
and a dark wind blows.
the government is corrupt
and we're on so many drugs
with the radio on and the curtains drawn.
we're trapped in the belly of this horrible
machine
and the machine is bleeding to death.
the sun has fallen down
and the billboards are all leering
and the flags are all dead at the top of their
poles.
it went like this:
the buildings tumbled in on themselves.
mothers clutching babies picked through the
rubble.
and pulled out their hair.
the skyline was beautiful on fire.
all twisted metal stretching upwards;
everything washed in a thin orange haze.
i said: "kiss me, you're beautiful -
these are truly the last days."
you grabbed my hand and we fell into it
like a daydream or a fever.
we woke up one morning and fell a little
further down;
for sure it's the valley of death.
i open up my wallet
and it's full of blood.
Compared to
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Pecker Dunne is like Rick Astley. Actually Pecker
Dunne is an octogenarian Irish traveller, who plays banjo and fiddle, either in
pubs or outside GAA matches, particularly in Munster, passing the hat round and
never asking for a definite fee. His peripatetic life has seen him roam from
his birth town of Castlebar in County Mayo in 1931, to Wexford, where he spent
most of his life, to his current abode in County Clare. Often his material
consists of Irish folk standards, such as Whiskey In The Jar, Roisin Dubh or McAlpine’s
Fusiliers, as well as forays in to C&W schmaltz, like Ballybunion
By the Sea, that thankfully don’t stray too close to Kevin Prendergast
or Big Tom territory and comic numbers, such as the Black Velvet Band parody The
Ould Morris Van, which may be resolutely unfunny but is still a
thousand times better than anything Seamus Moore produced.
However, what intrigues
me, apart from the gratuitous and unconvincing, populist, pro Republican
sentiments in the final verse of the almost risqué Down by the Liffeyside
are his own numbers. In particular his breakthrough hit from the 1960s Sullivan’s
John and his signature tune Wexford, which tell a compelling
tale of his life and the hardships he endured in the town he called his home
and in the life he has lead -:
My family lived in Wexford town, stopped
travelling and settled down,
Though my father kept a horse and car, we lived
within the town,
The people there misunderstood, or they did
not know our ways,
So with horse and car, back on the road, I
began my travelling days
My father was called the Fiddler Dunne, and
I'm a fiddler too,
But although I often felt his fist, he taught
me all he knew,
I know I'll never be as good, and yet I feel
no shame,
For the other things my father taught, I am
proud to bear his name.
He taught me pride and how to live, though the
road is hard and long,
And how a man will never starve, with a banjo,
fiddle or song,
And how to fight for what I own, and what I
know is right,
And how to camp beside a ditch on a stormy
winter's night.
O times were good and times were bad, and
people cruel and kind,
But what I learned of people then, has stayed
within my mind,
I'll honour friends with all my heart, do for
them all I can,
But I've learnt to go the road again, when
they spurn the tinker man.
O Wexford is a town I like, but the travelling
man they scorn,
And a man must feel affection for the town
where he was born,
I know one day, that I'll go back, when my
travelling days are done,
And people will begin to wonder, what has
happened to the Pecker Dunne.
Perhaps he can
teach it to Mick Wallace, who could then busk it outside Leinster House as he
tries to pay back the £21m he owes in unpaid VAT. Frankly, it seems Wexford
Youths must be on the way out, as they are the last of his problems, so he may
as well do it as a duet with Roddy Collins after Monaghan United’s shock departure
from the League of Ireland.
The final member
of my obscure musical trinity has been dead for over 30 years. The classical
composer Cornelius Cardew died in a hit and run accident in east London on
December 12th 1981. Having been in London two days prior to this at
a University interview, I can confirm the weather was dreadful and a thick fall
of snow had covered the capital. Nevertheless, Cardew’s political friends still
maintain it was a Secret Service hit than finished him off. This is a long, weird story…
Cardew was born
to Bohemian parents in Devon and, as a prodigiously talented chorister and pianist;
he first attended Winchester Cathedral School and then the Guildhall. It was
while studying piano and composition he found himself drawn to the avant garde;
initially this meant Stravinsky and Bartok, but eventually contemporary German
music was where his interests were focussed. Moving to Munich after graduation,
he studied under Stockhausen and from the late 50s and during the whole of the
60s, he became one of Britain’s foremost composers. His work is this period
proved to be part of a natural continuum that began with Stockhausen’s
dissonant systems music and led to John Cage’s more freely improvisational
pieces. Cardew’s genius was seen in the Wittgenstein inspired Treatise
and the wildly ambitious The Great Learning, where he
invented a whole new system of musical notation, based on Chinese philosophy.
He performed initially as part of the trio AMM, before forming the large,
amateur musical collective the Scratch Orchestra, who were closely aligned with
left wing causes and who regularly performed more and more outlandish from the
seemingly endless Great Learning.
As the 60s turned
to the 70s, Cardew, having undergone a political awakening, made an ideological
decision to abandon the avant garde and dedicate himself to what he termed
People’s Liberation Music. In deference to the Maoist self-critical practice of
Jingtao,
he published Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, denouncing the classical music
world as being interested only in maintaining capitalism by means of a
self-perpetuating oligarchy that were opposed to class struggle, of which he
had been part while producing his earlier body of work that he rejected
outright. Eventually, Cardew went further and was one of the founders of the
pro Albanian Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist Leninist). From
1972 until the end of his life, Cardew’s obsession with People’s Liberation
Music led him towards compositions that were characterized by their
belligerently Marxist lyrics and stridently accessible music; “compositions of
the utmost crassness,” as his biographer John Tilbury described them.
Cardew’s earlier
compositions were not easy listening; I find the CD “Works 1960-1970” to be
challenging, but his later efforts, such as the CD “We Sing of the Future” are
simply too bizarre for words. They comprise either Irish Republican folk songs
performed irritatingly slowly, with the words sung by plummy voiced,
classically trained opera divas, or indigestible chunks of Marxist dialectics,
often composed in conjunction with RCPB (ML) theorist Hardiel Baines; a man so
preposterous in his opinions that one must speculate whether Kurt Vonnegut
based Kilgore Trout on him, or whether Baines sought to emulate Trout’s prose
stylistics. While I can find no evidence of recordings of such classics as The
Emancipation of Women is an Essential Prerequisite to the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat, Tirana the Citadel, O Albania or When Comrade Enver Sharpens his
Sword, I can point you in the direction of such gems as Smash
the Social Contract or British Working Class You Are The
Revolutionary Force.
Now, look me in
the eye and tell me that you prefer Coldplay, The Stone Roses and New order to
Pecker Dunne, GY!BE or either oeuvre of Cornelius Cardew. Go on, I dare you!!
No comments:
Post a Comment