www.jonsavage.com

First off, three current youtube favourites:

The Poets, from Shindig, doing Now We’re Thru – one of the very strangest records to hit the Top 30, in an era of strange records: dig those ruffles.

For more, read George Gallagher in the second volume of Andrew Loog Oldham’s excellent biography, 2 Stoned.

John Lennon, who knew a thing or two about oddity, pronounced Now We’re Thru fucking weird. The clip also reminds us of a period when real-life hard men were not afraid to dress up like ponces, pansies and such estimable members of society. The next clip is vintage Buddy Holly, from a US TV show called Arthur Murray Dance Party, December 29th 1957. I’ve been immersing myself in the brand new, career-spanning Not Fade Away 6xCD box – which is totally riveting – and so it’s great to see one of the very few clips of Holly and the three man Crickets in action. Despite his tux and bow-tie, Holly can hardly restrain himself, in stark contrast to the stiff teens behind him:

The introduction is rather sweet, and Holly is perfectly poised between charm, unrestrained motion, and a tiny hint of menace – if not actual punk attitude in such a setting. The final cut is from 1968, and it’s the Easybeats on German TV, Beat Club, nailing what should have been the follow-up to Friday On My Mind, Good Times. A great song – the primal R’N R spirit updated – and a beyond committed performance from singer Stevie Wright (and it is Steve Marriott you can hear on backing vocals, on the original record):

Rock’n roll: it makes you do the chicken, it makes you do the stroll. OK some 45’s now, as I like nothing better than to play these out: all these are from the 1960s, found at the Utrecht Record Fair. The first is by Dutch gods N.V.Groep 65, who released two deranged singles in 1966. This is their first, Dank Zij De Heer (thanks to the Lord) – a bizarre and scandalous Gregorian chant – backed with Tanger, a simple ode to the pleasures of ‘wietjies’ (joints). The band split up in 1966, partly due to escalating drug use of singer and writer Warnar Landkroon (a/k/a Jesus). The full story can be found in the recent Grey Past 10” EP that contains everything the group recorded.

Another find was a 1967 single by Q65 who, in their original incarnation, released a string of tough freakbeat/ punk 45’s and a terrific album (Revolution) during 1966. It Came To Me is a monstrous rocker, constructed around a driving riff, that builds and builds. It’s on their recent RPM compilation, The Complete Collection.

Also from 1967 is the first single by the revamped and relaunched Fortunes. The Idol was heavily promoted on Radio Caroline that summer, and with its spacey introduction, ear-catching hooks and breathy finale, adds extra spice to a lyric about the loneliness of the long-distance pop star: ‘I can walk on fitted carpets, I can swim down at my pool, I can throw expensive parties, yes afford to be the fool’. Fitted carpets?

A fantastic break that was also released in 1967 is Syl Johnson’s Different Strokes. A staple of various breaks albums (Ultimate Breaks and Beats, Super Breaks), it begins with a brilliant James Brown style grunt interspersed with the high moans of an ecstatic female. With a nod to the shing-a-ling and the funky broadway, Syl makes ‘so many ways to play’ sound like fantastic fun.

The last single is an epic by the Edgar Broughton Band from 1970. There were quite a few tribal rock beats at that time – beginning with Give Peace A Chance – but Out Demons Out is one of the greatest, with multiple applications. For its use in the 21st century, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUxUsRuaXDo for a recent performance featuring Linder Sterling, dozens of local musicians and a very nervous dog, live at the Tate Gallery St Ives.

For some modern music, we go to CD’s still. No great complexity here, mostly electronica. More Kompakt, including Giu Boratto’s Take My Breath Away and the Total 10 2xCD compilation, featuring Boratto’s great re-mix of the Sam Taylor-Wood/ Pet Shop Boys’ version of I’m In Love With A German Film Star (in fact Roadent, but that’s another story) and DJ Koze’s latest wheeze, a track constructed around a tough tennis point, replete with the bonk bonk of the ball and female grunts, 40 Love. A couple of nu disco comps: Hibernation Vol. 1 on Bearfunk is really terrific, with a fake fur CD sleeve and plenty of those updated, high spacey disco sounds – including Greg Wilson’s version of Social Disco Club & Maia’s, The Way You Move. I heard Wilson’s own CD, Credit To The Edit Vol 2, playing in Les Hart’s Kingbee Records – quite possibly the best record store in the UK – and snapped it up. It has excellent extended versions of Love Is The Drug, Voodoo Ray and Dirty Talk in a very agreeable mix. Also recommended: the Feelies’ unregarded second album, 1986’s The Good Earth (reissued on Domino), songs that begin quietly and build to a surge; and most of all, to my surprise, the Jazzman collection of Lloyd Miller’s self-released music from the fifties and sixties, A Lifetime In Oriental Jazz – which becomes more and more oriental as you go through. Impressions of Bhairavi Raga indeed! Finally, Rick Tomlinson has morphed into Voice of the Seven Thunders, and, on tunes like Kommune and The Burning Mountain his forthcoming LP is liberally dosed with some great acid rock guitar. It’s out in February and is highly recommended.

Tags: Buddy Holly, Easybeats, Edgar Broughton Band, Giu Boratto, Greg Wilson, John Lennon, Kingbee Records, Kompakt, Lloyd Miller, N.V.Groep 65, Out Demons Out, Q'65, Sam Taylor- Wood, Syl Johnson, the Poets

Posted on January 13, 2010 at 8:41 pm  6 Comments

Jon Savage (left) and Terence Pepper (right) outside the National Portrait Gallery

A busy autumn: it’s been a great pleasure to work with curator Terence Pepper on the National Portrait Gallery exhibition of 1960’s Pop Photography, From Beatles to Bowie

Of the 150 or so images in the show, two-thirds have not been printed since the 1960s: Terence Pepper’s deep-level research has also uncovered a whole stratum of pop media that has been but ignored for the last forty years. Namely the young women’s magazines of the period, ranging from Marty to Boyfriend to Fabulous and then to the more mixed gender Rave. All of these commissioned photographers for unique shots – notably Fiona Adams

Fiona Adams

who took the iconic shot of the Beatles ‘leaping’ above the ruins of the Euston area – then being redeveloped – in April 1963. This photo (below, upper right) has become one of the decade’s defining images.

Also included are several photos from Salut Les Copains, the excellent French monthly that sent photographers like Tony Frank to the UK for location shots – like this one of Who snapped by the Bakerloo line (note the red 1938 stock – another pinnacle of design). The show is on until the 24th January: it will lift your spirits.

I’ve also contributed an essay to Johan Kugelberg’s illustrated book on the Velvet Underground, New York Art. Again, it contains dozens of photos and images that have not been seen for years, if ever.

 

One of my favourite images is the Billy Name mechanical try-out for the White Light White Heat cover (above, left), and the original EPI slides (above, right) are pretty good, too.

To promote the book, Johan did a very well-received event with Lou Reed in Paris, while he and I did a couple of events in London and hosted a show at the Utrecht Record Fair. At the Bill’s shop in Blenheim Crescent (Stand Out/ Minus Zero) I found myself talking to former Subway Sect guitarist Rob Symmons after 31 years: the last time we met was when I was interviewing the band in 1978 – for their-soon-to-be-released Gooseberry album that never appeared. (And where is it now?)

Rob stopped playing guitar for nigh on three decades but has a great new band, Fallen Leaves, who have two albums out: It’s Too Late Now and That’s Right which bring that tough 1966 sound into the 21st century. He had this to say about New York Art: ‘it’s not too coffee table glossy, but for real fans, while at same time being a pleasure to hold and examine, though also for non fans there is a quality in the material that captures that mid to late sixties New York art scene, you want to take part in it, to have the tickets, see the posters and go to the shows. Certainly a book you would wish to be left alone with, undisturbed, of a winter evening with a packet of turkish cigarettes’.

(see also Billy Name interview for the Guardian, from 1997)

Regular events include a monthly/ bi-monthly blog on Guardian Online – Jon Savage on Song (recent sample) – and also a weekly themed show on the German internet Radio Station, BYTE FM, thanks to Klaus Walter and Gerhard Klaus. Recent shows have included a series on 1969 songs, on Backwards and phased records, and weird John Lennon. Right now, we’re moving from Phasing into Winter. Keep warm, and keep sane.

Tags: Beatles, Billy Linich, Byte FM, David Bowie, Fallen Leaves, Fiona Adams, Gerhard Klaus, Johan Jugelberg, John Lennon, Klaus Walter, Lou Reed, National Portrait Gallery, photography, Rob Symmons, Subway Sect, The Guardian, The Who, Tony Frank, Velvet Underground

Posted on December 15, 2009 at 3:53 pm  1 Comment

[Images from 1974 scrapbook by js]

It was thirty five years ago today. Doesn’t have much of a ring does it, and indeed 1974 is an elision in most pop/cultural histories. A gap, a lacuna only partially filled by recent accounts of progressive rock – amusing and a necessary corrective though they might be. The political story is well told, most recently by Andy Beckett in his journey through 1970’s politics, When the Lights Went Out: the year of two Labour election wins, the three-day-week and the miners strike, the Birmingham IRA bomb, the slow upward rise of the New Right and free-market economics, the effects of the OPEC oil strike. It’s as though all these events have crowded out all other memories of this pivotal year.

In fact, as Paul Tickell has recently suggested, 1974 is ‘the year the 60’s ended and the 80’s began’. In pop, it’s the year of terminal glam: Diamond Dogs and Rebel Rebel. Bowie changes tack during the Diamond Dogs [tour] and opts for Philly Soul, while Roxy Music find affirmation with the surprisingly straightforward All I Want Is You. There is a late sophisticated glam flash from Sparks, with two huge hits and two albums, Kimono My House and Propaganda. Brian Eno releases Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, with the proto-punk The True Wheel (“we saw the lovers, the modern lovers, and they looked very good’), while producing Nico’s one and only Island album, The End – most notable for the synthesiser ice-storm on Innocent And Vain. Nico also crops up on Kevin Ayers’ Irreversible Neural Damage and the whole thing is wrapped up by June 1 1974 – an album recorded live on that date and featuring Ayers, Eno, Nico, John Cale and the rest of the Island community.

The big new teen sensations are the Bay City Rollers, a classic boy band plucked from the street and heavily manipulated. Apart from Saturday Night, most of their early records are pretty wimpy but they will foster harder imitators in the years to come (Slik, Hello (notable for their 1976 epic, Teenage Revolution and the Sex Pistols). For those requiring hard rock, Dr. Feelgood are a heart-stopping sensation on the live circuit and, by the end of that year, are busy recording their first and classic LP, Down By The Jetty.

On the West Coast, it’s the year of the two late hippie era masterworks: Neil Young’s On The Beach and Gene Clark’s No Other, which swings from cosmic exultation to despair (for more in this vein, hear if you can Syd Barrett’s last ever studio session from 1974 and Nick Drake’s Hanging On A Star, two late sixties golden boys floundering in the brutal seventies). The Doobie Brothers clean up with the New Orleans chapter in their early/ ambient travelogues: Black Water. American resident John Lennon makes his last good album: Walls and Bridges. In New York, the Dolls are running out of steam while the CBGB’s scene is getting under way: the Richard Hell Television, Ramones, Patti Smith – who releases her first 45, Hey Joe/ Piss Factory.

It’s a fantastic time for black music: funk, jazz-fusion, soul: Funkadelic’s Standing on the Verge of Getting It On, Bobby Bland’s Dreamer, Gil Scott-Heron’s The Bottle, Al Green’s Livin’ For You, Miles Davis’ Big Fun, Weather Report’s Mysterious Traveller. There are soul songs of surprising, if not shocking frankness: Swamp Dogg’s Did I Come Back Too Soon (Or Stay Away Too Long), Laura Lee’s I Need It Just As Bad As You, Betty Davis’ He Was A Big Freak (‘I used to whip him with my turquoise chain’). It’s the year of the early disco breakthrough: from Patti Jo’s Make Me Believe In You (mentioned in Andrew Holloran’s ur-disco text, Dancer From the Dance) and Gloria Gaynor’s Honey Bee through to huge US hits like George McCrae’s hypnotic drum-machine mood piece, Rock Your Baby, and the Hues Corporation’s Rock The Boat.

Similarly with reggae: the Wailers’ Natty Dread, Rupie Edwards’ Ire Feelings (skanga!), Toots and the Maytals’ In The Dark. The first dub albums are beginning to appear, by Skin Flesh and Bones, Augustus Pablo (Ital Dub). The greatest of these is Keith Hudson’s Pick A Dub. From its cover in (tam-wearing Rasta smoking huge spliff under a coconut tree) Pick A Dub is a holistic masterpiece that does much to promote Dub as the present/ future form. Hudson uses Augustus Pablo’s melodica as a fanfare on the opening title track: it weaves in and out of a churchy organ, but everything is brought back to the fundamental bass, snare and cymbal at regular intervals before a brief scat vocals whoops into the fade. Every track is great but Dreaded Than is pure, organ-drenched skank of filth, while Don’t Move is a perfect paradox: a dropped in and out vocal that says ‘be still’ while the backing track moves like BMW pushed to the engine limit. Pick A Dub is one of the first dub albums to get a UK release, if not the first, and you can hear it blaring out all over West London.

In Germany, Faust release Krautrock – the all-consuming drone that comprehensively trashes the genre that it helped to name – while Kraftwerk have an international hit with Autobahn: the Beach Boys transplanted to the autobahns of West Germany. (I’ve road tested it in situ – on the A7 and the A24, and it works perfectly: don’t forget that there are no speed limits on the A-bahn). Other 1974 albums of note include Can’s Future Days (inc the funky Moonshake), Klaus Schulze’s Black Dance, the Cosmic Jokers’ Planete Sit In, and Sand’s extraordinary Golem (thanks to Julian Cope for this tip), where outré electronica meets tribal chant in a primeval cave. Much more approachable is Cluster’s Zuckerzeit (sweet time) – a collection of ten instrumentals that range from the almost sickly (Marzipan) to the darkly ambient (James) and the disconcerting: Rote Riki, where bleeping androids fade into a sticky soundpatch of underwater creatures. Best of all is the uplifting opener, Hollywood, which builds and builds over nearly four minutes before resolving within a perpetual ascent. You want it to last forever. Zuckerzeit is often credited with inspiring Eno at a crucial moment – sure you can hear it on Another Green World and, even more, on the ltd ed, all instrumental, 27 track EG Music For Films – but it needs no retrospective justification: it exists in its own world, poised between playfulness, European melodicism and Romantic presentiments of darkness.

The final selection from this year comes from the outer fringes. In February 1974, the Residents release 1000 copies of Meet The Residents on their Ralph Records label. The front cover detourned, in classic pro-Situ defacement style, the Beatles’ first US album: John Lennon has a drooling tongue, George Harrison fangs, Ringo Dr Spock ears, while Paul McCartney has a particularly disturbing insect face. The flip showed the Beatles in another classic shot, all in their Pierre Cardin collar-les suits, with crawfish heads. Apart from being entertaining, it was part of a polemic against the hegemony of 60’s culture (which by the mid seventies had become oppressive to many): they would as return to the Beatles on 1976’s epic sonic cut-up, Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life, but in the meantime the Residents began their habit of warping 60’s radio hits – like These Boots Are Made For Walking (Boots) and the Human Beinz’s Nobody But Me (which cuts into their oil crisis number N-Er-Gee – excised from the later CD version, presumably for copyright reasons).

They would return to this theme on 1975’s Third Reich n’Roll: ‘people are speculating,’ they wrote in the sleevenote, ‘whether the Residents are hinting that Rock’n Roll has brainwashed the youth of the world. When confronted with this possible philosophy, they replied “Well, it may be true or it may not, but we wanted to kick out the jams and get it on”.’ Manifestos mean very little if the a-music isn’t there, and Meet The Residents is a dizzying collage of found sound and musique concrete with the deliberately dissonant and the near pop (Smelly Tongues), resolving into moments of strange beauty (Rest Aria). It took a while for the album and the group to find an audience, but towards the end of 1977 they sounded perfectly in sync with the times: beginning with similar aims to punk – how to blow away pop culture’s false consciousness? – the Residents had the a-musical and conceptual ability to take that polemic and music much further, as they did throughout the 80’s. But their first album still rings loud and unique.

To finish, some playlists:

1974, part 1

• Mr. Michael Bond’s Address – The Portsmouth Sinfonia
• White Light / White Heat (Live 1974) – Lou Reed
• At Home At Work At Play – Sparks
• Funky Kingston – Toots and the Maytals
• She Does It Right – Dr. Feelgood
• Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On – Funkadelic
• Ain’t No Love In The Heart of the City – Bobby “Blue” Bland
• Going Down On Love – John Lennon
• The Fan – Little Feat
• Rikki Don’t Lose That Number – Steely Dan
• Ife – Miles Davis
• The Bottle – Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson
• Let’s Get Married – Al Green

1974, part 2

• Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd
• The Thrill Of It All – Roxy Music
• My Teenage Queen – Harpo
• Amateur Hour – Sparks
• Devil Gate Drive – Suzi Quatro
• Honeybee – Gloria Gaynor
• Rock Me Again & Again & Again & Again & Again & Again (6 Times) – Lyn Collins
• Did I Come Back Too Soon (Or Stay Away Too Long) – Swamp Dogg
• Love Epidemic – The Trammps
• Doctor’s Orders – Carol Douglas
• Don’t Move – Keith Hudson
• Babylon Dubbing – Skin Flesh & Bones
• The Big Rip-Off – Augustus Pablo
• Androids – Robert Rockwell III
• Crystal Waters – Moolah
• Scarlet Woman – Weather Report

1974, part 3

• Autobahn – Kraftwerk
• Make Me Believe In You – Patti Jo
• Pick A Dub - Keith Hudson
• Train To Rhodesia – Big Youth
• In Zaire – Johnny Wakelin
• Rock And Roll Records – J.J. Cale
• Do It (Til You’re Satisfied) – B.T. Express
• Moonshake – Can
• Sweet Thing (Reprise) – David Bowie
• Time Machine – Sadistic Mika Band
• I Don’t Mind – Dr. Feelgood
• I Need It Just As Bad As You – Laura Lee
• Be Thankful For What You Got – William DeVaughan

1974, part 4

• Dreamer – Bobby Blue Bland
• Black Water – Doobie Brothers
• Observatory Crest – Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
• Ambulance Blues – Neil Young
• Age Of Treason – Donovan
• The Cavalry Cross – Richard & Linda Thompson
• No Other – Gene Clark
• Kometenmelodie 1 – Kraftwerk
• Helicopter – Sand
• Electronic News – The Cosmic Jokers
• Mirror’s – Moolah
• Hey Joe – Patti Smith

1974, part 5

• Satan Side – Keith Hudson
• Fingerprint File – The Rolling Stones
• Out Of The Blue – Roxy Music
• Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family – David Bowie
• The Needle and the Spoon – Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Fear is a Man’s Best Friend – John Cale
• Piss Factory – Patti Smith
• DMT – George Brigman
• Irreversible Neural Damage – Kevin Ayers
• Innocent and Vain – Nico
• Erotic Neurotic – The Saints
• Krautrock – Faust
• Heiße Lippen – Cluster
• If You Go 2 – Syd Barrett
• Hanging On A Star – Nick Drake
• I’ll Be There If You Ever Want Me – J.J. Cale

Tags: Andrew Hollaran, Andy Beckett, Augustus Pablo, Bay City Rollers, Bobby Bland, Brian Eno, Can, CBGB, Cluster, David Bowie, Dr. Feelgood, Faust, Funkadelic, Gene Clark, George McCrae, Hello, John Lennon, Keith Hudson, Kevin Ayers, Miles Davis, Neil Young, Nick Drake, Nico, Patti Jo, Patti Smith, Paul Tickell, Roxy Music, Sand, Sex Pistols, Slik, Sparks, Swamp Dogg, Syd Barrett, Television, The Beatles, The Cosmic Jokers, The Doobie Brothers, The Wailers, Toots and the Maytals, Weather Report

Posted on October 5, 2009 at 4:33 pm  7 Comments

Most of the recent forty year anniversaries – Man on the Moon, Stonewall, Manson, Woodstock – have been well-represented in the media, often by thoughtful documentaries. (Even the recent Linda Kasabian drama/doc had its moments). It was an incredibly compressed year, as the whole momentum of the sixties accelerated towards some kind of climax (or, as Rolling Stone preferred, The Apocalypse): coming up next, The Isle of Wight through> Altamont. I turned 16 in September 1969, so it was a pretty heightened time for me. It was the year that I started going to rock concerts, for one. I saw the Who that August in a tiny Assembly Hall in Worthing, down on the South Coast – about ten days before they played Woodstock. It was a warm-up date for the Plumpton Festival, so they’d brought their full festival gear. They came on the stage in this beautiful old panelled room, plugged in, did the riff to I Can’t Explain and from then on it was an onslaught, a perfect storm of amplified noise. My ears were still ringing three days later.

It was also the year that I started buying Rolling Stone. At the time it was a major break from the British pop press – still hamstrung (as we would have thought it then) by having to be pop. How could you reconcile Des O’Connor – high in the charts with Dick A Dum Dum – with the Archies, the Plastic Ono Band and Jethro Tull? Would you want to? In place of Derek Johnson’s lame singles reviews in the New Musical Express or Jonathan King’s irritating column in Disc and Music Echo you could read very early Lester Bangs (when he was still young and open, before the schtick had taken over), Greil Marcus, Edmund O. Ward and long articles about youth movement politics, the underground press, Groupies, and the MC5. It was us and them time: a generational war between young and old.

I was clutching a copy of RS issue number 30 (American Revolution 1969: the cover pic showed a cop holding down a bloodied protester with his baton) when I went to my first ever gig somewhere in Central London that April. Spooky Tooth were headlining over the Liverpool Scene. I was extremely self-conscious about my short hair: having been reliably informed that hippies would slip LSD into your drink when you weren’t looking (the Rohypnol scare of the day), I also spent most of those couple of hours with my hand over the polystyrene cup that contained a luke-warm coke. To my untutored eyes, both groups were brilliant: the Tooth were loud, hairy and blues-rock monolithic. The Liverpool Scene were far more random, a happening pulled together by disparate personalities, but they played their doo-wop pastiche, The Woo Woo (featuring Bobby and the Helmets), and an endless version of Love Is…., with Adrian Henri flinging himself around the small stage. ‘Love is feeling cold in the back of vans, Love is a fan club with only two fans…’ ad infinitum.

Both groups had albums out at the time. Both are still available. Spooky Two still sounds great, an acquired taste to be sure, but they set up a mood and never let it go. The cover is classic early 1969: they’re getting it together in the country (mud on the Kings Road gear) – an idea pioneered in the UK by Traffic – and the whole thing screams peak period Pink Island, with a gatefold cover and Jimmy Miller as producer bringing in his gospel patch. The group appear cheerful on the sleeve, but the lyrics begin with those old blues tropes, explore various states of heartbreak and end up in a gothic place with the final cut, Hangman Hang My Shell On A Tree. Punk blues misogyny rears its head on the nine minute Evil Woman but the rest is a fine mixture of psychedelia (Lost In A Dream), monster riffage (Better By You, Better Than Me – excerpted on the You Can All Join In sampler) and, on Waiting For The Wind, a killer breakbeat from Mike Kellie – later to join the Only Ones.

Amazing Adventures Of… by the Liverpool Scene is less homogenous. Produced by John Peel, it has a gate-fold sleeve with the band members – Adrian Henri, Mike Hart, Mike Evans, Percy Jones and Brian Dodson (I can’t see Andy Roberts) grouped together with their mates outside O’Connor’s Tavern in Hardman Street. (Thanks to Paul du Noyer for info: check out his book on Liverpool music past and present, Wondrous Place). There’s a long, loose impressionistic number (Tramcar to Frankenstein), a blues, a folky Liverpool travelogue (Gliders and Parks), a pure slice of Peelian whimsy – Andy Roberts’ Percy Parslow’s Hamster Farm: a very English country idyll – and Adrian Henri’s briliant Batpoem. Mike Evans’ live reading of The Amazing Adventures of Che Guevara – ‘The real Che Guevara emerges in Snowdonia….’ – weaves in and out. It’s a good record of a particularly British moment – that mixture of hippies with happenings, of poets with pop musicians – that has been largely forgotten.

Ten years later I spent a lot of time with Adrian Henri at his home in Mount Street, Liverpool. His then partner, Carol Ann Duffy, was writing scripts for Margi Clarke, appearing on Granada TV as Margox. I was her researcher: that was the connection. The house was (and still is) a beautiful early Regency building filled with books, pictures and High Victorian ephemera – the epitome of a certain kind of sixties taste. If you were staying there, there was one big drawback: the toilet was in the basement, three floors down. You’d stagger down there at 3am in whatever altered state, only to be confronted by a life-size photo of the very severe Doris Speed, who played Annie Walker, the landlady of the Rovers’ Return in Coronation Street. It was very disturbing. When I visited Liverpool in 2007, I met Adrian’s partner Catherine Marcangeli, who very kindly showed me round the house: it had hardly changed, a total time capsule, a shrine to a remarkable person. Adrian was unfailingly generous and patient with all the mania going on around him: a perfect gentleman and, in his gentle way, a real educator.

To end with, here are a couple of 1969 playlists, all from original 45’s — A lot of blues rock, but that’s the way it was…

1969: Year of the Rooster, Part 1

• The Emperor of Wyoming – Neil Young
• Superman – The Clique
• Petrol Pump Assistant – Fat Mattress
• Badge – Cream
• Good Times Bad Times – Led Zeppelin
• I’ve Got A Line On You – Spirit
• The Loner – Neil Young
• Creeping Jean – Dave Davies
• Days of the Broken Arrows – Idle Race
• Dear Jill – Blodwyn Pig
• The Games People Play – Joe South
• Get Back – The Beatles
• Waiting For The Wind – Spooky Tooth
• Man Of The World – Fleetwood Mac
• Living In The Past – Jethro Tull
• Rock Me – Steppenwolf
• Goo Goo Barabajagal – Donovan and the Jeff Beck Group
• Crosstown Traffic – Jimi Hendrix
• Walk On Gilded Splinters – Cher
• Pinball Wizard – The Who
• King Kong – The Kinks
• Wham Bam Thank You M’am – The Small Faces
• Someone’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite – Vince Earl and the Valiants
• I’ll Be Creeping – Free
• Peace Loving Man – Blossom Toes

Part 2

• The Ballad of John and Yoko – The Beatles
• Born To Be Wild – Steppenwolf
• Better By You Better Than Me – Spooky Tooth
• Well All Right – Blind Faith
• Green River – Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Something In The Air – Thunderclap Newman
• The Boxer – Simon & Garfunkel
• Honky Tonk Women – The Rolling Stones
• Old Brown Shoe – The Beatles
• Comin’ Home – Delaney And Bonnie
• Lie To Me – Kaleidoscope
• Kick Out The Jams – MC5
• Communication Breakdown – Led Zeppelin
• Cold Turkey – Plastic Ono Band
• Rain – Hard Meat
• A Salty Dog – Procul Harum
• If You Can’t Learn From Your Mistakes – Moby Grape
• No Mules Fool – Family
• Dark Eyed Woman – Spirit
• Darkness Darkness – The Youngbloods
• Oh Well Pt 1 – Fleetwood Mac
• Can’t Find My Way Home – Blind Faith
• Jesus – The Velvet Underground

Tags: Adrian Henri, Carol Ann Duffy, Catherine Marcangeli, Edmund O.Ward, Greil Marcus, Lester Bangs, Liverpool Scene, Manson, Margi Clark, Rolling Stone, Spooky Tooth, The Who, Woodstock

Posted on September 24, 2009 at 10:55 am  3 Comments

Vince Aletti’s The Disco Files 1973-78 has just been published for the first time in the UK by DJhistory.com It’s an indispensable read, not just for Disco and dance addicts, but for anyone interested in music writing. Aletti was the first person to identify the trend that would, for a brief and heady period, take over the world in the late seventies. His September 1973 article for Rolling Stone, entitled Discotheque Rock ‘73: Paaaaarty! spoke of a new underground where DJ’s were the stars, and the ‘hardcore dance crowd – blacks, Latins, gays’ would congregate in private lofts or one off events in hotel ballrooms. The new mix, lab-tested in David Mancuso’s legendary club the Loft, included classic mainstream Philly and Motown records from the period, the O’Jays’ Love Train and The Temptations’ Papa Was A Rolling Stone (check out the recent double CD of the Tempts’ late sixties/ early seventies reincarnation, Psychedelic Soul, esp the track Message from A Black Man) , weird Euro-records by Barabbas, as well as African breaks like Manu DiBango’s classic Soul Makossa and Cymande’s The Message. From late 1974 to the end of 1978, Aletti wrote what was pretty much a weekly column for Record World that charted the rise of what would soon be called Disco: from the social, racial and sexual underground to the top of the charts – albeit in a sanitised version, thanks to the Saturday Night Fever movie. Along the way there are fascinating diversions – the popularity of a b-side by the Glitter Band, Makes You Blind, the rise of Euro Disco, the recurrence of the Space theme (for more, see the playlist below) and of course the onset of Electronic Disco – the total futurism of Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express and Donna Summer’s I Feel Love, records that have not dated at all thirty years later. Quite apart from the musical content, Aletti’s columns are an object lesson in how to write regularly for a demanding readership: he is enthusiastic, engaged, informative, yet not afraid to pick up on a topic and run with it – like the sophistication of the music and its audience, or the impact of gay politics contained in records like Carl Bean’s I Was Born This Way.

Interview with Vince Aletti at DJHistory.com

DJhistory.com have also released an extremely entertaining double CD of totally instrumental French library disco from 1979, le disco: tele music remixed: with contemporary mixers upping the spaciness quotient, tracks like Funky Bass are futuristic, funky, sexy and psychedelic – what more do you need? Just let yourself go, you know it feels good. Some of the same impulse can be found on DJ Koze’s recent collection of remixes, reincarnations. Best-known for his multifarious releases on Kompakt – like the shifting, ambient, almost gamelan Zouzou on Kompakt Total 9 – this Hamburg native exercises his higly developed prankster side by announcing on the sleeve: ‘DJ Koze would like to announce that he is no longer DJ Koze. Since 01.01.2009 he is Swahimi (The Unenlightened)”. The fourteen tracks range from techno to cosmiche disco to ambient and back again: a highlight is the remix of Sascha Funke’s Mango Cookie, a deep house exploration that segues into a 1977 track by famed German actress / singer Hildegard Knef, Ich Liebe Euch. (Koze is playing Future Flash at London’s Cable Club on the 22nd of August 2009).

Another psychedelic mood piece, which sounded great during the recent hot spell, is David Crosby’s first solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name… (1971) – recorded with a cast including Grace Slick, Jerry Garcia, Graham Nash and Neil Young (more on the Decades box soon). Long-regarded as a superstar indulgence, this drifting, relaxed, melodic album is remarkable for the way that it deals with grief and absence: by the last three tracks, this notoriously flamboyant sixties/seventies figure has almost disappeared into receding layers of pure sound. For those who want more, there are out-takes from the sessions floating around, collected together as Everybody Here Can Be In The Band, which include a haunting song with Jerry Garcia on vocals, Loser. Let’s hope that the heat comes back.

Space Disco playlist 1977-81

• Magic Fly – Space
• Moon Boots – Orlando Riva Sound (ORS)
• Space Rock – The Rockets
• Cosmic Traveller – Sumeria (Alec Costandinos)
• (Do You Have) The Force – The Droids
• I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper – Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip
• Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band – Meco
• Spacer – Sheila B. Devotion
• Tango In Space – Space
• Space Bass – Slick
• Stars (12″ version) – Sylvester
• Cosmic Cars (7″ version) – Cybotron
• Spacelab – Kraftwerk
• Cosmic Raindance (7″ version) – Cybotron

Tags: Carl Bean, David Crosby, David Mancuso, DJHistory, Donna Summer, Grace Slick, Jerry Garcia, Kompakt, Kraftwerk, Manu Dibango, Neil Young, Rolling Stone, Temptations, Vince Aletti

Posted on July 21, 2009 at 4:14 pm  1 Comment