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  7 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