A vintage concert shirt from Billy Idol’s Charmed Life Tour featuring Faith No More.
 
When Billy Idol asked Faith No More to join his Charmed Life Tour, he was still recovering from a near-fatal motorcycle accident which almost cost him his life and one of his legs. Idol’s extensive injuries are also the reason you only see the rocker from the torso up in the video for “Cradle of Love” as the wreck left him temporarily paralyzed. Before hooking up with Idol, FNM had been on the road with Soundgarden and Voivod. The would officially join Idol in early September for a run of approximately 30 shows with their final gig scheduled for Seattle on October 31st, 1990. Reviews from this leg of Idol’s tour with Faith No More are full of all kinds of stories including FNM pissing off crowds by pissing on them while opening for Idol at the Cow Palace in California. However, nothing on this tour would live up to the debauchery witnessed by the 18,000 in attendance at Seattle Center Arena (now Key Arena) on Halloween night in 1990.

Based on a review of the show published in Seattle publication City Heat by writer Michael Edward Browning, Mike Patton walked out on stage in a pair of gorilla pants and, according to Browning, a “Doris Day” wig. However, with a little more digging, it appears Patton’s intention was not to look like Doris Day, but, most likely, Nirvana vocalist Kurt Cobain. Take a look:
 

Mike Patton on stage at Seattle Center Arena on October 31st, 1990.
 
Patton would then devolve into his signature manic arm waving/drunken sailor trudging/octave-smashing self, which Browning overheard a fellow audience member (who he referred to as a “mother”) describe as someone doing a good imitation of a “retarded person.” Yeesh, this chick. As Faith continued thundering through their set, they launched into their single “Epic.” During the song, Idol’s road crew rolled out a huge pile of smelt on a lightning rig and dumped it on the stage floor. After the initial shock of having 40 pounds of dead fish suddenly appear on stage, Patton started stuffing them in his gorilla pants. The rest of the band proceeded to lob the smelt into the crowd before returning to the stage to perform their cover of the Commodore’s soulful classic, “Easy.”

Now it was time for Idol to take the stage and for Faith No More to get a bit of revenge for Idol’s fish fuckery. And they didn’t waste any time.

While Idol was strutting around during “Cradle of Love” a member of FNM (likely Mike Patton) appeared on stage dressed in a gorilla costume and started coordinating dance moves with Idol’s backup singers. The rest of Idol’s set would go on without any other antics until his encore. While Billy was crooning out the moody jam “Eyes Without a Face” Faith No More would return to the stage in the nude with their heads and faces covered by masks, towels, and bags. Patton, Roddy Bottum, James Martin, Bill Gould and, Mike Bordin formed a naked dancing prayer circle around Idol until Billy joined them. There has been some question in the past as to the identities of the nude marauders but in a Tweet from 2013 Idol confirmed it was Faith No More on stage that night au naturel. On an even weirder note, Idol would end up having the last hee-haw by letting five miniature pigs and a fucking goat loose in FNM’s dressing room. After returning from their heroic naked hijinks, it looked more like a barnyard than a backstage party as the piggies and their goat friend chowed down on trays of leftover food in their dressing room.

Footage or photographs from the show (with the exception of the one in this post), do not appear to exist. To try to make up for this, check out this “performance” by FNM from Top of the Pops. As you may know, bands on Top of the Pops were required to lipsynch and at around 1:24 you can see Mike Patton not giving a single fuck about TOTP’s rules.
 

Faith No More on ‘Top of the Pops’ in 1990.
 
HT: Michael Edward Browning

 
Whereas I was not exactly a Crass punk myself, I was definitely sort of Crass punk adjacent. The image conjured up of a Crass punk tends to be one of a smelly squatter, a stinky dole-scrounging vegan anarchist smoking roll-ups and sniffing glue. In 1983 and 84 I was a teenage squatter in the Brixton area of London (and before that in the infamous Wyers squat in Amsterdam), but I was a well-groomed American kid who saw no reason to stop bathing, or to change out of my normal clothes when I went to see a punk band just so I would fit in. I found it funny to show up for a Flux of Pink Indians gig at the Ambulance Station wearing a pink tennis shirt or penny loafers and white Levis to a Poison Girls show. At least it was amusing TO ME. Plus I’d have looked like a dummy in punk clothes. I never had any interest in “being different” like everybody else. Wearing the uniform of non-conformity, one which was apparently collectively agreed upon, had little appeal for me. In 1984? I saw it a bit like I saw tie-dye to be honest. Perhaps I was just prematurely cynical. I’ve never been much of a joiner.

But many of the people I knew and interacted with daily living in squats were full-on, very idealistic Crass punks and through their influence I was introduced to the decidedly non-cynical ideas of communal living that the band espoused and inspired. Take for instance the daily ritual of “stolen stew” whereupon items shoplifted from Tesco, or discarded vegetables gathered from the dumpsters of Brixton market were thrown into a large cooking pot at the end of the day by two German girls, both Crass punks to the hilt. (On days where I was stealing sugar packets to keep my stomach quiet, these improvised communal meals tasted better than anything I’ve ever subsequently eaten in a three star restaurant.) Veganism, obviously was a huge part of that subculture and Crass were THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT REASON that the vegan lifestyle first began to gain popularity, initially in the squats of South London and then spreading out worldwide from there. (This is a fact, don’t argue with me, I was there. Where do you think Morrissey got it from?). Animal rights and the anti-vivisection movement. And oh yeah, all the politics, that was pretty big, too, what with the anarchy and all. Class War was read and discussed and Ian Bone (a truly great English character) was around at times. I took part in the infamous Stop the City demonstration, the first anti-globalist rioting that shut down London’s financial district—or at the very least annoyed and intimidated many bankers and stock brokers for the better part of a day. Stop the City was more of a CND thing, but was mostly populated by sulfate-amped anarchopunks and the Crass logo was seen on half of the backs there. (What’s amazing to consider in 2019 is how several thousand people, most of them with no telephones at home, managed to show up that day. I recall being there early, thinking it was going to be a bust and then suddenly BOOM, Threadneedle Street was packed with young spiky-haired weirdos looking for trouble.)

These things don’t ever leave you.
 

 
Although an inspiring flesh and blood political ideal—the notion of what Crass stood for was obviously very, very important to me when I was younger—musically they weren’t my cup of poison. PiL, Throbbing Gristle, Gun Club, Virgin Prunes, Nick Cave, Soft Cell and the Slits were what I was into then. I would rather read their lyric sheets than actually listen to Crass’ music. The thing was, none of the Crass punks who I knew really listened to Crass either. I realize that this will sound just plain wrong, but it was none other than early UB40 that seemed to be the preferred soundtrack to anarcho-punk life, and not the abrasive racket made by Crass themselves. The early Cult were another group that a lot Crass punks listened to. Crass gigs yes, Crass records not so much. That was my directly observed observation.

Fast forward to today and I hadn’t listened to an entire Crass album for… well… quite a long time. To be honest, I tended to think of their music as being a shambling low-fi mess with a yob from Essex screaming over the top. The only Crass CD I own is the Best Before 1984 compilation, but I will admit to having a look at Discogs a few months back to see how much copies of original Crass records go for, just to own them as objects of cultural importance, not thinking I would listen to them much. I’m glad that I didn’t do that because One Little Indian have repressed the classic Crass albums on vinyl for the first time since they originally came out and from what I have seen and heard so far, these releases are exceptionally well realized. Not only is Gee Vaucher’s artwork faithfully reproduced, they’ve been remastered by Alex Gordon and Penny Rimbaud at Abbey Road studios and they sound, dare I say it, GREAT. Picture an archival copy of Stations of the Crass that’s been given the Blue Note treatment! These pressings are ridiculously quiet 180 gram platters that allow the listener to hear deep into every particle of amp buzz on the master tapes. My memories of listening to Crass albums is of hearing scratchy records played on crappy record players in filthy places. Little did I suspect how well-recorded their albums were. They sound shockingly good, these new One Little Indian releases. I don’t want to overstate the case but these are legit near-audiophile pressings that seriously took my head off. It felt like I was spinning a buzzsaw capable of great violence on my turntable. It sucks to realize how little things have changed in the world since these albums were recorded, but it means their angry vitality, so unique at the time, is curiously undiminished, either as art or agitprop.

Penis Envy stands out the most among Crass’s albums, not the least for its lack of Steve Ignorant’s trademark ranting and the female voices taking over for the entire record. It’s their most experimental and avant garde work. The guitars are savage, lacerating, Rimbaud’s signature drumming is crisp and martial and Pete Wright’s bass is taunt. I’ll say it again: These albums were NOT recorded poorly, they were recorded very professionally indeed. If you believed otherwise, as I did, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Minimally Penis Envy and the Best Before 1984 comp (on 2 LPs for just $20 and offering the best of Steve Ignorant’s songs) are what you’d want to have of Crass in your record collection. I also have Stations of the Crass, and will probably pick all of them up save for the first album. That one sort of blurs into angry screamy white noise to my ears and live Crass is the bridge too far for my tastes. But the rest of it? Yes please.

Highly recommended.
 

Penny Rimbaud discusses remastering the Crass catalog in a recent interview.
 
More after the jump…

 
A few months back, we told you about Frank Zappa’s earliest known recording, “Lost in a Whirlpool.” That song, captured circa 1958/59, was put to tape using amateur equipment. A couple of years later, FZ stepped into a proper recording studio for his very first session. In January 1961, he recorded two compositions, and both would subsequently be re-worked into songs by his group, the Mothers of Invention. But decades would pass before the original, historic recordings saw the light of day.

In late 1960, Zappa started working at Pal Recording Studio in Cucamonga, California. The facility was owned and operated by Paul Buff.

“[FZ] just came in one day in 1960, when he was around 20, as a person who wanted to record some jazz,” Buff remembered. “He had some musicians, and wanted to rent a studio. Probably for the first year or so I was associated with him was doing a combination of recording jazz, producing some jazz records, and was also writing some symphonic material for a local orchestra that was supposed to record some of it. He was very jazz-oriented . . . He played clubs, and played all the jazz standards . . . He did a lot of original compositions, and he’d play things like ‘Satin Doll’ for a few dollars and a few beers.” (from the liner notes for The Lost Episodes)

 

Joe Perrino & The Mellotones; Frank Zappa, far left. FZ played weekend gigs with the lounge band in the early ‘60s.

During the initial session at Pal, Frank recorded an original jazz composition entitled “Never on Sunday.” FZ played guitar and was joined by five additional musicians on the track, which was arranged in the bossa nova style.
 

 
Does that melody sound familiar? If you’re a Zappa fan, it surely does.

Continues after the jump…

A show poster for Motörhead’s headlining gig at Bingley Hall in Stafford, England on July 26th, 1980.
 
At the age of sixteen, Lemmy Kilmister saw the Beatles perform in Liverpool. This event would play a considerable role in Kilmister’s desire to pursue a career in music. Of course, the image of girls frantically throwing themselves at John, Paul, George, and Ringo (as young Lemmy undoubtedly witnessed firsthand) probably didn’t hurt either. While I’d like nothing better than to keep talking about Lemmy’s early days, nobody has done that better than Lemmy himself in his 2002 autobiography White Line Fever. Let’s jump forward to the glorious year of 1980, so we might pinpoint the reason Lemmy passed out backstage at Bingley Hall in Stafford, England on July 26th, 1980—allegedly for receiving one too many blowjobs from amorous female fans before the show.

During 1980, Motörhead would, among other things, become known for trashing their hotel rooms. Drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor enjoyed a good hotel room thrashing and broke his hand on more than one occasion teaching random hotel rooms a lesson. In fact, Taylor’s time with Motörhead was full of broken bones. On another occasion that same year (following a show in Belfast, Ireland), an obliterated Phil was hoisted into the air by an equally obliterated, and very large, Irish fan. Taylor’s new pal was so drunk that after he lifted Taylor into the air, he moved back to see how high he had lifted the Motörhead drummer. Gravity did its thing, and Phil ended up with a broken neck. Just before the release of their fourth album, Ace of Spades, Motörhead headlined a gig at Bingley Hall with Angel Witch, Mythra, Vardis, White Spirit and approximately 10,000 highly intoxicated fans. At this point, Lemmy had been on a strict 72-hour regimen of sex, drugs, booze, and no sleep. When it was time to play Bingley Hall Lemmy was such a mess that guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke, an epic connoisseur of vice in his own right, told Kilmister that he was “drinking too much.”
 

The cover of the very rare collectible “The Overwhelming Motörhead in Rock Commando” written by Klaus Blum and distributed at the Bingley Hall gig.
 
After going full-gonzo for three days, Lemmy made it to the stage and, for a change, Clark and Taylor were relatively sober despite the excessive amount of cocaine blowing around backstage. According to Lemmy, after leaving the stage prior to the band’s encore, he collapsed and had to be revived. Clark and Phil were pissed at the seemingly indestructible Kilmister calling him a “motherfucker” because they were suddenly concerned about how the incident would affect their careers. Ultimately, (and since this is Lemmy Kilmister), he would return to the stage and finish the encore. Though it remains somewhat unclear how many people witnessed Lemmy’s collapse, the band was concerned enough about the incident that Lemmy chose to downplay his unplanned backstage nap, blaming it instead on three blowjobs he received prior to the show.

Here’s more from Lemmy on that (from White Line Fever):

“After the gig, I told the papers that I’d collapsed because I’d had three blow jobs that afternoon. The part about getting the blowjobs was true, actually. There were chicks all over the place, and there was this really cute Indian bird—she was two of them. There was this room in the hall that was full of cushions and shawls hanging down. It was like some Maltese fucking dream. So I locked myself in there with her and wouldn’t come out.”

So, according to Lemmy, it wasn’t three days’ worth of Lemmy-sized booze, drugs, and sex that caused his collapse at Bingley Hall, it was too many blowjobs! So my friends, the next time “Steak and a Blowjob Day” rolls around, don’t be like Lemmy (it’s impossible anyway) and know your fellatio limits. Footage of Motörhead performing their 1977 jam “Motorhead” live on German television in 1980 follows.
 

Motörhead live on German television performing “Motorhead” from their debut album of the same name. Kind of like Lemmy’s three-day binge, the band recorded the record in two-days fueled by speed and no sleep.

Artwork from Vestron Video and their UK VHS for ‘The Return of the Living Dead.’
 
Before we take a deep dive into the deviant classic that is 1985’s The Return of the Living Dead lets demystify the collection of films by late director George A. Romero and his partner John A. Russo. The first was Night of the Living Dead, released in 1968. Romero wrote the script for the film during his freshman year of college after meeting Russo while he was visiting Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh where he was studying graphic arts. After passing the script back and forth, the pair finally agreed the zombie antagonists in their film would be of the flesh-eating variety, not primarily brain consumers. With respect to zombie film super fans, this distinction has often been lost on connoisseurs of the genre, and Romero himself has publicly lamented about being constantly asked to include the words “Eat Brains!” while signing autographs—even though his zombies were just not into eating human brains. Initially, the title of the film was “Night of the Flesh Eaters,’ which was later modified for its theatrical release in order to avoid confusion with the 1964 film, The Flesh Eaters. However the release lacked notation of copyright, errantly placing the film in public domain where by definition an artistic work is considered common property.

In 1974 Russo would pen his first novel based on Night of the Living Dead. Four years later would see the publication of Russo’s second book Return of the Living Dead, which served as the basis for his dark screenplay (written with another Romero collaborator, Rudy Ricci) and subsequent 1985 film adaptation of the book. According to an interview with Russo in 2018, none other than Frank Sinatra had agreed to finance the film but withdrew after his mother Dolly Sinatra was tragically killed in a plane crash. After it was clear George Romero wasn’t interested in directing, the late Tobe Hooper was tapped but pulled out to direct Lifeforce (1985). Eventually, Russo and Ricci’s original screenplay would end up with a man of many talents and connections, Dan O’Bannon (Heavy Metal, Alien, Total Recall and, coincidentally, one of the writers behind Lifeforce) who revamped it completely so much so Russo has said he’d still like to see his (and Ricci’s) original screenplay get the film treatment someday. Ultimately, this about-face wasn’t a bad thing at all, and at the urging of the film’s distributors, dialog and scenes were at times meant to be darkly humorous. The pioneering O’Bannon would end up in the director’s seat for the first of five Living Dead films, this being the only one directed by him. Thanks to many factors and concepts influenced or directly implemented by O’Bannon, the film would become one of the most beloved zombie flicks of all time.

Think I’m wrong? Let me help you with that starting with one of the film’s stars, actress and heavy metal fitness enthusiast Linnea Quigley, and the trick behind her long nude scene in the movie.
 

Actress Linnea Quigley as Trash getting ready to do her graveyard dance in the nude. Sort of.
 
Part of the plan for the release of the film was that it would also, at some point, be shown in an edited-for-TV form; devoid of most of its nudity and questionable language. At first, Quigley, who spends pretty much all of her time on camera nude, had pubic hair. The story goes, one of the film’s producers just so happened to be visiting the set while Quigley was doing her graveyard striptease and freaked out at the sight of her bush and ripped Dan O’Bannon personally, telling him that pubic hair could “not be shown on television.” The then 24-year-old Quigley was sent off for a quick Brazilian at the beauty parlor, which further horrified the producer (said to be line-producer Graham Henderson), who responded that you could now see Quigley’s “everything.” This guy. The job of disguising Quigley’s down-under parts would go to the film’s art department who created a mannequin-like prosthetic for Quigley’s hoo-hah, which made her lady parts look like a barbie’s plastic vulva. So for those of you of a certain generation which grew up believing you saw Linnea Quigley’s hairless crotch in The Return of the Living Dead, I’m sorry. 

More after the jump…

 
Barry Adamson is a musician, composer, writer, photographer and filmmaker. With those credentials, many people (journalists, critics, what-have-you) often describe Adamson as a “polymath.” Fair enough, but it’s not the full dollar. Coz I think Adamson is a fucking genius. And you can print that on a t-shirt and wear it with pride:

BARRY ADAMSON IS A FUCKING GENIUS

‘cause it’s true.

Over the past forty years, Adamson has produced some of the most startlingly original, uniquely brilliant, and utterly diverse music ever put to disc. His back catalog ranges from his time as bass player and co-writer with Howard Devoto’s hugely influential post-punk band Magazine, moving on through Visage, to joining the tail end of the Birthday Party before becoming one of the original key members of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Quitting the Bad Seeds after their first four studio albums, Adamson delivered his debut solo album Moss Side Story in 1989—a dark and epic “filmic suite” to an as-yet unmade movie, which was described at the time by the NME as “one of the best soundtracks ever, the fact that it has no accompanying movie is a trifling irrelevance.” The album was a calling card announcing Adamson’s distinctive and undeniable talent.  He followed this up with another slice of compelling urban-noir brilliance his Mercury Prize-nominated album Soul Murder in 1992.

In 1996 came Oedipus Schmoedipus—one of those albums you must hear before you die—in which Adamson collaborated with Jarvis Cocker (“Set the Controls for the Heart of the Pelvis”), Billy MacKenzie (“Achieved in the Valley of Dolls”) and old pal Nick Cave (“The Sweetest Embrace”). Apart from these gems, there was also the thrilling noirish sounds of “It’s Business as Usual,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” “The Big Bamboozle,” and a hat tip to Miles Davis with “Miles.” This led to As Above, So Below in 1998—a masterpiece of jazz or “rock-jazz noir” which offered “a bold, satisfying vision from an artist who shows no fear in expressing the seedier sides of life.”

By the turn of the century, Adamson was producing albums of compelling beauty, originality, and genuine thrills with music as diverse as jazz, funk, soul, rock, lounge and movie soundscapes that unlocked ports of entry to unacknowledged sensations. King of Nothing Hill (2002), the masterwork Stranger on the Sofa (2006), with the ecstatic and rousing single “The Long Way Back Again,” the near perfect “tour-de-force” Back To The Cat (2008), the triumphantly brilliant I Will Set You Free (2012), and the astonishingly great Know Where to Run (2016) which saw Adamson moving in new and untraveled directions.

Adamson has also contributed to the soundtracks of movies by Derek Jarman (The Last of England), Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and David Lynch’s Lost Highway. In fact Lynch commissioned Adamson after spending ten hours non-stop listening to his albums. He then had him flown out to his studio to work on the film.

And let’s not forget his career as a writer of London noir fiction, his work as film director, producer, and screenwriter and his acclaimed photography which has been published in books and exhibited across the world.

Last year to celebrate his forty years in music, Adamson released a kinda greatest hits Memento Mori which to be frank every home should own a copy of this album. Bringing this altogether, Adamson recorded a concert at the Union Chapel, London, which featured songs from across his whole career including “Split,” (Soul Murder) “Jazz Devil” (As Above So Below), “Sounds From The Big House” (Moss Side Story), “I Got Clothes” (Love Sick Dick), ‘The Hummingbird’ (Memento Mori) and the Magazine classic “The Light Pours Out Of Me.” Last week, I spoke with Adamson over the phone about his new album release, his influences, his early life and career.
 

 
Tell me about your new live album.

Barry Adamson: It was recorded at the Union Chapel, Islington, London, I was celebrating a forty year period with an album that had come out Memento Mori and it was decided to record one of the showcases around that record just to make a night of it really.

It’s a bit of closure on the last forty years. Just to have something that was a kind of memento of the whole thing—the forty years and the live experience that had not been actually recorded to date. It’s a first on that level.

It’s also for the people that were there that night and the people that weren’t there that night. For people to hear how this transposes in a live situation. I actually think the record’s really great. There’s some great things going on and it covers such a width and depth of the whole sort of things I’ve been involved in.

You were brought up in Moss Side, Manchester, which was at one point called ‘Gunchester’ because the level of deprivation, crime and violence. What was your childhood like and how did it impact on your first album Moss Side Story?

BA: It was very much a black and white world. I can remember observing everything around me—perhaps that was sort of my personality that was burgeoning at the time—but that would have its own kind of cinematic playfulness to my eye and a kind of mystery element to it as well. I found Moss Side bleak, post-industrial, and very much in a black and white way. But at the same time it was kind of vibrant and thrilling.

By the time I came to do solo work I went back to Moss Side and all the pieces seemed to fit together of something that I had observed but couldn’t articulate in my early years. Then I was able to do something with an album by just looking out the window and opening that window and hearing what was there projected from within myself. I think I was a little bit lost at the time.

What do you mean by ‘lost’?

BA: You know those times when you’ve lost something unique? When you have to come back to yourself and find the things about you that make you you and keep yourself in that way.

I was away a lot working with the Bad Seeds in Berlin. My parents were still in Manchester so I would come back and see them. On the trips back I started to make these cassettes of different ideas and little melodies and sounds. It was almost like time-off, almost like being in the studio and there was time to put something together and make a note of it. It was becoming a thing by itself really.

When I did get back, I took a big breath out. That’s when I decided to move into something that was more about myself. I stumbled upon this idea of a soundtrack that wasn’t necessarily to a movie but just a soundtrack to whatever was going on inside and outside and around me.

I think everybody in their own way goes through a dark night of the soul and I wanted to try and bring it to an end. I think things went a little darker for a while. With hindsight I knew that I was embroiled in a very dark night of the soul and I did also have a kind of resilience that took me back to feeding myself with my own energy and my own art and that’s what I think became a place where I could start the work I was supposed to start anyway. I think looking back over the years it was the right thing to do.

That’s how [Moss Side Story] came about.

Your music is so rich and diverse ranging from the filmic to the funky, rock to jazz, and everything in between, how do you go about composing, coming up with the ideas for your music?

BA: It works in really different ways. It’s like you can be sat around and you can see melodies floating by and your job is to catch them with a butterfly net. You know the ones that have got your name on it because you can recognize them and they’re already sort of formed. Sometimes you sit down and you go “Right, I’m gonna write something today.”

I had a period of about five years after Moss Side Story where I was trying to discipline myself by going into the studio every day and writing something no matter what it was, this little squiggle of notes, just to get into the practice of receiving ideas, working through ideas and becoming an artist. Now I’m very used to the idea it can come at any time and you better write it down, you better make a note of it. I keep notebooks and things to record on all the time and I sit down daily to chisel away like a sculptor until you see a bit of a hand or bit of a knee or a leg. Then you start working away.

Do you find you compose more than you record?

BA: For every album you write two albums. I always do that.

I feel like I have to see every idea out even if I get an inkling it’s not going to work I have to see it out. And really strange things happen, you might have a part that melds itself to something else. I had this happen this week. I put down an idea for something then returned with another idea the following day. Then I played the two ideas and saw they were the same idea as a progression which I didn’t think of before. It’s a bit like sitting there and saying that’s got to go and that’s got to go. The stuff that stays with you, the stuff that taps you on the shoulder you stick with because you know there is something in it and you know you can’t throw it away. 

I’m very quick these days, for once I really do know something is out—it’s for the bin, it’s over.
 

DM Premiere: Barry Adamson - ‘Sounds From The Big House’ from the forthcoming album ‘Live At The Union Chapel.’
 
More from Barry Adamson and two more tracks, after the jump…
 

 
Although the work was receiving rave reviews pretty much everywhere, and had been broadcast by BBC radio, it seemed that no record label had any interest in releasing John Tavener’s avant garde opera The Whale, before John Lennon brought it to Apple Records. The two had met at a party and later exchanged tape recordings. Lennon passed along some of the experimental music he was making with Yoko Ono and Tavener gave the Beatle a tape of his dramatic cantata.

Perfect for bringing a little classical music gravitas to Apple, The Whale is kindred spirit to 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s “Lux Aeterna” (for 16 unaccompanied voices) and Frank Zappa’s quasi-operatic musings for his 200 Motels soundtrack.

From the Wikipedia entry:

The Whale is loosely based on the biblical allegory of Jonah and the Whale, although Tavener admitted that “The ‘fantasy’ grew and perhaps at times nearly ‘swallowed’ the biblical text: so the swallowing of Jonah became almost ‘literal’ in the biblical sense.”

The libretto includes the words of an encyclopaedia entry describing certain facts about the whale, and this is contrasted with themes within the music which attempt to portray the reality of the whale itself, whose existence is greater than the sum of all the facts about it.

The Whale has eight sections: I. Documentary, II. Melodrama and Pantomime, III. Invocation. IV. The Storm, V. The Swallowing, VI. The Prayer. VII. In the Belly, and VIII. The Vomiting.

The Whale premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on January 24, 1968 when the composer was just 24 years old. It was recorded in July of 1970 and released as an album by Apple Records that same year. Ringo Starr’s voice can be heard on the recording via a loud hailer, and he would re-release The Whale in 1977 on his own Ring O’ Records label

In Tavener’s own words:

The Whale represented new territory for me.   Previously I had set straight biblical texts as in Credo and Cain and Abel, but in the story of Jonah and the whale it was interspersed with a surrealist section with the opening encyclopedic entry on whales. These occurred throughout the biblical narrative of The Whale, at the stomach and inside the belly of the whale. The Whale was dedicated to my wild Irish adopted godmother Lady Birley. It made a great impact at the inaugural concert of the London Sinfonieta with Alvar Liddell the great wartime broadcaster reading the encyclopaedic entry on Whales.

During Tavener’s long career he he became one of the best-loved British composers of his generation. Tavener was knighted for his services to music. He died in 2013 at the age of 69.

 
Earlier this year, we told you about legendary R.E.M. performances captured before they were famous. Those shows, now considered amongst the best the band ever played, took place in 1981, just as they were getting started (their first single had just come out). We’ve got another fabled R.E.M. concert to share with you, one that took place when they were considerably more well known, but had yet to break into the mainstream. This show is perhaps the most unique concert they ever played. It occurred when the group was still in its formative stage, but change was coming.

By 1985, R.E.M. was one of the most popular American rock bands not signed to a major label. Their third album, Fables of the Reconstruction, made it to #28 on the Billboard charts, and their video for “Can’t Get There From Here” received MTV airplay. In August of ’85, the “Reconstruction I” tour took them to Canada, and included an August 17th stop at Barrymore’s Music Hall in Ottawa, Ontario. The first part of the gig went off without a hitch. Their main set was solid, featuring two great covers— “Pills” (Bo Diddley by way of the New York Dolls) and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” (Creedence Clearwater Revival)—as well as a brand new, yet to be released song, “Fall on Me.” But when they returned for an encore, everything changed.
 

 
What went down was recounted in the recent (and excellent) biography, Begin the Begin: R.E.M.‘s Early Years.

After running through their regular set list, the band was heckled with cries of “Fuck off!” when they encored with “Moon River.” This almost resulted in a fight: [bassist Mike] Mills allegedly had to be restrained from attacking the heckler. A couple of songs later, [guitarist Peter] Buck couldn’t let it go. “The guy who yelled ‘Fuck you’ during ‘Moon River’: Meet me backstage, you asshole.” Further heckling ensued, but instead of storming off (which the band had sometimes done in similar situations), R.E.M. elected to play an entire second set of mostly cover songs—including punishing, shambolic versions of “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room” (originally performed by Brownsville Station but mistakenly attributed by Mills to Bachman Turner Overdrive), “Sweet Home Alabama,” and “God Save the Queen,” interspersed with deranged monologues from [singer Michael] Stipe and Mills.

Author Robert Dean Lurie also notes that the Fables era marks the end of R.E.M.’s initial approach to touring, and that their subsequent outings were more professional and far less unpredictable.

The group would eventually sign with a major label, and their hugely popular albums, Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992), resulted in success for R.E.M. on a global scale. During this period, they stopped touring entirely.
 

 
Listen to a very listenable audience recording of the Barrymore’s gig after the jump…

 
One evening at a local fleapit in Germany, sometime in the 1920s, a young woman stood on stage while the projectionist changed reels between movies and performed her latest dance called Pause. The woman was Valeska Gert who was well-known for her wild, unpredictable, highly controversial, beautiful yet often grotesque performances. The audience waited expectantly, a few coughs, a few giggles, but Gert did not move. She stood motionless in a slightly contrived awkward position and stared off into the distance. The audience grew restless. What the fuck was going on? The lights dimmed, the performance ended, and the movie came on. This wasn’t just dance, this was anti-dance. This was performance art. And nobody knew what to make of it.

Nijinsky had tried something similar a few years earlier, when he sat on the stage to a small audience and said something like: “And now I dance for you the meaning of the War.” He ended up in the booby-hatch. Gert thankfully didn’t. She just antagonized the bourgeoisie and inspired a whole new way of performance.

Valeska Gert was born Gertrud Valesca Samosch in Berlin, on January 11th, 1892. Her father was a highly successful businessman and a respected member of the Jewish community. According to her autobiographies (she wrote four of them), Gert was rebellious from the get-go. She showed little interest in school preferring to express herself through art and dance. At the age of nine, Gert was signed-up for ballet school where she exhibited considerable proficiency but a wilful subversiveness. She hated bourgeois conventions and considered traditional dance limiting and oppressive. But she was smart enough and talented enough to learn the moves and impress her teachers.

On the recommendation of one teacher, Gert was given an introduction to the renowned and highly respected dancer and choreographer Rita Sacchetto. Good ole Sacchetto thought she had a future prima ballerina on her hands and gave Gert the opportunity to perform her own dance in one of her shows. Instead of something traditional, Gert burst on stage “like a bomb” in an outrageous orange silk costume. Then rather than perform the dance as rehearsed and as expected Gert proceeded to jump, swing, stomp, grimace, and dance like “a spark in a powder keg.” Sacchetto was not pleased but the audience went wild. This became Gert’s first major performance Tanz in Orange (Dance in Orange) in 1916.

As the First World War had a dramatic and negative effect on her father’s business, Gert, buoyed by her success with Tanz in Orange, sought out her own career as a dancer, performer, and actor. She worked with various theater groups and cabarets, winning garlands for her performances in Oskar Kokoschka’s Hiob (1918), Ernst Toller’s Transformation (1919), and a revival of Frank Wedekind’s Franziska (1920).

But Gert became more interested in merging acting with dance and performance with politics. She created a series of lowlife characters who she brought to life through exaggerated performance. Or as Gert put it:

I danced all of the people that the upright citizen despised: whores, pimps, depraved souls—the ones who slipped through the cracks.

Long before Madonna caused outrage by flicking-off on stage, Gert was simulating masturbation, coition, and orgasm. It brought her a visit for the cops on grounds of obscenity. Her most notorious performance was the prostitute Canaille. As the academic Alexandra Kolb wrote in her thesis ‘There was never anythin’ like this!!!’ Valeska Gert’s Performances in the Context of Weimar Culture:

Gert’s portrayal of this figure is significant at a time when German state regulation of prostitution, which involved the supervision of sex-workers by the Sittenpolizei (moral police) and severe limitations on their freedom, became increasingly attacked as incompatible with the new democratic system and moves towards greater legal and civil rights for women. The regulation policy was in fact abolished in 1927.

Gert’s unvarnished and ruthless depiction of the prostitute renounced any idealisation. Everyday life—and misery—were reinstated over and above the aestheticised life previously represented in much dance, in particular classical ballet with its fairy-tale plots and noble, dignified representation of humanity.

~ Snip! ~

...Gert did not simply interpret this role as a critique of capitalist society and its treatment of woman as a will-less and submissive commodity. Rather, she strove to depict the female experience in a somewhat autonomous light, with the prostitute enjoying considerable control over her sexuality.

Forget The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, this was a nice Jewish girl ripping-up the text book and changing society. Gert was making a one-woman stand for “those marginalised or excluded from bourgeois society.”

Nothing was taboo for Gert. Her performances covered a wide range of subjects, themes, and characters—from sport to news, sex to death, and to the invidious nature of capitalist society. When Gert asked Bertolt Brecht what he meant by “epic theater,” the playwright replied. “It’s what you do.”

Her reputation grew in the 1920s. She appeared in cabaret, in movies, and in theater productions. Gert would have been a superstar had not the rise of the anti-semitic Nazis brought her career to a premature hiatus. She quit Germany, moved to England, and got married. She then moved to New York, ran a cabaret where both Julian Beck and Jackson Pollock worked for her, and became friends with Tennessee Williams.

After the Second World War, Gert returned to Europe. She tried her hand at cabaret again and found herself cast in movies by Fellini, Fassbinder, and Wim Wenders. But it really wasn’t until the 1970s and the explosion of punk that Gert was fully rediscovered and embraced by a younger generation. Gert was hailed as a progenitor of punk, the woman who “laid the foundations and paved the way for the punk movement.”

Gert died sometime in March 1978. The official date is March 18th. But Gert’s body had lain undiscovered for a few days—something she predicted in her 1968 autobiography Ich bin eine Hexe (I am a Witch):

Only the kitty will be with me. When I’m dead, I can’t feed him anymore. He’s hungry. In desperation he nibbles at me. I stink. Kitty’s a gourmet, he doesn’t like me anymore. He meows loudly with hunger until the neighbours notice and break down the door.

 

 

 
More pix of Gert and a video, after the jump…
 

 
Glam rock’s history is clustered into two distinct eras: its initial early 70s glitter-pop boom (T.Rex, Sweet, Slade, Suzi, Bowie, New York Dolls) and its macho, chest-thumping 80s hair metal resurgence (Mötley Crüe, Poison, Ratt). If you’re looking for the connective tissue between the two, it’s very clearly KISS and Hanoi Rocks. But there was also a hazy and overlooked “art-glam” moment in the mid to late 1970s when bands like Roxy Music and Sparks stretched glam’s platform boot stomp into weird new musical life-forms. Art-glam’s pinnacle achievement, I think, was the first two albums by reluctant Brit glitter-kings Japan. Adolescent Sex and Obscure Alternatives were both released in 1978. By the time most people discovered them, the band had already abandoned their sound and vision, barreling straight-ahead into synth-driven pop, eventually becoming vanguards of the “New Romantic” movement. They were much happier being proto Duran Durans, and Japan frontman David Sylvian decided to just pretend 1978 never even happened.

But it did, man. And it was glorious.
 

Dandies in the underworld: Japan in 1978
 
Japan was formed in South London in 1974 by Sylvian and his brother, Steve Jansen. Sylvian’s tragic beauty was the band’s initial calling card and when early publicity photos wound their way to the band’s namesake country, they became instant sensations there. While virtually ignored back home, they were huge in Japan, even before releasing a lick of music. Their manager told the Japanese press that Sylvian was voted “most beautiful man in the world” (he wasn’t), and that was really all they needed. Initially, Japan’s sound was essentially blue-eyed funk, but by the time they hit the studio in 1977, an affection for the chunky hooks of the Dolls and T.Rex had kicked in. Their first two albums are low-budget wonders of post-punky jangle, alienated disco-funk, and slithery glitter rock. None of it should work, but it does. Perfectly. And looks-wise, the band was impeccable, like Hanoi Rocks in custom-fitted shark skin suits.
 

Racy sleeve for Japan’s debut 1978 single. Remind you of anything else?
 
But none of it mattered, really. 1978 had other things on its mind. Marc Bolan died in ‘77 and took glam rock with him. It was all about punk and disco and new-wave, and Japan’s funky glitter-rock seemed anachronistic to most, including the band themselves. In 1979 they met Euro disco king Giorgio Moroder who turned them on to dancier alternatives. He produced their hit single “Life in Tokyo” later that year and paved the way for their arty synth-pop makeover. They spent the next three years pioneering the new romantic movement before unceremoniously breaking up mid-stride. Sylvian has gotten the band back together here and there over the intervening decades, sometimes under the moniker Rain Tree Crow. But one thing he has never wavered on is how much he hates those first two albums.
 

Japan’s 1980 new-wave makeover.
 

“It doesn’t mean anything. That whole era of Japan was ....misguided,” Sylvian told NME in 1991. “If people want to somehow keep that period alive for themselves it’s really up to them but they’re fooling themselves. Maybe it’s a fantastic form of escapism for those people who build their existence around the fact that there was once a group called Japan. I think they’re missing so much in life. I feel totally detached from it. I don’t relate to it at all. If I felt complimented or flattered by that then I’d say so. I don’t. In fact most of the time I find it irritating, in that they’re highlighting an area of my work that I was involved in, in which I place no value myself.”

 

 
Well, sez you, dude. The fact of the matter is this: Japan’s 1978 albums are gorgeously disaffected glam rock gems well worth rediscovering.

And as these clips after the jump show, they looked as fantastic as they sounded.