“The first time I saw art was when my father took us on a trip when I was 12. My father worked in a factory, he had four sickly children, my parents had a lot of money problems, and we didn’t go on excursions often. But there was a Salvador Dali show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that included the painting “The Persistence of Memory,” and my father found Dali’s draftsmanship just astounding, so he wanted to see the show in person. So he dragged us all to the museum. I had never seen art in person before. And seeing paintings - seeing work by Picasso, John Singer Sargent - I was completely smitten, I totally fell in love with Picasso, and I dreamed of being a painter.”
The sublime Patti Smith once described her drawings as the “merging of calligraphy with geometric planes, poetry, and mathematics.” While in her early 20s and living with artist/photographer Robert Mapplethorpe at the Chelsea Hotel, the inseparable lovers would draw together side-by-side for long periods. Mapplethorpe would be a constant stream of encouragement to Smith, empowering her to keep creating despite the noise in her head telling her she wasn’t good enough. She would draw images of Mapplethorpe as well as his gorgeously aggressive X-rated photographs. In 1978, Smith and Mapplethorpe would sign on with New York art dealer Robert Miller who had just opened his art gallery on Fifth Avenue a year earlier. 1978 would mark the first time, at the age of 32, that Smith would show her original works of art alongside Mapplethorpe’s photographs—including a variety of his portraits of Patti. As I will never tire of hearing stories told by Patti Smith, here’s a bit more from the high priestess of punk on the wonderful thing that is “creative impulse”:
“The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can’t give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work. And that continuous exchange—whether it’s with a rock and roll song where you’re communing with Bo Diddley or Little Richard, or it’s with a painting, where you’re communing with Rembrandt or Pollock—is a great thing.”
Her artwork has been exhibited everywhere from New York to Munich, and in 2008 a large retrospective of Smith’s artwork (produced between 1967 and 2007) was shown at the Fondation Cartier pour I’Art Contemporain in Paris. In 2019, Smith’s illustrations were used for the album, The Peyote Dance, a collaboration with Smith and Soundwalk Collective (Stephan Crasneanscki, Simone Merli). So, without further adieu, let’s spend some time perusing a few of Patti’s illustrations produced over the last four decades.
I’ve been intending to write a long post about Bobby Conn here on Dangerous Minds for the past year. I’ve thought about Bobby Conn a lot in recent months, but never actually sat down and started typing any of it out until today. There’s a brand new Bobby Conn album, Recovery, and this is what finally gave me a deadline. It’s EASILY “the album of the pandemic,” but we’ll get to that, and why, later.
I present to you that Bobby Conn is the greatest marginal cult artist in America today. That a talent this brilliant has not been nationally heralded and respected widely is unforgivable.
A bit more than two years ago I myself had little more awareness of “Chicago’s favorite Christian entertainer,” than the widely circulated and very puzzling YouTube clip of Bobby Conn performing “Never Get Ahead” on what is obviously a local cable access program for young viewers. Many of you reading this have no doubt seen this clip, which dates from the late 90s, as it’s had several bouts of being a viral video since YouTube first launched in 2005, and maybe even before that. Apparently it’s also been shown several times on MTV Europe as something along the lines of “the worst music video ever made.” (Because of this Bobby Conn is better known, and has a much bigger fanbase, in Europe than in America.)
One day, it was in Spring of 2018, for no reason I suddenly had “Never Get Ahead” playing in my head and I dialed up that video and watched it again. And then I watched it again, and again, marvelling at its uncomfortable brilliance and thought “I gotta look into what this guy is all about.” It wasn’t that it was a good song—it’s great—but more that I found the whole thing so very, very confounding and I wanted to know more. On the basis of this one piece of evidence, “confusion,” frankly, seemed the obvious reaction that most people would have when confronted by this scraggly little crackhead emoting like a demonic Al Jolson covering a Jackson 5 song and dancing his ass off while young children and early teen onlookers clap and awkwardly dance around him.
One detail of this video that I especially appreciate is how none of the kids are like “What is going on here? Who is this weirdo?” but are apparently quite genuinely enthusiastic about the flaming creature who’s just landed in their midst. The entire thing is unwholesome, but also a masterpiece of the vaguely sinister. Note that the X-rated lyrics were toned down for this appearance. (Here’s the original song.)
What did the rest of Bobby Conn’s music sound like, I wondered? I took the plunge and ordered his entire catalog from Amazon. There were five studio albums, a live CD and a few EPs. I didn’t pay more than $2 for any of them. The postage for each was more than it cost. It took me about nine or ten further months until I grabbed one off the pile and started listening in the car. The car was the perfect place to listen to Bobby Conn and give the music my full attention. Not a good soundtrack for multitasking, that’s for sure. I’ve listened to all of them in the car, for weeks, before listening inside. It was a winning strategy for me at least. The key thing is that you need both repeat listens—it won’t sink in on the first play for most people—and to pay close attention, because it’s music with a lot of tiny moving parts.
I began at the beginning with his self-titled 1997 debut Bobby Conn. This album is sometimes described as “no wave” or “post rock” and that’s not entirely offbase, but it’s also got the mutant pop/disco/soul “hit” of “Never Get Ahead” (a song metaphorically equating a male prostitute sucking off old men to getting ahead in the corporate world), the heavy metal bludgeoning that comes with “The Sportsman,” and “Who’s The Paul? #16,” a 13-minute-long musique concrète assemblage comprised of slowed down and layered snatches of Paul McCartney songs. “Axis ‘67 (Parts 1&3)” explains how Conn believes he is, or might be, the Antichrist prophesied in the Book of Revelation. And you can dance to it. It’s an album that’s impossible to pigeonhole, and that has no obvious influences other than the Jackson 5 (and maybe the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but don’t let that put you off). After a few back to back listens, I had a feeling I was going to become a big Bobby Conn fan. What an incredibly strong, and unique, but preposterously odd way to present yourself to the world. How much of it he was serious about and how much of it was purely a theatrical persona ala Ziggy Stardust was difficult to say. There was a very straight-faced quality about it all, knowing, arch and dripping with multiple layers of venomous irony.
Conn’s next album was 1998’s Rise Up!, an updating of the whole “protest music” concept for an apathetic generation not much interested in protesting anything. That this message was coming from a diminutive, falsetto-singing, apparently drug-addled rent boy with glitter eyeshadow, chipped painted fingernails and a shitty nylon tracksuit gave Rise Up! a particular “leper messiah” edge. Musically it was a massive step-up from the prior year’s effort—it was produced by Jim O’Rourke, who is all over the album—and marked the full-flowering of Conn’s musical collaboration with his future wife, violinist Julie Pomerleau, aka Monica BouBou. She’s on the first album but here takes a role that’s about equal to the name on the spine of the CD. He’s an amazingly inventive guitarist, as proven on his debut album, but with his “rock” prowess on that instrument augmented by her sophisticated strings and keyboards, there’s an immediately noticed slickness that Bobby Conn lacked. Here the sound becomes—all at once—a sleazy comingling of the essence of 70s and 80s AM radio hits, Prince, prog, riffy glam rock, Van der Graaf Generator and disco. A stand out track, the vicious “Baby Man,” tells the tale of a useless loser living off his girlfriend. It might be autobiographical, it might not be.
It could be accurately said that the Bobby Conn project was already in full bloom with Rise Up!, but the next album, 2001’s The Golden Age—also produced by Jim O’Rourke—is another big, huge jump up in quality. The lyrical fodder is still the same. Conn has said the album overall is about someone in his 30s still acting like he’s in his 20s, but paranoia, revolution, street drugs and male prostitutes (“I’ll be working on your street/ Missing half my teeth/ Give another gummy blowjob/ Get myself something good to eat.”) are still the dominant themes. The arrangements on this album are absolutely next level and it’s here that Conn and BouBou do something so unique and so perfectly realized that I can’t think of any other musical artist(s) who do this, or have done this particular thing, and done it so well.
What am I talking about? It’s how the music can smoothly shapeshift from a string-led Gainsbourg/Vannier-esque orchestrated passage to something that sounds like King Crimson (there’s often a strong hint of Robert Fripp in Conn’s guitar playing) and then have it change on a dime from there to a blaring horn section that sounds like it’s grafted straight from Frank Zappa’s Grand Wazoo album. For a few bars it will sound like Styx, then Arvo Part. Then it becomes alternately Prince-like, proggy, falsetto Chic disco-funk, and ends like an 80s power ballad. This might, and often does, happen within the confines of just one song. In an interview, Conn described how the compositional structure of Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” had a big influence on his songwriting. Almost everything on the album is a suite of sorts. They pull this conceit off spectacularly well. The Golden Age is one of the most musically sophisticated pop albums I’ve ever heard, with some of the very finest musicianship, and it’s bursting with intelligence. I would easily rank it my favorite Bobby Conn release, and as one of my top favorite albums, period. Sadly this one isn’t on Tidal, but it is on Spotify. Start with The Golden Age. It’s probably worth mentioning that one day when I was playing it, my wife, who is 99% of the time totally indifferent—if not openly hostile—to what music I’m playing, asked me what I was listening to and added “This is absolutely beautiful.”
It is but it’s a lot other things, too. Here’s an excerpt from a quite informed Amazon review for The Golden Age by Bill Your ‘Free Form FM Print DJ.
If you grabbed your favorite 1970s and 1980s influences, wrote structured songs, and then both piled these influences both alongside and on top of the other, you would sound like Bobby Conn.
If what I just described sounds like an artsy mess, buy Golden Age and hear that Conn’s music is anything but. Take “Angels,” an early Golden Age track. Conn maintains a three or four chord structure through “Angels,” but breaks the arrangements down into tiny fragments. First the song sound like a basic guitar track, then classical sounding strings take over in the guitar’s place, then Conn’s voice takes “Angels” steering wheel. He can sound like Curtis Mayfield one second, Bryan Ferry the next, Tim (or for that matter Jeff) Buckley the next.
But Conn’s mastery hear is not wearing a lot of musical hats in ambitious suites. If I wanted that, I’d take out any good—or awful—70s progressive rock album and play the mandatory side long track.
NO! What makes Conn so compelling is that the songs work as songs—just like the Beatles or Brian Wilson or Steely Dan (and yeah, he references those guys too.) He is a master at screwing the tiny parts of his tracks together so each supports the other and makes a cogent, 3-5 minute rock and roll song
Not that you are going to absorb it, or even be able to process it right away. There is A LOT going on in each of his songs, and you have to play the numbers a few times and A) listen attentively—i suggest a notepad and a protractor or B)-keep playing it on a casual basis until it gets into your head, where it is going to stay for a long time.
Verdict = truth. Bobby Conn’s songs, as complex and as complicated as they are, tend to be serious earworms.
Conn released an album about every three years, then there was a gap of five years, and ultimately of eight years. All of them are super strong albums. There’s no such thing as a “bad” Bobby Conn song. Like with Momus or Luke Haines, some songs just stand out more than others, but they’re all good and of a consistently high quality. Sadly, I see little to indicate that any of these dazzling albums sold more than a perfunctory number of copies. I know of but two other Bobby Conn fans, one who told me that when he’d seen Conn play live there might’ve been more people onstage than in the audience. Aside from the “Never Get Ahead” clip, none of his YouTube videos have racked up a significant number of views. Spotify tells you exactly how many listeners an artist gets and it’s the same story there. It must be depressing as fuck to be this talented and also to still remain fairly obscure after decades of trying. I think the pervy prostitute persona and the multiple levels of irony might confuse, or repel a lot of people, but for fuck’s sake, this character is INSPIRED. The songs make more sense and are much more interesting coming from “Bobby Conn” the same way “Five Years” made more sense coming from Ziggy Stardust. (David Bowie himself was a Bobby Conn fan and invited him to perform in London when he curated the Meltdown Festival in 2002.)
I was worried that maybe he’d stopped making music. From 2012 to 2020, there was no Bobby Conn album, just the unjustly ignored “Hollow Men” single. I’d only just discovered one of the greatest unheralded American musicians of my generation, he had to make more albums, if only JUST FOR ME!
When I got the press release about a new Bobby Conn album a couple of weeks ago, I (literally) said “FUCK YEAH!” It wasn’t just the best “rock” news I’d gotten in quite a while, it was great news to get especially now, as we’re all hunkered down in this pandemic. Immersing myself in a NEW Bobby Conn album became my most important, soon-to-be-gratified short term goal.
But before I get to that, let me backup first and call your attention to the jaw-dropping music video for “Hollow Men,” directed by the notorious Bruce LaBruce. This is a work of high art, if you ask me, and I urge you to watch it with the volume up loudly and giving it your full and undivided attention.
Amazing, right? Not everyone’s going to pick up on the T.S. Eliot and Lohengrin references, of course, but others will. It really doesn’t matter and should have no bearing on your enjoyment of the piece if you do or don’t. This is one of the best Bobby Conn songs, not just in eight years, but ever. Coupled with the video, it’s the very quintessence of his art. (And let me remind the reader that when I say “his” I mean to include Pomerleau/BouBou’s contributions, which are significant.) Interesting to note that the druggy male hustler persona of “early” Bobby Conn has now been updated as a middle-aged pervert.
Although it’s my own personal favorite B-52s release, the 1982 EP produced by David Byrne known as Mesopotamia is generally thought of as being one of their least successful records. At least it was critically savaged when it first came out, but to my mind it contains their very best work. The hiring on of Byrne, then at the height of his creative powers, I thought was an inspired move on the band’s (or label’s) part. Byrne introduced the polyrhythmic beats of Remain in Light and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts to the signature sound of the “tacky little dance band from Athens, Georgia’’ to great effect. I was a big Talking Heads fan, and a far bigger B-52s fan, so hearing elements of the Heads’ “Afro-Eno-era” sound melding with the wacky racket of the B-52s was heaven for me as a teenage rock snob. Byrne took the B-52s sound to a different place, and I felt nicely expanded on their sonic palette. The B-52s obviously felt differently, as Byrne was fired before a complete album could be recorded (hence why only an EP of the sessions was released).
Seriously, you have no idea how often I played this record. It falls into the “soundtrack of my life” category in a big way. But what many fans of the group do not know is that there are three very different versions of Mesopotamia: The “classic” shorter US/Warner Brothers EP version; the extended mix version mistakenly(?) released in Germany and in the UK by Island Records; and the 1991 CD version, which basically mixed David Byrne’s contribution right out of the proceedings…
The first two B-52s albums are classics, and to my mind perfect in every way, but a third album in that same style would have probably been one too many. Byrne’s involvement, for many fans and critics, took the band a little too far away from their inspired amateur beginnings. Perhaps, but who else but Byrne was capable of coming up with such amazingly funky polyrhythmic grooves back then? And haven’t the B-52s always been about the beat? David Byrne was on fire at that time creatively and was simultaneously working on his masterpiece score for Twyla Tharp’s Broadway ballet The Catherine Wheel. I’ve read that the B-52s felt that his production made them sound too much like Talking Heads, but hey, what a valid direction that was for them! True, certain elements of their signature sound were diminished (Ricky Wilson’s Venusian/spy-fi surf guitar for one, and Keith Strickland’s drums were crowded out by a drum machine), but other elements (Wilson’s striking use of dissonance in his compositions) are given freer rein with different instrumentation (like the nearly atonal “No Wave” brass section and sleekly synthesized bass lines) than the B-52’s normally employed. And it’s a much darker, dreamier vibe for them, for sure. Their sound was nicely expanded upon by Byrne’s “dubbier/trippier/hip hoppier” production approach, if you ask me, but the B-52s didn’t ask me, and it was their call, ultimately.
Still why not release a special collector’s edition of Mesopotamia with the original longer David Byrne mixes and the known outtakes: “Queen of Las Vegas,” (see below), the original “Big Bird” and “Butterbean” (both recut for Whammy) and the pretty Fred Schneider sung ballad “Adios Desconocida” (which you can hear here). In any case, the longer, “alt” David Byrne version of Mesopotamia, unavailable now for 40 years and never released on CD can be downloaded all over the Internet (it’s not hard to find). I don’t hate the 1991 remix of Mesopotamia, but I’d never choose to listen to it over either of the other versions. Ever. ‘Nuff said.
An absolutely slamming live “Mesopotamia” from the Rock Pop Festival, Dortmund, Germany, 1983:
Sopwith Camel, is a barely recalled—but amazing—group from the Summer of Love-era San Francisco, who were the second Bay Area band to be signed to a major label (after Jefferson Airplane) and the first to have a top 40 hit, 1967’s Lovin’ Spoonful-esque (both bands had same producer, Erik Jacobsen) “Hello, Hello.”
If you look at a book of San Francisco rock posters, you’ll see their name show up a lot on bills often above the names of much more famous groups (like the Grateful Dead, who opened for them), and on bills that included Love, Allen Ginsberg and the 13th Floor Elevators, but there’s precious little written about them online. I think they must’ve largely slipped past me because based on the evidence of “Hello, Hello” I probably mentally put them more into the bubblegum pop category, plus with their name, I think I conflated them with the Royal Guardsman, who had novelty songs like “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron” and “It’s Sopwith Camel Time.”
Here they are miming “Hello, Hello” on Dick Clark’s Where The Action Is:
Their first incarnation of Sopwith Camel only lasted about six months. Their debut album was pretty much cobbled together right before they split up—the album sported a sticker asking buyers if they remembered “Hello, Hello”—but Sopwith Camel reformed four years later in 1971 when their music took on a more jazzy/hippie Steely Dan-meets-War-meets-John Sebastian kinda sound.They released one more album in 1972 on Reprise before breaking up again, The Miraculous Hump Returns From the Moon and this is what I want to call your attention to. It’s one of the most amazing overlooked gems of the 1970s. In a decade positively teeming with great “lost” music, it stands out as one of the best “lost” albums.
I realize that I compared them to three different acts above, but really this album, or most of it, at least, isn’t too much like anything else that was going on at that time. And how many bands can you name that were fronted by a guy wielding a soprano sax? None, right? They had a highly original sound. If I was hard pressed to describe their music in words, I’d have to say they sound like what the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers would sound like if they’d have formed a real band. Only Frank Zappa’s Apostrophe can rival it as a soundtrack to reading underground comix of that era. It’s a quirky, fun, sleazy-sounding album. I highly, highly recommend giving it your time.
Taking in elements of FM schmaltz, prog-rock, jazz, showtunes, Krautrock and indian classical music, this is an album that overflows with ideas, but never overwhelms. “Orange Peel” is cooly funk-scented ambient-jazz, “Dancin’ Wizard” is what Incredible String Band might have sounded like if they’d grown up with sunshine rather than rain, while “Coke, Suede and Waterbeds” is as lush and indulgent as the title suggests. However, it’s the last track “Brief Synthoponia” that is most startling. A fantastically stream-lined experimental jam, it manages to cram an awesome breakbeat, sax and synth squalls and some super-skronk hep-cat dynamism into its fifty-three second lifespan. A tiny masterpiece.
If there was just ONE song you’d hope to see performed by these guys on YouTube, it’s The Miraculous Hump‘s opening number, the futuristic and CATCHY AS HELL “Fazon.” I could listen to this on a loop for 24 hours and never get sick of it. Sadly the performance gets abruptly cut off, followed by “Monkeys on the Moon” another song from the album. (There are other versions of this video floating around.)
BONUS clip: Jonathan Wilson and his band covering “Fazon” in 2014
Well, the Youtuber known as Alt Copperpot5 has done it again, uploading more amazing, previously uncirculated live footage of Nirvana. We told you about two of the other recent times Alt Copperpot5 has premiered such video (see links at the end of this post), and like those clips, the footage is superb.
This Nirvana performance was recorded at the “No More Wars” benefit concert, held on the campus of Evergreen State College, a liberal arts school in Olympia, Washington. Nirvana headlined the event, which took place on January 18th, 1991, not long after the US-led Gulf War began in Kuwait. Before Nirvana played, bassist Krist Novoselic gave an impassioned speech about the war. Dave Grohl is on drums, having replaced Chad Channing in September.
Here’s Paul Kimball of Helltrout, the group that played right before Nirvana that evening:
Evergreen was a very socially conscious environment, sometimes to a fault. But we and other bands were really feeling it. It was an intense moment. Krist Novoselic spoke at length from the stage that night, and though I remember it being less than eloquent, it was definitely right on…The big difference at this one was Dave Grohl. All of sudden what Nirvana had been trying to do finally became undeniable. The songwriting, the time on the road…The fact that Dave could harmonize with Kurt is something that pushed the songwriting way up front, and his drumming—well, c’mon! (from I Found My Friends: The Oral History of Nirvana)
Someone videotaped Nirvana, and a couple of songs (and perhaps even more), including “Breed,” aired on a public access TV program in Olympia. It’s believed that Nirvana’s entire 33-minute concert was captured, but very little has circulated.
A photo from the show. Can you spot the videotaper?
On March 15th, Alt Copperpot5 uploaded a nine-minute collection of clips from Nirvana’s set—partial video of six songs, as well as a portion of Krist’s speech. The recording contains performances of new tunes that were unreleased at that time, including the earliest known live versions of “Territorial Pissings” (with a guitar solo not heard in the familiar studio take) and the unnamed hidden track on Nevermind, a song later titled “Endless, Nameless.” The taper did a nice job, and the footage looks great, appearing to have been sourced from a low generation tape. As Paul Kimball noted, the band sounds incredible.
Here’s the order of the clips:
1. Tuning
2. Krist’s speech
3. Aneurysm
4. Breed
5. Pay to Play (early version of “Stay Away”)
6. School
7. Territorial Pissings
8. Endless, Nameless
As the video comes to an end, Kurt can be seen smashing his guitar to bits with a hammer.
By the time this show happened, Nirvana had made the jump from indie Sub Pop to DGC Records, the major label that would release Nevermind in September. Nearly a year to the day after the “No More Wars” benefit, the record would top the US Billboard album chart.
The first image of the group a purchaser of the ‘Nevermind’ CD sees after opening the package.
A couple more photos of Nirvana from the “No More Wars” gig, then the video:
As a bonus, here’s the full version of “Breed,” taken from the aforementioned public access TV broadcast:
John Peel with his wife Shelia and Mark E. Smith and the Fall at Peel’s 50th birthday bash, 1989. via.
When did everything get so shit? The older I get the more I think Philip Larkin was probably right when he wrote every new generation is just a mere dilution of the last. My gauge is pop culture and pop culture just now is shit, utter shit. Music is at a nadir. And don’t tell me, “Oh, but there’s suuuuuupppppeeerrr new bands out there…” No. There are mainly shit new bands out there who think they’re super.
Like take this morning when some vacuous TV presenter was interviewing a boy band pop star who was being feted like he could walk on water and turn it into wine. The singer (if that’s what he was) had a vocal style like cats being drowned and looked like he’d escaped some bide-a-wee home for the criminally attired. This anodyne safe space presenter was all “super,” “lovely,” “great” and “you’re the best.” Had she ever listened to this no-talents back catalogue? If she had—-God help us!!! I would rather go deaf than listen to that kinda shit. Seriously.
Anyway, this insufferable presenter was the kind who would interview a serial killer with: “And you know I was really a bit scared when I heard about my next guest, but you know what, he’s really super, amazing, just lovely. Now, Sid, you strangle people, don’t you? That’s amazing. And it’s all your own handiwork? Super.”
This is where we are at folks. Maybe coronavirus ain’t so bad after all…
Now kids (in my best Grandpa Simpson voice…), once upon a time, young ‘uns could wake up in the morning and there was such an abundance of great music to pluck like ripe fruits from the tree that we never got out of bed. No, sir. We just lay there, smoking weed and listening to PiL, T.Rex, Bowie, the Specials, Joni Mitchell, Blondie, Radiohead, Throbbing Gristle, Public Enemy, NWA, Kate Bush, Nick Cave, Iggy Pop, the Slits, etc, etc, etc…. Of course, it wasn’t all good. There was NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys, Boyz II Men, the Spice Girls, and New Kids on the Block….so maybe things haven’t changed that much…hmmm?
But then again….Let’s go back to your childhood, childhood… says Vivian Stanshall.
It’s 1989. The legendary Radio One DJ is being given a surprise party to celebrate his 50th birthday and 25-years in broadcasting. The party took place on Peel’s birthday eve Tuesday August 29th, and featured a few of his (then) favorite bands: House of Love, the Wedding Present, and the Fall.
Originally Peel’s other favorite band the Undertones were to reform with Feargal Sharkey on vocals but “sadly had to pull out due to one of the members having a family bereavement.” Thankfully, the House of Love stepped in. If the support bands were good, the headliners the Fall were grrrreat.
John Peel, for those who don’t know, was one of the most important British DJs operating out of the BBC from the 1960s until his untimely death in 2004. Peel curated, introduced, and promoted some of the best new bands during these years like T.Rex, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, the Faces, Joy Division, the Clash, the Sex Pistols to the Fall, the Smiths, Pulp, Nirvana and the White Stripes and many many more like the A. C. Acoustics, Dept. S. and the Undertones. His influence as a curator of good musical taste has never been equalled.
Now back to the surprise birthday party. The Fall played a selection of past tracks and more recent recordings, together with a cover of the Gene Vincent song “Race with the Devil” as it was one of Peel’s favorite songs.
Track Listing: “Mere Pseud Mag Ed, “I’m Frank,” “Arms Control Poseur,” “Fiery Jack,” “Race with the Devil,” “Carry Bag Man,” and “Mr.Pharmacist.”
John Peel joins the band on stage while the crowd sing “Happy Birthday.” Peel addresses the audience and made his famous quip about his fantasy soccer career:
Think my chances of making the Liverpool side are gone now. Might still be able to get a game at one of those London clubs, though.
You can listen to the whole party here but meantime, here’s the meat and two veg: The Fall.
Mark Wilkinson’s artwork for the cover of Marillion’s 1983 album, “He Knows You Know.”
After leaving art school, Mark Wilkinson found a nine-to-five office job drawing illustrations used for heating and ventilation companies. Realizing this was not exactly what he had in mind for a career, he started freelancing for comic books and magazines catering to fantasy and science fiction fans. This was fine for a while and kept Wilkinson busy while he searched for gigs in the realm of album art. His first would be a concept he executed for an executive at RCA who envisioned the cover art for a 1982 heavy metal compilation called Hot Shower, featuring a Tron-like image of a guy in an asbestos suit and helmet wielding a Stratocaster spewing neon flames. Wilkinson’s next album cover would mark the beginning of a long relationship between the artist and English prog-rock band Marillion to the tune of nineteen of the band’s studio albums, as well as records for the group’s original vocalist Fish.
Wilkinson came by the job after overhearing a conversation about a company called Torchlight and their need for new artistic talent while at a pub in London. He then phoned Torchlight inquiring about work and was invited to come in and meet the art director, who told him the job was creating album artwork for Marillion. In an interview for a Bulgarian Iron Maiden fan site, Wilkinson would call this point in his still-young career as his “big break.” Another turn of good luck for Wilkinson was scoring the job of creating posters for the Monsters of Rock festival held at Castle Donnington. This would lead to requests for his master-airbrush services by mega-metal acts playing the festival, specifically Judas Priest, who the artist has also had a long relationship with. Others would follow, such as the Scorpions, Iron Maiden and Swedish band Europe.
His air-brush work, while most closely associated with the 80s, was inspired by the psychedelic 60s British graphic design duo of Michael English and Nigel Waymouth, known as Hapshash and the Coloured Coat. He also credits underground Zap Comix hero and psychedelic poster artist Rick Griffin with helping guide his artistic style. His work with Iron Maiden would begin after the band decided to give a little makeover to the most famous heavy metal mascot of all time, Eddie (created by Derek Riggs). Iron Maiden’s co-manager Rod Smallwood appreciated Wilkinson’s approach to his images of Eddie as he believed the artist clearly saw that Ed was much more than “just a skull.” His work with Maiden has appeared on various albums and other Maiden merchandise. Wilkinson would return to comics, creating incredible artwork for the Judge Dredd series on several occasions in the 1990s and beyond. In 2000, Wilkinson released the now hard-to-come-by book, Masque: The Graphic World of Mark Wilkinson, Fish and Marillion, a 180-page volume full of color images of his work. You can also purchase prints and more from Wilkinson on his official site.
The death of one form brings forth life in another.
Something was going wrong. It wasn’t just with the band, it seemed to be happening everywhere across the country. The Specials were on tour promoting their second album More Specials. It should have been a happy time. But in every city they visited, every gig they performed the tension, the anger on the streets and in the concert halls was becoming more and more apparent. There was a feeling the country was falling apart.
In 1979, the newly-elected Conservative government gave a promise to “heal” the nation “and sow peace” after the failure of Labour’s policies in 1970s which had given rise to three-day weeks, power cuts, endless strikes, a “winter of discontent,” where the dead were left unburied and the garbage piled-up on city streets. But as soon the Tories were elected, they turned true to form crucifying the poor and helping the rich. They closed down factories, destroyed hope, and created mass unemployment. The promise of a better future and the opportunity to achieve was only intended for a select class.
Jerry Dammers the Specials co-founder, producer, chief song-writer and keyboard player thought the new Prime Minister “Margaret Thatcher had apparently gone mad”:
...she was closing down all the industries, throwing millions of people on the dole. We could actually see it by touring around. You could see that frustration and anger in the audience. In Glasgow, there were these little old ladies on the streets selling all their household goods, their cups and saucers. It was unbelievable. It was clear that something was very, very wrong.
While there was something wrong going on in the country, there was also something very wrong with the Specials. When the band got together to record their next single “Ghost Town” everyone stood “in different parts of this huge room with their equipment, no one talking.” Dammers left the recording twice in tears seeing his hope for the band falling apart.
As fellow bandmate Neville Staple recalled the Specials ended “differences of opinions”:
...some wanting to lead things in one direction, some in another. I guess we were such a mixed bag of personalities, with various skills and talents, we just wanted different things and couldn’t agree enough to stay together.
It was probably the wrong move but Staple took “the bull by the horns and got stuck in and just kept going…[..]..never stopped.”
In the summer of 1981, the Specials released “Ghost Town.” It became the band’s biggest hit spending three weeks at number one in the UK Charts. The song reflected the sense of despair that had spread across the country as riots erupted in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. The country was burning. At the moment of their greatest success, the Specials split.
Staple teamed-up with his fellow bandmates Lynval Golding and Terry Hall. and formed a new band—the Fun Boy Three.
The progressive rock band Seiche was a Chicago trio that existed for a brief period in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Though they weren’t around for long, they did put out an album, a record that’s become highly coveted. Now, decades after it was first pressed, Seiche’s exceptional LP is back.
Seiche consisted of Steve Zahradnik (guitar/vocals), Tom Vess (bass/vocals), and Marc Levinson (drums). The unofficial fourth member was Joe Klinger, their manager/producer, and one of the founders of the band. All had graduated from high school just a year or so prior. The guys in Seiche may have been young, but they were already experienced players, though they were songwriting novices. Encouraged by Klinger, Seiche worked up original material in a Chicago garage, which also served as a hang-out spot for the group.
In the spring of 1981, Seiche went into a local studio to work on an album. Produced and engineered by Klinger, Seiche recorded live, with minimal overdubbing. Everything was recorded during two sessions in April, which were held late at night, when the studio’s rates were cheaper. Mixing was done in a single day.
The plan was to send the LP to radio and clubs, with the hope that it would result in Seiche getting airplay and gigs, while also demonstrating Klinger’s behind-the-board talents. Just 150 copies of album were pressed; 100 came in plain white sleeves, the remaining 50 with cover art by Klinger’s sister. It was titled simply, Demo Press. The group is named after a type of wave, one that appears unexpectantly and in dramatic fashion.
Seiche’s lone album is certainly something special. A blend of dreamy, early Pink Floyd, classic Sabbath riffery, and the pure prog of King Crimson, Demo Press is a dynamic, energetic LP that’s way more alive than your standard prog rock record. It sounds like it came from another era entirely, long before new wave and MTV—which arrived the same year as Demo Press.
On August 3rd, 1981, Seiche played their only show at a Chicago club. The venue served alcohol, so the band members—all still under 21—couldn’t go beyond the rim of the stage. A second gig was booked, but when Levinson found out he couldn’t make it, a disagreement about who would fill in on drums led to the break-up of the band. After less than two years together, Seiche was finished.
Original copies of Demo Press turn up on auction sites from time to time, selling for, at a minimum, several hundred dollars. In 2013, a minty copy with the artwork sold for $1,884.
Thankfully, Jackpot Records has re-released Demo Press on vinyl, making it readily available—and affordable—for the first time. This authorized reissue of the album is sourced from the original tapes, and the vinyl sounds fantastic. The package includes new liner notes with reminiscences from the band members and their manager, along with photos and other archival material. The LP comes with a free download, which contains an exclusive, previously unreleased King Crimson cover.
For Dangerous Minds, Jackpot has uploaded one of the best tracks from the album, the awesome “Evidently Me”:
I’ve been a big Birthday Party fan since Prayers on Fire first came out—which is 38 years ago, if you are keeping count—and lately I’ve been in a real BP kick again, buying up original Aussie singles on Discogs. When the offer to review Fat Possum Records’ 2-LP vinyl reissue of Rowland S. Howard’s 1999 solo album Teenage Snuff Film came my way, I said “yes please.”
I’m embarrassed to admit that this album had passed me by, which is strange as I continued to follow Howard’s music after the Birthday Party imploded. Crime & The City Solution.These Immortal Souls. His two albums with Lydia Lunch are amongst my top favorite records. And you’d think a title like Teenage Snuff Film would’ve been intriguing enough, but apparently I was otherwise engaged in 1999. (In my defense, it wasn’t released in North America.)
Better late than never. This album is a motherfucker!
Teenage Snuff Film kicks off with the brilliant “Dead Radio” and these lyrics:
You’re bad for me
Like cigarettes
But I haven’t sucked
Enough of you yet
Did Raymond Chandler ever write anything that good? No. No he never did.
In the very next song, “Breakdown (And Then…),” the crown prince of the crying Jag intones:
Crown prince of the crying Jag
Stuffed the towel in his mouth to gag,
Oh my darling I never knew
How hard it was to get rid of you
The opening lyrics of the third song are equally as strong as what preceded them, if not stronger still:
I had no knife but myself
It was me I cut but you bled as well
How could I help dear sweet pretty one
When I could not put down the gun.
The title of that last one takes the notion of the famous six word story attributed to Ernest Hemingway (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”) and cuts it down to just three: “I Burned Your Clothes.”
You really don’t have to wonder too much what that one’s all about do you? Does it come as any surprise that an album with a title like Teenage Snuff Film is a tad on the dark side? Probably not for most people, Howard clearly being a firm believer in truth-in-advertising. TSF is a bleak and diseased chronicle of an obsessive, toxic relationship and self-destruction. It delivers a payload of the very noirest noir. File it next to Marc Almond’s Torment and Toreros and Lou Reed’s Berlin under “Music to Slit Your Wrists To.” (This is a big compliment, if that’s not clear!)
The music lives up to the standard set by the lyrics. Howard is backed here by Mick Harvey on drums, organ and guitar, Brian Hooper (The Beasts of Bourbon) on bass and six string players. His longtime partner Genevieve McGuckin co-wrote and played organ on “Silver Chain.” There is a thick Phil Spectoresque Wall of Guitars-style production by Lindsay Gravina. I always found that the weakest part of These Immortal Souls was Howard’s singing—he always seemed more of a phantom than a frontman—but here I think his ravaged voice is just about the only one I could ever imagine hearing sing these songs. (At least the ones he wrote, there are also ace covers of the Shangri-Las’ “He Cried” and Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” which is set to a gothic blues dirge that really brings out a different side of that particular song.)
Teenage Snuff Film is out now in North and South America on Fat Possum Records as a 2-LP set newly remastered by producer Lindsay Gravina from the original tapes. It comes out in the UK and Europe on MUTE Records. Autoluminescent, Richard Lowenstein and Lynn-Maree Milburn’s documentary about the life of Rowland S. Howard is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Both are highly recommended.
