Pic via @Bob_Fischer
 
Uncanny Island, the very first solo art exhibition by musician and author Luke Haines is on at the Eston Arts Centre through the end of the month. Should you find yourself in North Yorkshire, you should drop by and check it out.

The exhibit features Haines’ psychedelic visions of British wrestlers from the 1970s and early 80s (echoing his 2011 concept album 9 ½ Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early ‘80s) and a Christmas tree festooned with ornaments bearing the likeness of everyone who was ever in the Fall. (The band had 66 members during Mark E. Smith’s five decade run, in case you were wondering.)

Luke Haines’ latest album is Setting The Dogs on The Post Punk Postman.

I asked the artist a few questions via email.

Is this your first solo art exhibit?

Luke Haines: Yep. First solo exhibition. I’m pleased it’s in the north—away from curators and the dull art people.

Tell me about the Fall Xmas tree?

I’d painted a MES bauble for a friend’s Xmas present. The obvious next stage was to paint every member of the Fall, but I had no reason to embark on such a futile endeavour. Then the artist Neil McNally asked me if I wanted to have an exhibition. It was then that I realized it was time for the Fall Xmas tree.

I know that you’ve described your work as outsider art in the past, but with the Lou Reeds, the Hawkwind paintings, the Maoist Monkees—and of course the psychedelic wrestlers which refer to your own album—it seems more like you’re doing something more akin to “rock snob art”? How do you see it?

My stuff is more like sitcom art. I tend to do the same thing: put popular or unpopular culture figures in absurd situations. Like putting Hawkwind in a balloon carrying esoteric knowledge (The North Sea Scrolls) back to their squat in Ladbroke Grove. If Hawkwind actually did this the world would be improved immeasurably. In the show there are a couple of paintings depicting wrestlers having diabolical fever dreams about It’s A Royal Knockout. I’d like to do a whole art show about It’s A Royal Knockout. Maybe a straightforward reenactment.

How often are you asked to comment on the art of Ronnie Wood, Ringo Starr or Paul Stanley?

I think that worrying about pop stars inflicting their art on an ungrateful world will be the least of our problem post covid. There will a tsunami of ‘lockdown art washing up. It will all be terrible.
 

Mark E Smith Xmas tree bauble
 

The Fall Xmas Tree in situ.
 

Fall Xmas Tree (detail)
 

Liver Sausage (Mark “Rollerball” Rocco)
 

Brian Glover
 

Dickie Davies
 

 
Eston Arts Centre, 176 -178 High Street, Eston, Middlesbrough, TS6 9JA.

 
Rufe Davis was an American actor, singer and “imitator of sounds.” He was best known for his “rural” comedic radio act, “Rufe Davis and the Radio Rubes” during the 1930s, for being a co-star along with Hoot Gibson, John Wayne, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers in dozens of Hollywood B-Westerns and for his role as “Floyd Smoot,” the train conductor of the “Hooterville Cannonball” on the 60s CBS TV comedy series, Petticoat Junction.

Davis’ rendition of “The Old Sow Song” was his musical calling card for obvious reasons and something that those of us of a certain age might remember from a popular 60s kiddie record made by Mel Blanc and others called Bozo And His Pals (which is where I first heard it—and loved it—as a tyke), although it was originally released as a 78rpm record many years before that. The same song was also given away as a cardboard record in cereal boxes. His version of the song was probably what kept the song alive in the 60s and 70s, and even beyond, but there was another famous version that we’ll get to in due course.

Maybe you heard “The Old Sow Song” from one of your grandparents singing it to you? They might’ve heard it in a vaudeville theater. It might also be something that was passed down from long before that, an actual working class English folk song. I’ve also seen it described as a Yorkshire farmer’s song. It’s claimed by Scotland and Ireland, too. One of the earliest recorded versions was one done in 1928 by Albert Richardson. It was also recorded by Cyril Smith and Rudy Vallee, as well as by opera singer Anna Russell. Novelty songsmith Leslie Sarony did his hit version of “The Old Sow Song” in 1934. Apparently John Ritter performed the song on Three’s Company but sadly I could find no clip of this. According to YouTube comments, Hee-Haw featured more than one rendition of “The Old Sow Song.”

Perhaps many of you learned “The Old Sow Song” at summer camp or grade school, where I am guessing it can still be heard to this day, since children’s songs with farting noises never truly die. This evergreen sing-a-long is up there with “Bingo was his name-o” and “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” but neither of them has blowing raspberries as an integral part of the song. Can you imagine what the sheet music must’ve looked like?

I’m truly delighted that a vintage visual representation of “The Old Sow Song” exists. I don’t have an exact year for the clip, but it’s described as a “talkie” or “soundie” in the descriptions of the various uploads which might indicate that this was an early sound film, and yet there is a Hitler reference, so I think it might be a bit later than the uploaders think. Maybe an early kinescope?

I high recommend taking any—and all—drugs that you have handy before hitting play. If Rufe Davis’s face doesn’t turn green and if time doesn’t seem to bend like taffy and come to a complete standstill while you watch this, then you clearly haven’t taken enough drugs. So take more.
 

 
After the jump, the Doctor Who connection!

The cover of the upcoming graphic novel, ‘Motörhead: The Rise of the Loudest Band in the World’ due in September 2021.

When it came time for author David Calcano to pen the graphic novel take on Motörhead’s illustriously loud, 40-year career, he, the folks at Fantoons, and illustrator Mark Irwin (fittingly a former art director for Heavy Metal magazine), took the project very seriously. You may recall that Calcano has authored various other music-related graphic novels on artists such as Billie Holliday, and a few eclectic coloring books featuring Frank Zappa and Marillion (!). Calcano’s latest graphic novel, the 144 page Motörhead: The Rise of the Loudest Band in the World, (due on September 7th, 2021), begins Motörhead’s debaucherous story with Lemmy (as it should) back when Kilmister was working as a tutor/instructor at a horse riding school in North Wales. At the time, the teenager and soon-to-be-hellraiser thought working with horses was what he would do for a living. It was, after all, according to Lem, a great way to “get along with women.” To back up this legend about the legendary Lemmy, here are a few shots of Lem and his horse friends.
 

Lemmy: “I used to ride horses a lot, there wasn’t much music then, rock and roll and that sort of thing.” Image via Twitter.
 

Lemmy’s former Hawkwind bandmate Dave Brock also recalls Kilmister’s fondness for horses. The photo above shows Brock alongside Lemmy sitting on a “spirited” horse named “Dynamite” at a ranch in Kansas. This photo is so metal it makes my hair hurt.
 
Thankfully, after his ears were exposed to artists such as Little Richard and Elvis (specifically the jam “All Shook Up”), Lemmy’s work with horses was history, though equines would continue to be a part of his life, for nearly all of his life. Here’s a look at some of the illustrations from Motörhead: The Rise of the Loudest Band in the World which wouldn’t be complete without a few panels of Lemmy clutching a large bottle of his beloved drug of choice, speed, and a naked chick. 
 

 

 

 

 

 
HT: Metal Injection

 
A few days ago, whilst idly wasting time on the internet, I googled some images of 70s horror vixen/Bond girl Caroline Munro. As you do. Anyway an image of her with huge 80s hair (and Gary Numan!) caught my eye. That led me to a 2019 Guardian article that touched upon a musical project from the mid-1960s, from when she was just a teenager, that might be of interest to our readers.

The story goes that a photograph of Munro taken when she was 16 won the Evening News’ Face of the Year competition which had been judged by David Bailey.  Fame beckoned, and so did an offer to make a pop record:

In 1967, Munro, who had sung in her church choir, released her first single, a breathy ditty called “Tar and Cement,” recorded at Abbey Road. Her backing band was Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, better known as Cream, alongside the future Yes guitarist Steve Howe. She remembers Baker driving her up the Mall in an open-topped Jaguar to the photoshoot; an image in keeping with the Austin Powers-ish tang of her life at this time. But it’s the B-side, This Sporting Life, the 70-year-old Munro sings to me today over coffee. “‘I’m getting tired of hanging around / Think I will marry and settle down / Because this old night life / This old sport life / Is killing me.’ I was only 16, just out of convent school when I sang that. It was ridiculous, really. I didn’t know anything about living a sporting life.”

The session was produced by Mark Wirtz, then coming off the hit of Keith West’s A Teenage Opera. It’s not bad at all!
 

 
The single’s A side, “Tar and Cement” is also pretty decent:
 

 

 
Bonus, “Pump Me Up,” the song Munro cut for Gary Numan’s Numa label in 1984. It’s really a pity there’s no music video for this song.
 

 
The Guardian referred to artist/musician Drew Mulholland as “the putative godfather” of the psychogeographic rock movement. Mulholland’s idiosyncratic compositional techniques (for that is the right word) include “sampling” the atmosphere of a particular location and incorporating this resonance/mood/memory into his soundscapes. Formerly trading under the name Mount Vernon Arts Lab, he has staked out a territory between psychogeography and hauntology, inspired by séances, Cold War architecture, desolate places and the occult. Mulholland has collaborated with the likes Isobel Campbell, Sonic Boom, Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake, Adrian Utley from Portishead and Barry 7 of Add N to (X). He has also worked with Coil, which… makes a lot of sense!

The subject of Mulholland’s latest project is a strange bookstore recalled from childhood. It sounds like the evil twin of Brian Eno’s On Land or the soundtrack to the infernal rites of a 19th century secret society and comes in a slickly published, limited edition object d’art record jacket from the Library of the Occult label. (If you are interested in a physical copy on vinyl, you should act quickly as they are nearly all sold.) His Patreon account can be found here and you can contact him about the creation of original music pressed onto a bespoke handcrafted record made just for you. Or for someone else.

What was the inspiration behind Messer’s Circulating Library?

Messer’s stood across from my Aunt Nan’s flat in Glasgow, and was a mixture of borrowing library, second hand bookshop, newsagent, and tobacconist. Even in the early 70s it was a place outside time, dark, musty, and seemed to have a personality, a very special atmosphere. I also remember they had a print of Francis Barrett hanging above the door. A copy of Witchcraft and Black Magic by Peter Haining, with paintings by Jan Parker, was my Aunt Nan’s first purchase from there, and her excitement showing it to me coupled with those images and her taking me over to the window in order for her to point the location of Messer’s out to me all seemed like a dozen firecrackers going off in my head at once.
 

 
So it was an actual, real shop?

Absolutely, it was at 624 Alexandra Parade in Dennistoun opposite Wood Street until the mid 1970s.
 

 
How did you create the sounds of ectoplasmic formation heard on the album? Actually let me ask that in a different way, what was the original “input” source material that you manipulated? Describe your working methods. You often begin with field recordings, right?

Yes, field recordings are my basic ingredients whether it’s recording the locations used in The Wicker Man, the ambient sounds in the Anatomy Museum at the university, or a 1930s statistical analysis calculating machine.  The location is fundamentally important to the work, from them the ideas spring. For Messer’s Circulating Library I went to its former location and recorded inside the deli that is there now and also the approach to it at different times of day.  Then once I’ve catalogued those sounds I get to work and see what they suggest, including titles.  The “ectoplasm formation” was made of a few elements from the recordings but the main reasons they work is varispeed and processing, and especially as a secondary consideration the manipulation of reverbs.
 

Painting by Jan Parker
 
I have to say that it does sound genuinely scary, as if you’ve captured the peak moment of some infernal occurrence. It’s got a genuinely evil vibe, not a corny horror movie vibe. How do you achieve that? What is that sonic quality that makes these pieces so intense?

I think it must be the reverbs, it/they take those sounds…somewhere. You may well believe that you are controlling them but I think that’s the point where something else kicks in. That’s the time the titles usually suggest themselves, too. ‘‘Horror Hee Black Pods,” “Marshe Benediction,” and “Fierce Chemistry” all came that way on this album. What I’ve learned is to totally immerse yourself in the sound and completely trust your instinct

I never regarded it as ‘‘evil’’ per se, however my introduction to Messer’s was through the feeling I got being around my grandma’s kitchen table when she was reading the leafs, pondering coincidences, or predicting the future, and of course Jan Parker’s paintings did terrify and intrigue me in equal parts… so many questions there. So I always connected the Haining book and the lo-fi occultism in the back kitchen with the sense and atmosphere of the shop, which I always found to be pleasant, welcoming, and an adventure. It was all about atmospheres.
 

“Mandy Rakes Up the Leaves Again”
 
Tell me about your Syd Barrett piece.

That was great fun, I was giving a talk during the Alchemical Landscape conference at Cambridge and the next morning I naturally started wandering around making recordings (which were released earlier this year). Being a complete Syd fanatic, I, of course, had to pay my respects at his boyhood home on Hills Road. When I got there the gardeners had just finished work and lots of detritus was still lying on the path so I collected some and glued them onto card, cut it into a 7’’ circle, played it on my turntable, and recorded it. Afterwards I ground down what was left of the leaves and twigs and added their dust into the paint I was using back at Corpus Christi College to create a abstract painting. Which I still have.

I realize now that it’s just the same process I use for creating sounds, using an artefact from a relevant location.
 

 
Author Joseph Lanza is an expert’s expert on some of the more enigmatic corners of popular and unpopular culture. In numerous books he’s written about Muzak®, long forgotten crooners, obsessive film directors like Ken Russell and Nicolas Roeg, bland pop songs, the history of cocktails, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Possessing an expertise on matters from Mantovani to Leatherface, Lanza’s work is quirky and unique. His latest book, Easy Listening Acid Trip: An Elevator Ride through Sixties Psychedelic Pop (Feral House) covers a musical genre that most people have no idea even existed.

It’s bound to send prices skyrocketing on Discogs for this kind of stuff. Like all of his books, it’s a fun read.

I asked Joseph Lanza some questions over email.
 

 
In your books, you display an erudition about obscure popular culture, and you seem to have staked out a territory, where others have feared to tread. How did you become interested in, and an expert on, elevator music and pop orchestral cover versions of psychedelic hits?

I’ve been curious about this kind of music since my high-school days.  While listening to the garden-variety rock and pop along with my peers, I was also fascinated by the easy-listening instrumental FM station that my parents often kept on in the background.  They seemed to be broadcasting phantom orchestras and choruses that covered many current songs, and I remember being amazed to hear the Ray Conniff Singers do a version of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind.” Though their vocals were engineered to be more background than foreground, the song seemed all the more haunting with its references to old-time movies and ghosts.  Its subject matter was close to the ideas and images in Roger Corman’s 1967 movie The Trip, which helped to introduce LSD themes to the masses.  The Conniff recording has a spectral appeal that, for me, brought out this message more than the original record.

In college, I would listen to recording artists like Nico by day, and at night, I’d turn on the local elevator-music station. It sounded like tunes from a parallel place, and I liked this. At the same time, I recall standing in a bank line, hearing similar music from the ceiling speakers, and seeing what looked like a thermostat dial on the wall; it was really a Muzak volume setting.
 

 
Can I assume that you mainly listen to this sort of music?

I’ve collected a lot of this music through the years and listen to it much of the time.  But I also like sixties pop and folk rock by Donovan, The Searchers, and even the echo-drenched ballads produced by Joe Meek.  Peer Raben’s music to the Fassbinder films is also appealing, and Raben had expressed Mantovani’s influence in some of his work.

What is it about this sort of fare that captured your attention?

It played almost everywhere, in different places, and it attracted me more with the passing years.  I wondered about the people and the studios that put these sessions together.  This music was not the product of some indifferent machine but by reputable session players who also did backgrounds to some pop albums and Top 40 songs.  Vinnie Bell is one example.  He contributed to Muzak sessions but also played his “water guitar” on Ferrante & Teicher’s “Theme to Midnight Cowboy.”  The term “elevator music” has accumulated pejorative connotations, but it’s ultimately a positive term. It’s music that, like an elevator, floats in the air, often between destinations: airports, hotel lobbies, and malls And it triggers sometimes-ambiguous emotions.  In the late ‘40s, Muzak and the Otis Elevator Company ran an ad in Time magazine, showing happy elevator passengers, and touting how, thanks to “Music by Muzak,” “the cares of the business day are now wafted away on the notes of a lilting melody.”  This gives the term an historical context.  And in the late sixties, at the height of the “counterculture” and political violence, easy-listening tunes like Paul Mauriat’s “Love is Blue” played on the same Top 40 stations that also played the Doors and Jefferson Airplane. During my research for the book Elevator Music, Brad Miller, who’d engineered and produced the early Mystic Moods Orchestra albums, told me that they were also popular among Bay Area youth.  He claimed, “the pop music at that time was trying to provide more texture as opposed to the usual electric rock bands.”  The psychedelic appeal was not like a Jetsons-inspired vision of the future but a melancholic gaze into the past that often revived old sounds from the British music hall, American vaudeville, and Tin Pan Alley.  This helps explain why easy-listening (with its emphasis on traditional melody) and psychedelia formed an uncanny merger.  Even the Rolling Stones took the time to go back to their European roots with ditties like “She’s a Rainbow.”
 

 
Have you met many others who share your interest in this most specific of musical genres, or are you a bit of a lone wolf?

In 1984, when Muzak celebrated its 50th Anniversary, I contacted the company and got a folder full of information about its history.  Later, as I started writing Elevator Music in the early ‘90s, I was meeting and talking with several programmers who had worked at Muzak.  I also had extended conversations with some who had programmed for easy-listening instrumental channels, or the so-called “Beautiful Music” stations, which were among FM’s most popular formats.  Then, going into the ‘80s, the format gradually ceded to “Adult Contemporary,” which replaced Percy Faith, Ferrante & Teicher, and the Hollyridge Strings with the likes of Neil Diamond, Frank Sinatra, and Barbra Streisand.  We got blasted with “foreground music” and were eventually robbed of a musical background.

Today, I am far from being a “lone wolf” in liking this music.  You can go to YouTube and type in “Muzak Stimulus Progression,” “easy-listening instrumental music,” or any particular recording artist like Paul Mauriat or Franck Pourcel, to find many fans leaving messages about how they like these recordings and miss their presence in public places or on the home hi-fi. Some reminisce about a long ago and far away time when such sounds permeated the malls, shopping plazas, and supermarkets during their childhoods.
 

 
Who do you find are the greatest practitioners of the easy-listening acid cover version genre?

My favorites are the Hollyridge Strings, especially their albums of songs by the Beatles during the Sgt. Pepper years.  Their versions of “A Day in the Life” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” are heavenly, and they even had the gumption to play an echo-redolent, orchestral cover of “I am the Walrus.”  Both David Rose and the Johnny Arthey Orchestra did great versions of Donovan’s “Wear Your Love Like Heaven.”  As early as 1965, both Rose and James Last record released their interpretations of “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
 

 
Are there any particular numbers in the Spotify playlist you compiled that you wanted to comment on?

Spotify did not seem to have many of the tracks I wanted, but among the ones I did find, the 101 Strings’ version of “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” is a favorite because it got released not long after Scott McKenzie’s original 1967 hit.  It reinforces that fascinating contrast between background and foreground.  The Percy Faith Strings provide a mellifluous take on “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” A wild card in the bunch is the Shadows’ “Wonderful Land” from 1962.  Its combination of spacey surf guitars with Norrie Paramor’s lush orchestra foreshadowed the easy-listening psychedelia that would emerge just three years later.  The same applies to James Last’s version of “Telstar.”  Into the ‘80s, the Wallis Blue Orchestra provided an intriguing tribute to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Though many associate it with the early ‘70s glitter era, the song fits more in the last gasps of the psychedelic years because Bowie released it in 1969, around the time we landed on the moon. Major Tom is floating in space, but his mind is on returning to a home he’ll probably never see again.  As an easy instrumental, even without the lyrics, the song’s mood seems even more wistful than on the original.  That’s how I appreciate easy-listening psychedelia in general.
 

 
*Yet

I loudly declared singer songwriter Scott Lavene’s 2019 album Broke to be my top favorite album of that year, and even though it’s not out yet, his upcoming album is already in my top two of 2021 (the other being Cathal Coughlan’s superb Song Of Co​-​Aklan). The title of his new one is Milk City Sweethearts, but you can’t buy it until mid-September (pre-order vinyl here.) It’s really good. I reckon it’s even better than the first one and that’s a tall order.

There have already been three new videos produced for the album and we’ve got the first two for you below. I asked Scott Lavene some questions via email.

Is “Nigel” based on a real person that you know?

The song was supposed to be for a theatre show I was almost part of, but it didn’t work out so it ended up being the first song I wrote for the album. It’s based on a friend of mine who was once a very pretty man but is now lost to the deep. I often see him, thinner and more ragged each time, cycling around town. I’ve fictionalized him for the sake of the song. Really, “Nigel” is about damaged people finding comfort within each other.

Your Lou Reed tribute?

I wrote the song in a different key. It was a bit more shouty. Then, after playing around with it one night I recorded the demo in a more relaxed key and spoke the vocal which felt better. And yes, a bit more Lou Reed. Also it mentions standing on corners which is very him. I mean, sub consciously I’m probably always trying to make a Lou Reed tribute and maybe this song is the closest I’ve got. Accidentally, of course.
 

 
”Lord of Citrus” starts out sounding a bit Beefheartian. Were you listening to the good Captain when you were writing your upcoming album?

I’m never far from the Captain. I was listening to a lot of stuff. Mainly 80s alternative music but also Brain Eno’s first couple of albums and ESG.  The intro to “Lord Of Citrus” was a bit of a happy accident. I played the guitar to the intro in the ‘wrong’ key but it sounded so bloody right.

Your videos are always so well done on an indie budget. What’s the story with the excellent new animated video?

Well, it’s a guy called Ryan Anderson. He’s a fan and we started a back and forth and a mutual admiration for each other’s work. His Instagram animation was so good, the early stuff is just very twisted and right up my alley. I asked him if he could splice a few pieces together and he just made me a video. First for last year’s “Lover” and then I knew I wanted him to do a couple more for the album even though we have virtually no budget. He’s a sport and completely wonderful. I’d get him to every video if i could but they’ll definitely still be a couple of videos of me pissing about. Luckily I like making my own videos. It’s a challenge to do them for no money and with limited equipment.
 

 
Some Dangerous Minds readers will immediately recognize the names of Ferrante & Teicher, the prodigiously talented dual piano purveyors of the easiest easy listening who sold 90 million albums in their five decade career, but those readers will be of a certain age or else crazed crate diggers.

I asked my wife, who has deep knowledge of all kinds of zany things, what the names “Ferrante & Teicher” meant to her and she said “Nothing” (we were even listening to them at the time). Most people under 45 will draw a complete blank when that question would be posed to them. However, those of us north of that age will likely recall the “grand twins of the twin grands” from various light entertainment TV programs in the 60s and 70s and our grandparents record collections. The pair was primarily known for their dexterously executed two piano mind-meld arrangements of popular classical music pieces, film themes and Broadway show tunes. They were a huge draw on the “pops” classical concert circuit. Along with the likes of Peter Nero and Arthur Fiedler, they produced the whitest, most inoffensive music ever made—which isn’t to say that they weren’t great, because they were really quite extraordinary musicians.
 

 
Before becoming the of the biggest selling instrumental acts of all time, Arthur Ferrante and Louis Teicher were classically trained pianists who met at Juilliard. The pair started out doing John Cage-influenced “prepared piano” pieces (sticking cardboard between keys, laying metal bars across them, using glass mallets and so forth) and used a lot of studio manipulation, operating in the Joe Meek/hi-fi demonstration territory a little bit, too. Some of their early material, as heard on mid-1950s albums like Soundproof, Blast Off! and Soundblast sounds like, I dunno, an Eisenhower-era version of Tangerine Dream (Isn’t that description intriguing? I’m proud of that one…).
 

 
When the duo signed to United Artists in 1960 it was suggested to them that they might want to record some movie themes and their career instantly took off with their version of the theme from Billy Wilder’s classic comedy, The Apartment and their stirring rendition of the “Theme From Exodus” (which made it to #2 on the singles chart). Many people might have assumed back then that Ferrante and Teicher were a gay couple because of the dressing alike “twins” nature of their two piano shtick (they were neither related nor twins), but the matching mustaches, horn-rimmed glasses, pompadour toupees and the bargain basement Liberace tuxedos were just a part of the act. Both were married at least once and had kids.
 

 
I expected that Ferrante & Teicher would have had some sort of critical re-appraisal, like Esquivel did during the whole “lounge” craze—they’re awesome!—but that never happened. It’s kind of strange considering HOW LARGE of a flea market and four-for-a-dollar record store bin footprint they left behind. Imagine a warehouse with 90 million albums in it. A lot of their records are still floating around. Why haven’t young people with ironic facial hair discovered Ferrante & Teicher? Why haven’t more of their songs been sourced for obscure break beats? Why have virtually none of their 150 albums ever been released on CD?

To add insult to injury, there’s precious little about Ferrante & Teicher on the Internet, their website has hardly been updated since they died and they have almost no presence on the torrent trackers. At least there are several choice clips of them on YouTube, doing what they did best.

A great example of their more avant-garde earlier work, the gorgeous, Martin Denny-esque “African Echoes”:
 

 
Amazing, right?

I have a special memory of Ferrante & Teicher because I actually went to see them in concert on my first real “date,” believe it or not, when I was in the 8th grade, with the young lady who would end up being my girlfriend throughout much of my teen years. Perhaps it’s an event recalled decades later with particular fondness because it was such an auspicious night in my young life, but I would honestly have to say that it was one of my peak concert going experiences, too, it really was. The show was held in an intimate outdoor amphitheater and I still have a strong sense memory of being there, where we were sitting relative to the stage, the humidity that night, the lightning bugs and how dazzling, virtuoso and telepathic their piano playing was.

“Midnight Cowboy:
 

 
More Ferrante & Teicher after the jump…

 
The great English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, Noël Coward was one of the most celebrated wits of the 20th century. He’s what they used to call a “sophisticate.”

But when Sir Noël wanted to throw down, he could throw down. Coward’s rapid-fire patter and clipped diction in this televised 1955 performance of his “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” could give any of today’s top rappers a run for their Benjamins.

Witness this extraordinary elocution execution:

 
Out today on Cherry Red Records is Setting The Dogs On The Post Punk Postman, the latest installment of Luke Haines’ whimsical muse. What’s been on his mind lately you might wonder? Wonder no more, the album is filled with songs about German U-Boat captains, ex-Stasi spies, Nixon and Mao, humorous Scottish poet Ivor Cutler, a nefarious pumpkin up to no good, landscape gardening, and of course, Andrea Dworkin’s knees. In other words, it’s the new Luke Haines album! Setting The Dogs On The Post Punk Postman features guest contributions from REM’s Peter Buck and Julian Barratt. It is the creation of a man who certainly knows how to amuse himself. I applaud this. I prefer artists who do it for themselves first. I mean, why should they do it for you?

I posed a few questions to Luke over email, here’s how he responded.

Is the post-punk mailman an actual real person?

Some people think it’s Vic Godard. It isn’t. Vic’s great anyway…I’d had the title for ages – and what are you gonna do with a title like that? Use it. I hate the ‘idea’ of ‘post punk.’ It didn’t exist. It went from punk, to new wave. Post punk doesn’t come into it. The notion of post punk is just another example of curator culture. ‘Waiter there’s a curator in my soup.’ In the song – the post punk post man is very much the ‘messenger.’ You should always shoot the messenger (or set the dogs on them) The messenger is invariably an idiot and up to no good; Brother number 1, or 2. Another thought: I’d been thinking about Epic Soundtracks. I didn’t know him well, but I was very sad when he died. He deserves more thought…so this song is a kind of tribute to Epic.

What did this person do to piss you off? Did you argue about Swell Maps and Throbbing Gristle? What happened?

(answered above)

Do you reckon he’ll know that the song is about him?

As explained – the song isn’t about anyone in particular. However, when you write a song about someone, then that person should always know, otherwise what’s the point.

Was there a particular reason that you were photographed in front of the Ace Cafe?

There’s an unreconstructed element to the record. Musically and lyrically. The Ace Cafe is the most unreconstructed place I could think of. They sell posters of scantily-clad biker ‘chicks’ that are slightly tatty. It’s all very un ironic. It’s just assumed that bikers who go there might like that kind of poster on the wall of their workshop. I love everything about the Ace especially its location – in the middle of nowhere but slightly near Neasden. Jim Fry (the photographer) and I had been talking about that great Bob Marley documentary when the Wailers come to tour the UK for the first time, and they end up holed up in a terraced house in Neasden and then cutting the tour short because of the snow. Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh took the snow as an omen of London being Babylon, and they hopped it back to Kingston JA.  From there I got to the idea of the sleeve being the Ace Cafe.

What about Ivor Cutler? Did you see him taking the bus one day and years later this is what inspired the song?

Ivor used to live near me. I used to get on the C11 bus and Ivor would as often or not be aboard. He would often strike up conversations with strangers on the bus, not in a mad’ way, just in a curious way. The line about the ‘hat’ is an actual conversation he had with a school kid. I made a mental note of it, knowing i’d use it one day.

I won’t ask you about “Yes, Mr. Pumpkin,” the inspiration there seems far too personal.

Right. It started out as a Syd Barrett kind of singalong ditty, which I couldn’t get out of my head. When I started recording it it reminded me of a song by The Mighty Boosh. During the first lockdown the only person I kept bumping into was Julian Barratt, I figured that as I’d had Julia (Davis) on one of my albums that all the signs were telling me to get Julian on this one!

For me the highlight of the new album is “Two Japanese Freaks Talking About Nixon and Mao.” You should do an entire album of guitar rock (I think). You’re good at riffage!

I should. Since working with Peter Buck I’ve got really into guitars again. I’ve become almost obsessive. It’s a good job I’m not wealthy otherwise I’d just blow it all on guitars. The electric guitar is the greatest invention of the 20th century. We should worship guitars (not the people who play them so much) as wooden (or metal) gods.

Isn’t “I Just Want to Be Buried” the first real love song that you’ve ever released?

There was “Breaking Up” towards the end of the Auteurs. I kind of hid that one away, as I thought writing love songs was kind of redundant. I was wrong on both counts.

Did the missus approve of that one?

I think she would have disapproved if it had been anything other than what it is. I still don’t really understand why pop songs don’t get down to the nitty gritty of carnality more often. The song is kind of funny but it’s also dead serious. It came out like Man Who Sold The World-period Bowie, sung by Judge Dredd. I’m pretty happy about that.