When you think of Brazil there are probably one or two
things that spring to mind, depending upon your age and geographical location.
For much of the world a mention of the country will bring up images of the
famous golden football shirts and world cups of the 1970’s and 80’s, of
football played the way that so many wish it were still played and skills that
have yet to be bettered. For others it is Carnaval with its huge street
parades, magnificent ornate floats and of course scantily, if extravagantly,
clothed women, or the miles of golden beaches with scantily clad women…I may be
getting slightly off track here, but nevertheless these are images that come to
mind at the very mention of the word Brazil. However, there is another thing
that is so fundamentally Brazilian that it is intrinsic to the things mentioned
above and that is music.Again, when you think about Brazil, the first thing that
comes to mind when thinking about music is probably Samba, the music that
accompanies every Carnaval video and every film tracking along a Brazilian
beach, but there is other music that has come out of Brazil. Bossa Nova,
developed sometime in the 1950’s as a fusion of Samba and Jazz, became very
popular for a short time and still has its fans today, but then in the
mid-sixties came an art movement that gave rise to a new style of music that
would reflect a much wider set of influences than those that were internal to
Brazil.
The Tropicalia movement started, like so many it seems, as
a small group of musicians and poets, amongst whom the most famous is probably
Gilberto Gil, in the north-east of Brazil, before shifting the whole movement
to Sao Paulo, where, through a series of connections, they would come into
contact with a band by the name of Os Mutantes. Gil invited them to play with
him at the 3rd Annual Festival of Brazilian Popular Music, which, the following
year, led to them being invited to work with him in 1968 on his eponymous
second album as well as featuring on the album Tropicalia: ou Panis et
Circencis, a statement album for the movement as a whole, which would create a
connection that would lead to conflict with the military government of Brazil.
In the same year they would release their debut album, titled Os Mutantes,
which would start their journey to becoming one of the most influential
Brazilian bands to make themselves known beyond the borders of the country.
Listening to a band singing in a language different to that
which you speak is always an interesting experience, the connections and clues
that can be gleaned from the lyric of a song are missing which, as a result,
means that a lot of room for nuance is also missing. The music on this album
tends toward the whimsical, with the occasional delve into more serious,
contemplative sounding tunes, but does the way the music sounds relate to what
the songs actually mean? Anyone who has listened to music for any amount of
time, particularly the era this album originates from, will be aware of a
strong tendency of disparity between music and lyric in songs, the
juxtaposition of cheery music with lyrics that tend toward the dark, menacing
tone or the sad song which carries a message of hope are common tropes, but
they depend upon an understanding of both elements to create their effect. So
what do you do when one of those elements is obscure to you? Well, one
suggestion would be to stop trying.
When you just sit back and listen to this album it becomes
an enjoyable experience. The sounds that are put together, from fuzztone guitar
and keyboards, distortion and what would appear to be environmental sounds, and
the use of different forms and ideas of music, the obvious Brazilian influence,
with both Samba and Bossa Nova playing their parts, as well as the obvious
influence of The Beatles, are all amalgamated into a coherent and pleasing
whole, whilst still having enough edges to keep it all interesting. They have
also stayed relatively relevant, Kurt Cobain and Flea have both expressed a
love of their work and The Bees covered A Minha Menina on their debut album in
2002, and that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise as this is an album
that looks both backward and forward musically, taking in the musical
influences of Brazil and mixing them together with psychedelic pop, jazz and
soul to create a sound that, although very much of its era, was a strong
suggestion of music to come in later decades.
(MS)
I remember Maite from Stockwell in those late
90’s. Studying towards a doctorate in Latin American studies. One October she
speculated on how she was split between buying a winter coat or buying a ticket
to Rio. Even then it was fantastic bullshit, but the previous year she’d been
on a field trip in the Amazon and entertained us with tales of plucking fresh
fruit and avocados from the foliage. That Autumn we saw Maria Bethania at Drury
Lane and newly inspired I criss crossed the (now cleared) forests of the London
record shop community in search of Brazilian music. Like the fruit, I picked
out album sleeves on the strength of their colourful and exotic skins. One of
the first was by Os Mutantes.
Os Mutantes. Mutants. Plant or animals that
are different from other plants or animals of the same kind because of a change
in the structure of their genes. A hybrid or composite entity. Something that
has assimilated foreign bodies to create something else.
The indigenous Tupi Indians of the Brazilian
central plains would eat their adversaries to utilise their power. The
preference for strength ensuring only the bravest warriors were consumed in
this way. Through time the Tupi were exiled to the outer coastal fringes of the
South American land mass where they encountered the Portuguese Empire. Through
the mass cultivation of sugar cane, an influx of more than 2.8 million West
African slaves entered the mix. The burgeoning state gained its independence
and in the late 19th Century set upon on its path towards nation
building. By the 20’s the modernist writer Osvaldo De Andres would define the cannibalistic
culture of Brazil as both a unique and essential catalyst in the country’s
evolving culture. By the 30’s this artistic intelligentsia would be absorbed
into high office.
Glauber Rocha’s “Terra Am Transe”
reflects on this political turmoil. In his film a poet rides the wave of a
newly birthed administration, enjoying the patronage of his cohorts on their
rise to executive power. On the regime’s lurch towards tyranny he rejects the
transformation and is shot.
By the 50s the country’s journey to the
modern world found permanent expression in the vision of communist architect Oscar Niemeyer’s new capital city of Brazilia, founded on the central plains of the
Tupi. Turning into the 60’s this utopian vision became married to progressive
socialist ideals. But comme toujours the progressive Left simply furnished a
waiting room ready for the far Right to occupy. In 1964 a coup d’etat with US
backing overthrew the progressive President Goulat and a temporary military
regime was installed. Temporary for over 20 years.
Round about this time other rebellions were
breaking out. Culture is identity and music is a highly important and emotive
issue within Brazil. The raw material of samba from the Afro-American
north-east was refined with gringo jazz into the exportable bossa-nova. The
Left rebelled against the sun and sex banality of the lyrical content. There
were rumblings that the white bleached transformation of the music had
sacrificed something en-route to it becoming the emblematic sound of the
Copacabana bourgeois. But across the world a million cocktail glasses clinked
in easy listening ignorance. The closet influence of America and England
influenced the working class Jovem Guarda (the ie-ie-ie equivalent of the
French ye-ye) which in turn influenced the evolving Musica Popular Brasileira.
Televised song festivals took on the fervor of football matches with partisan
clans alternately singing along via printed lyric sheets or drowning out the
music in loud opposition.
And then in 1967 with Che prowling the jungle
borders and the spirit of Simona Bolivar in the air, the rebellious
Tropicalistas from Bahia dropped an anarchist bomb into this highly charged
atmosphere. Wrapped up in Sgt Pepper-imagery, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom
Ze and Gal Costa briefly turned contemporary Brazilian pop culture on its head.
Putting the Dada into Carmen Miranda-da they shook a cocktail of bossa, samba,
tango, psychedelia, bolero, hard rock, cumbia, chanson and rumba to revisit the
‘20s cultural cannibalism. And in only12 months they would alienate both Left
and the Right acting as the primary catalyst for the State’s repressive lurch
towards an oppression that would stretch into the 1970’s.
And Os Mutantes, the pop group? They were a
sort of house band to this revolution. Alongside arranger Rogerio Duprat they
would contribute to much of the music created by this incestuous collective,
backing Gil’s landmark Beatlesque-Capoeira West Side Story “Domingo No Parque”
and Veloso at his incendiary appearance at the 3rd International
Song Festival which resulted in a sort of Dylan at Newport type clash of
cultures. Their own albums stand up well, with the opening two particularly
fine examples of the movements aesthetic melting pot. Like planets circling
round the sun, when The Beatles shone at their brightest so the band’s they
inspired found their radiant peak. By 1969 with Gil and Veloso in London exile
they moved to more generic rock, their light increasingly diluted in the outer
rings of the cosmos.
But the legacy of this period left us an
abundance of wonderful music both before, during and after the Tropicalistas.
Put on your new winter coat and take a walk through your local forest to pick
out as many colourful consumables as you can.
(PS)
Occasionally you hear an album
that grabs you by the lapels and demands that you snap out of whatever funk
you’re currently in and just bloody smile, why don’t you.
Os Mutantes’s 1968 debut is
ostensibly a pop album infused with psych and prog flavours throughout, like
the stripes in Willy Wonka’s sticks of rock; it also has elements of
avant-garde, but without the pretention that can sometimes go hand in hand with
that. I don’t actually think they’re trying to be Art in any formal sense, this
LP seems like a genuine desire to create interesting and diverting sounds, it’s
sonic experimentation and exploration in its purest sense.
For parts of this LP I get a
taste of contemporary Mothers of Invention works like Uncle Meat or Lumpy
Gravy, but with less complexity and focus on musicianship. These guys didn’t
have the Serious Chops that the Mothers had, but there’s certainly a fair helping
of invention there – and there are still some non-standard rhythms, as in the
alternating 3/4, 3/4, 2/4 pattern of the first part of Panis et Cirenses; and
Baby is a doo-wop number that wouldn’t be too far out of place on any early
Mothers LP.
I also get the lo-fi aesthetic
of the first couple of Velvet Underground LPs, with Rita Lee in the Nico role,
especially in the dreamy O Relógio - but there’s much less self-conscious cool
imagery here, they’re clearly not taking themselves too seriously like the
Velvets did. This to me is pure far-out entertainment... it also sounds like it
was recorded on a cornflakes packet through a sock for 50p, which only adds to
its innocent charm.
It still seems rooted in
Brazilian musical tradition too, despite the freaky influences of contemporary
overseas popular counter-culture; there are precious few (if any) Americanisms
in there, and the instrumentation and harmonisation give an authentic feel to
the sound, especially in the samba rhythm of Ave Genghis Khan before it
meanders off in its various directions.
It’s joyous, liberating fun…
even the hammy music hall sound of Senhor F grates less than usual for me, as
it all seems to fit into the chaotic ‘everything including the kitchen sink’
aesthetic. It’s a glorious festival of the absurd, which evidently caused a few
establishment feathers to ruffle in its year of release… 1968 was the yearof
rebellion and protest, after all. Weird and wonderful stuff.
“Half the nation’s gone to war, the other half is out
to score”
World conflict looms and GenZ snoozes beneath its vast
collective eiderdown. Pressed together almost touching, these children resemble
us on that first sanctioned Covid exercise, when we stumbled out into the
half-light of Hampstead Heath desperately avoiding each other. Adolescence ends
at 32 these days we are told, but what’s going to happen to these kids when
they are forced to wake up?
Secondhand’s “Reality” fumbles along in the eye of
this very same storm. An oddly philosophical effort, musically birthed in a
primitive early prog-psych style. It was pulled together and released against
an all too familiar and repeating cycle of ambition, indifference and tragedy.
Washed down for inspection, it’s a curio of curios.
Let’s start with the packaging. The garish purple
sleeve is striking with a mocked-up medical record on one side and a skeletal
X-ray hand reaching out on the other. It’s not clear which is front and which
is back. The credits list the songs and musicians and the name and address of
someone called Denis James, also mentioned in two song titles and maybe the
suggested subject of the piece. The word “Reality” is attached via a printed
staple, the band name scrawled as Secondhand and the sleeve deliberately
battered and worn like Costello’s “Get Happy”.
In fact the band were The Next Collection, a Mod band
in the mould of The Small Faces. They changed their name to The Moving Finger
before any semblance of fame and fortune could reach them and then had to
change it again but not before some pressings of this album listed them as
such. The final name Secondhand seems to have been used as much as Second Hand.
The sleeve wasn’t deliberately worn it was an uncorrected pressing plant
problem, so original copies are somewhat unique in their range of defects. A
bad day for E.J Day and Sons you might say. And as for the concept of an album
based around a character called Denis James, well that’s somewhat enigmatic
too.
Denis James is a clown no less and may be a cipher
used to illustrate a state of being, namely the carefree days of youth spent
lost in self-absorbed anarchy. For those of good fortune or bohemian
inclination an attitude that aspires to last a lifetime. For the less fortunate
a brief candle that burns all too soon. At least I think that’s the intention.
Secondhand were 15-17 years old. Their back story is
sparse but like so many bomb culture kids they spied a door out of the biscuit
factory, invitingly left ajar by pop music. Perhaps they foresaw a permanent
escape. But Secondhand never began to make it and just before the recording the
young guitarist’s father died soon forcing him to leave the pop dream behind to
keep his family a-float. Perhaps that’s why this recording is tinged with such
desperate melancholy. Though the producer having a breakdown half-way through the
record can’t have helped.
The diagnosis is set out in “Reality’s” opening salvo.
“Fairytale” is a re-cycled pop effort from their previous Summer of 67 incarnation,
but where the demo version uplifts, this one is mired in dark undercurrents.
The conclusion of mother’s swaddling bed-time story is forever threatened and
disturbed by the outside world. “Someone’s knocking at the door, don’t let
them in”, they sing and darker still, “Father comes home late from work,
hard as nails, his stony footsteps on the stairs, ends the fairytale”. Out
of shot we conjure verbals, belt-buckles, tears. But worse than the four walls
of home lie the grinding malevolence and incessant “Rhubarb” of the adult
world. The soulful vocals of Ken Elliot are indistinct throughout this album
and here the words seem to emerge as half-heard mumblings about “The Man” on
high discussing eugenics and “the animal people”. The music is a brutal,
stone-age metal before it had been invented. The effect, not so much background
colour, more flashing lights from a blunt object crashed across the skull.
Enter, “Denis James The Clown”, slipping into proceedings from a side alley; “The
funny man who never lets you down”. A vaudevillian sideshow from a toytown
world that tries to seep into this album, but finds its way blocked. A real
character or an echo of what went before? Then it’s the ironically groovy
“Steam Tugs” and another chapter towards disillusionment. The morning after the
party, the rotting room strewn with dormant revellers. The empty tins of
Watneys Party 7, the broken bottles, the heaving ashtrays, the pimply youths,
the half-dressed girls exposed by the harsh sunshine. A dawn of steam-tug-mugs,
with the cockney rhyming marking your peers as completely lacking when the
drugs wear off. Back in Denis’ barrel organ arcade, “We Are Slowly Getting
Older” pops in to emphasise the point, woozily playing with the stereo
spectrum. Our protagonist is growing up quickly but not quick enough and before
long the dark thunderclouds envelope proceedings and we hear more about “The Man”.
“Some top men got together, what do you think of that?
They came to the conclusion we’re getting far too fat”
What exactly are you supposed to think when told some
top men get together? The dark psych into prog spiralling backward guitars and
rumbling explosions suggest nothing good. “The World Will End Yesterday” seems
to bring side one to a close in a mood of mutually assured destruction and the
untold terrors and corruption of a post-apocalyptic year zero. Heavy shit... and
err… “the same thing applies when the old man bought a hat, he put it on a
chair where a fat old lady sat”
- the infantile and profane, the marriage
of heaven and hell…Beano and Bosch. I see the sleeve of the band’s follow-up
album as painting the picture of this song. This Zappa meets Vincent Crane
Prog-out was memorably titled “Death May Be Your Santa Claus” and was
accompanied by a short film of the same name. The film contemplates religion,
marxism, race relations…cannabilism and as with the scene in which the band are
seen jamming in a rotting Notting Hill street, it has little and long lost
purpose.
Flip “Reality” over and “Denis James, Ode to D.J”
carries a most bizarre almost Catholic, bridging narrative. It recalls an
innocent time where Denis is just one of the crowd of happy sunny Sunday kids
on the cusp of life. However, due to the lack of a sixpence to use the
chocolate machine his fate is disastrously determined. It leaves us to
speculate that the machine is but a metaphor for virtue itself and if denied
access then… where do you get your kicks? In this case it turns out to be hard
drugs.
“Now he’s gone, won’t see him no more.”
And at this point the album reaches its zenith in a
staggering 15minute death-dream through the addiction of “Mainliner” into the
stark and long overdue realisation of the adult “Reality”. The church organ on
the former is blasted out from St Gabriel’s, Cricklewood, opposite Melrose
Avenue, coincidently the site of another Denis…Nilsen’s, first torture
chamber. This harrowing song lurches between grandiose funereal pomp and sombre
reflective guitar arpeggios. The lyrics may be the Ghost of Christmas Yet
to Come; a prediction of an imminent and desperate future.
Then as though gasping into fitful consciousness from a coma, the machines
spark back into life, the head shakes, eyes open and a final moment of
realisation unfolds.
St Gabriels, Cricklewood
“When I was just a little boy
My father said to me
He said Son when you grow up
You have to face reality
I travelled round
from town to town
I never thought
I’d ever have to settle down”
The song drives on growing more urgent with its intent
“I travelled in
A dream of ecstasy
But now my dream is gone
I’ll have to face reality
I’ll have to face reality”
Then a key change, like gears shifting on a sharp
incline,
“The dream is gone and I can’t carry on
Time is right and there’s a light
Everything is shining, what a beautiful sight
Reality, the dream has gone away
Re-ality, everything is shining”
A chorus of flutes sweep by, like a celestial choir
overseeing mankind’s folly, shrieking stridently above a maelstrom of gun
shots, grinding tanks and overhead fighter plane duels. The passage slows to
bluesy guitars then the string quartet requiem of “Mainliner” ominously
returns, setting proceedings to their inevitable close. A furious march of
drums and strings develop, spinning and spiralling to a slowly elongated groove
with the piercing cellos clawing to the heavens like damned souls escaping from
the mire.
The dream is gone and I can’t carry on
Until the time is right
And there’s the light
And everything is shining what a beautiful sight
Off a side street from Clapham Common…52, Elms Road to
be precise, the “Bath Song” concludes proceedings with Denis overdosing during
ablutions. “Well If you’re feeling down come on and get happy!!” toots the
Radio London jingle hot on the heels of the DJ’s stark announcement of Denis’s
demise. A DJ announcing the death of DJ, another clue or joke or an accident,
like the sleeve pressing?
Post release the departing guitarist Bob Gibbons would
never recover from the stress of trying to support his family and took his life
before the 1970’s were over. Recorded in a small studio on the Old Kent Road (now occupied by an Asda) ,
the producer Vic Keary would recover from his breakdown and continue to use the
band on other projects. Indeed this collaboration pre-dates the LP and there is
a connection between the band and an obscure singer-songwriter called
Denis Couldry. The Next Collection’s first credit was backing Couldry’s,
Keary-produced solo single “I Am Nearly There”, a brooding meditation
on…something or other. Flip the single over and you have “James in the Basement”
and though the music is Schlager-lite sing-song stuff the connection of Denis
and James may have provided some inspiration. The song fades out to tell us “he’s
quite insane…he’s quite insane” and Couldry would ultimately spend the 70’s and
80’s in and out of psychiatric institutions. Prior to this he’d been lead
vocalist of Felius Andromeda who warmed up by backing comedy clown Harry H. Corbett on his psychedelic piss-take “Flower Power Fred” before releasing the superb “Meditations/ Cheadle
Heath Delusions” 45. The organ recorded by Keary at that same
Cricklewood church used on “Reality”.
And finally. Felius Andromenda’s final single
“Funeral” was actually credited to Second Hand on a 1972 release with a line-up that
seemed to merge the remaining members of the two bands, even though Second Hand were calling themselves Chillum at this point. My head hurts.
(LK)
Real Gone Kids
There is an old
quote, the origin of which I am unable to recall, that goes “I don’t suffer
from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.”, and although I cannot remember
where I heard that particular aphorism, it is most definitely brought back to
the forefront of my mind by listening to Second Hand’s debut album Reality.
There are albums that you listen to once and they become a favourite and albums
that you listen to once and smash with a hammer, but there are the rare albums
that don’t necessarily impress on first listen, or perhaps even the second, but
gently creep into your mind, slowly releasing their quality as you provide them
with a little space and Reality is one of those.
Second Hand were
formed by a couple of teenagers in South London in the mid-60s, who were
members of one of the first truly post-war generations, but still lived very
much in the shadow of the second world war. Though they themselves had not
experienced the privations and horrors of the conflict, they would have lived
with the effects of those years all around them. The people that raised them
and with whom they would interact may well have seen the effects of war up
close, who carried the physical and mental scars of combat or the psychological
effects of living in fear of bombs raining from the sky. Why is this of note,
other than from a historical perspective, because this album is a horror show,
not in the sense of it being a disaster, but in the actual sense of a
theatrical performance of fear and dread.
Just to indulge
in a slight digression for a moment, the fact that this band and this album
were created by a couple of teenagers is something that should be kept in mind
when listening; it’s not because the album is bad, it most certainly is not in
my opinion, but rather because of something that becomes obvious the further
you delve into this record, which is that the music displays its influences
like a large neon sign. It’s not particularly strange for a debut album,
especially one created by a young group of people, to be somewhat obvious in
its influences, one only has to think of Led Zeppelin’s debut or The Doors
first album, but Reality does not even bother to try and disguise the music
that contributed to its realisation.
The opening of
the very first track should be recognisable by any fan of The Who, and several
tracks show strong influences from The Kinks and Pink Floyd, but that is not
all there is to this album. It would not be unreasonable to ask whether Jimmy
Paige owned a copy of this album, before forming Led Zeppelin, and if someone
told me that it had been an influence on Pink Floyd when writing The Wall, I
would have no problem in believing them.
The reason being
that this album has a lot in common with the aforementioned work in terms of
narrative and structure. Though Reality is not a concept album in the true
sense, it does have a strong sense of narrative within each song, except for
those which demonstrate a strong sense of eccentricity and whimsy, and even a
sense of overarching narrative across the whole album. From the protective
mother in the opening song, to the death from a drug overdose in the final
track, there is a consistent sense of fear of missed opportunities and passing
youth, of failure and excess. This is a horror story of an album, but not of
ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, there is no pricking of the
thumbs, this is the sheer dread of life and the horror of existence.
Upon hearing this
album for the first time it’s easy to dismiss it as just another mildly
eccentric prog/psychedelic rock album, just another, albeit a good one, entry
in the panoply of such albums of the period, but there is something, even on
the first listen, which tempts you to listen to it again; something beyond the
eccentricity of the music in parts. When you
do listen to it
again, and you absolutely should do so, it starts to reveal something about
itself. This album has some dark corners in which horrors lie, and those
corners are the ones in the room you are sitting in
(PS)
Isn't it funny how
some LPs are so evocative of the year they were released? This came out in
1968, and to me it absolutely screams of that year: too heavy for 67 but
without the higher production values and techniques that many bands and
producers had started employing the following year.
As I stare at the
last few Christmas chocolates in the Quality Street tub, it strikes me that
this LP is just as mixed a bag; there are so many styles crammed into a
relatively short space, and I wonder if the overall feel suffers a bit as a
result.
The opening track, A
Fairy Tale starts off as a proper mod rocker: a punchy four chord Small Faces-y
guitar riff after the initial piped organ suspended chords is as impactful as
you could want, and the D# after the G/F/C is also nicely non-standard... then
it switches into full Ogdens psych mode before picking up the riff again to
close.
Rhubarb! is a wilder,
blues riff-based thrasher that made me think more of JD Blackfoot than anything
else, but I'm searching for a better comparison. It's frenzied and loose, just
as a blues rocker should be - but I'm not sure that Ken Elliott's vocals suit
this type of wild abandon, it highlights the weaknesses in his voice more than
anything for me.
Then we get to the
thing that so many bands of the era regrettably took from Sgt Pepper: Denis
James the Clown (Arthur Kitchener) is pure vaudeville, like Bonzo Dog
Doo-Dah Band aping up the old cockerney music hall songs from battered 78s
found in flea markets. It's irritating and for me, it's the toffee penny in the
Quality Street tub (ie still hanging around in late April). A complete
turn-off.
Steam Tugs gets
things back on track; it's a funky white soul number which makes me think of
Mark I Deep Purple. but unfortunately, Bob Gibbons was no Ritchie Blackmore, so
there are no guitar pyrotechnics or virtuosity to light things up and make this
something extra special.
For Good Old '59 I
get the Kinks, all quirky and eccentric, tugging on the nostalgia strings. The
World Will End Yesterday with its backwards guitar has a much more psych
feel... I get strains of Tomorrow here, but a bit dirtier. Again, Gibbons was
no Steve Howe, so there's some flair missing from the guitar lines for me.
Denis James the Clown (Ode to DJ) is one of the few occasions on this LP
where a musical style is almost revisited; this is more like Steam Tugs, funky
but with a slowed down riff, which goes into more of a Traffic sound after a
while, a la Paper Sun.
Mainliner is a
slower, more introspective track with its phased guitar chords, but I don't
think the bass and guitar work together. This disconnect is possibly
deliberate, as it appears to be an elegy for a drug casualty, a bit like Procul
Harum's Nothing That I Didn’t Know, but more stark. It evolves with church
organ and string quartet and becomes something rather more interesting and
progressive towards the end.
The title track is
the standout for me - the Purple One in the tub, if you like - but the bass
lines often don't follow the melody or the chords which is frustrating. It's a
slow, pulsing, groovy rocker with a nice bit of flute and added apocalyptic
explosions. The middle eight (if you can call it that) is another string
quartet break which modulates to some very unexpected chords, never seeming to
resolve, lingering on sweet dissonances - then ending with a heavy section of
everyone together, combining orchestral and pop in a much more satisfying
result than Deep Purple's Concerto for Orchestra from the following year ever
did.
The Bath Song is more
Procul Harum to my ears, but hammed up and I think the melodrama spoils it for
me - and again, I don't think Elliott's vocals are strong enough to carry the
higher ranges, and it's a shame that this track closes the album.
There is much on this
LP which is fantastic, interesting, challenging... but sometimes I fear it's
let down by limited musicianship, and possibly even the overall sound. I think
in the hands of a better producer, this would be a far superior album for me;
but it's still one I will definitely keep coming back to.
What can be said about Eno that
hasn’t already been said? Glam Rock Icon turned Musical Chameleon, National
Treasure, Inventor of the Skullet (possibly), Patriotic Millionaire and
Godfather of Ambient.
In the mid-70s prog was
becoming a parody of itself with its overly complicated, intricate noodling in
27/13 time. The yoof response to this public schoolboy frippery (which I’ll
admit, I do have a sizeable soft spot for) was punk: pick up a guitar, learn 3
chords and write a two-and-a-half-minute song… and it was a hammer blow to the
capes & keyboards merchants and their side-long epics.
Eno had a different approach
though: strip away the clutter and take a step back, give the musical theme
space and time to breathe, to imprint on the listeners’ brains; and while the
impact was perhaps not as immediate as punk, its aftereffects were arguably far
deeper and longer lasting.
In late 1975, Eno released
three LPs back-to-back: Another Green World, Discreet Music and Evening Star,
the latter a second collaboration with Robert Fripp after 1973’s (No
Pussyfooting). The last two of these were significant steps away from Eno’s
previous work, dispensing with the 3-minute song in favour of more expansive
soundscapes with simple themes being repeated over extended, searching guitar
and synth lines. To my ear, these sound very much in the same vein as works by
Krautrock pioneers Tangerine Dream, Harmonia, Neu! & Cluster; perhaps not
quite finding his own voice yet, but still interesting works worth exploring.
After a collaboration with
Cluster in the Summer of 1977 and a brief (but unsatisfactory, IMHO) return to
the 3-minute form with Before and After Science, we get the release of Ambient
1: Music for Airports; and this is where I think Eno’s hallmark sound is truly
born. Here we still have the simplified form, extended pieces… but it’s even
more stripped back than before. There’s more space between the music, more time
for the themes to float and find a place to land softly before picking up
again. Even between the 2 pieces on each side, there’s a substantial silence –
a palate cleanser almost – to allow the listener to reset and return gently to
square one.
In 1/1, I get Echoes of Erik
Satie with the beautiful ostinato piano theme, written by Robert Wyatt;
lilting, melodic, wistful, played on a seemingly endless loop. There are synths
underneath this, but they feel like occasional supports or tethers, gently
grounding or propping the melodic line up but only when necessary. It’s a
wonderfully understated piece of music, and Eno’s Kandinsky-esque graphic score
on the reverse of the LP sleeve gives a hint of what to expect: the measured
repetition of simple, uncluttered musical ideas in a minimalist frame.
Eno’s own inner sleeve notes
state that “Ambient music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening
attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is
interesting” and on those terms I’m not absolutely convinced he’s succeeded
with 1/1, the principle feels more applicable to the previous ‘discreet’
releases. When I listen to this, I want to put everything to one side to devote
all my attention to it, to be immersed by it as if in a hot bath, letting the
glorious hits and decays of the notes fill the room and disperse through the
keyholes and cracks in the doors. I feel as if allowing it to be ignored would
be a terrible waste somehow.
Less is more.
(LK)
I first heard Ambient 1: Music
for Airports when I was in college; picking up an album in what was an
extensive music library because of the name attached to it, Brian Eno, settling
down to listen to it with headphones on and then emerging forty minutes or so
later not really sure what I had listened to, or whether what I remembered
hearing is actually what I had experienced, because that is one of the inherent
features and charms of ambient music.
Released in 1979, Ambient 1:
Music for Airports is the album that is generally considered to be the album
that created an entire genre of music, that being, somewhat obviously, Ambient
Music; a genre that almost defies description, though when most people try it
is through the idea of what it isn’t rather than what it is and there is good
reason for this. Music is generally discussed in terms of rhythm and metre, of
verse and chorus and in some cases even meaning, ambient music has none of
these and quite deliberately so.
The story behind the creation
of the album is that Eno was inspired by a wait of several hours at Köln
airport, the banality of which was in counterpoint to the happy and pleasant
music that was being pumped into the building. Eno, who was by his own admission,
not the most confident of flyers, felt that this was trying to create a sense
of forced happiness, something that could raise tension in people that were
already in what he considered to be a stressful situation. He conceived the
idea of a style of music that would simply exist, not asking anything of the
people there and allowing them to be as involved as they wished to be.
The opening of 1/1, or track
one side one, begins with the sound of individual piano notes being played, a
beginning that would fit any piece of traditional classical music as a theme
that might go on to be developed, but doesn’t, and that is almost the point.
The phrase is repeatedly played over and over again, never developing or
changing; but just as important in these repeating phrases is the negative
space in musical terms, the silence that accentuates the notes and allows them,
and the listener, the time to breathe. Nothing is forced here; there is time
and space in the music to appreciate it and the space around oneself.
This piano phrase forms a
through line to the piece, the element that allows the listener, if they so
wish, to focus on what they are hearing as, slowly, the parts of the whole
begin to build with the addition of the third element of the piece, the synthesizer,
which works in counterpoint to the piano. Whereas each of the piano notes is
distinct and separate and even the phrases themselves exist in a minor
isolation, the synthesizer provides a sustained, elongated, almost drone-like
effect in the music, reminiscent of Buddhist chants or Tuvan throat singing.
The combination of these
elements, the distinct piano notes, the silence that defines them and the
elongated synthesizer notes combine to create an aural space into which the
listener can enter and indulge in an almost physical pleasure, or stand outside
of and appreciate as a calming, almost spiritual, piece of music. The title is
quite apt, though it could just as easily be titled music for sitting, though
that is something one does a lot in airports, or music for cooking, as it is
easy to imagine this music filling the cavernous buildings that are modern
airports, existing as part of the background of noise and motion and yet there
is also a genuine pleasure in just sitting back and letting this music wash
over you as you contemplate the meaningless nature of the music and the universe.
(MS)
I’ve listened to it. I keep listening to it. In the bedroom. In the kitchen. Washing up. Traipsing up and down the river. In
the background when I’m working. In the background when I’m thinking about
working. In the background when I’m not thinking about working. In the
background when I’m not thinking. Not thinking. Just existing. Just breathing.
Just living and sensing that I am still alive. Forgetting that I am alive. I
want to say something about it. I want to say how it moves me, how it changes
my mood, how it stirs in me some emotion. Most
recently I tried it out on an ordinary Thursday morning and I think it did.
I turned it on from my phone. YouTube.
On the bed, lying still I let it drift about with my eyes closed. But it set
off my tinnitus so I got under the covers to muffle it. Then I started thinking
about Dobrochna and those long gone days. But I got up because that’s not
healthy. Looking for my socks I found a lot of dust under the bed so started
brushing it out with my paws. Then putting the dust pan down I picked up my
jeans and straightened them out on the back of the chair. There was a big brown
mark on the seat which I smelt then licked and found to be chocolate orange. In
the lounge there was more on the settee and a discarded wrapper stuffed into a
whisky glass. What was I watching? “The Satanic Rites of Dracula, yes”. I must
have dropped it down myself as I was eating it. I had a shower and though I
couldn’t really hear it from the bedroom, I knew it was still going on. Towel
round my privates I nipped back into the bedroom and… yes it was still going
on. “New undies today” I said. Fully dressed, I stood up, blew my nose and
grabbed my wallet and keys. As I reached for the phone it stopped and went
straight into an advert for a Black Friday deal.
10 minutes later I tried again
and turned it back on from the start, this time through earbuds with bus trip
visuals. Bit of a rotten film though. Miserable looking girls in big coats
shuffling up the stairs into their seats. Pitch back street scene beyond,
orange lights, tree branches crashing against the window like skeletal
Nosferatu fingers. Like the piano in my ears. “Christopher Lee was always a
good Dracula”, I mumbled. Bermondsey to London Bridge. Brightened a bit as we
crawled through Borough. School kids trooped off and more workers got on. Then
I focussed on my fellow passengers. No one looks at anyone in the eye these
days. The isolation of our daily commute, it’s an intense time. And yet if we
could see from the side, everybody is looking at everything and everybody.
Blackfriars zoomed by. Stand up to get off. IMAX blocks the horizon at Waterloo
when approaching from the East. On rushing bodies splashing over the pavements.
If I could just see this scene from the side, I’d see that everyone is looking
at me but skilfully so as not to be seen doing it. We’re all doing it. I’m
looking at some people more than others, I must admit. Another bus over the
river as I can’t walk over it. The music stopped at Aldwych… and another deal
for Black Friday boomed out. That’s a problem with YouTube. It breaks such contemplative
moods.
I’ve listened to it lots of times in lots of
places but I’ve not listened to it in an airport. Maybe that’s it.
This post is a follow-up to a previous post. It’s an imaginary
double album that may have come out in about 1969.
The unnamed Everyteens enter the Green from opposing sides ‘neath
the watchful gaze of Mrs Raven and the towns-folk of Fantastic; a town born in
a dream. Their only commonality being youth and maybe mouths sore from the sucking of boiled sweets.
Before them the holy innocents meet and journey hand in hand across the
summits and valley depths of teenage love with all its incumbent terrors and
delights. The sound of wurtlitzers and calliopes puncture the darkening early summer
skies with the soft balm of fun. Scattered hither thither, candy-coloured
tents offer seemingly innocent diversions, with aged story-tellers recounting
tall tales to the accompaniment of children’s choirs and strummed balalaikas. Tales
of experience and portent, delivered as warnings and signs; an adult
counterpoint to the inner confusion and drama within their young minds. Along
the way they find and lose love, they break-up, they come back together, they
part as friends and all the way through they don’t know why. They don’t
understand what guides their turbulent journey. But Weatherman speaks of the changing
skies and if they’d only listened they would have learnt. Did Sam not ride into
the night to remain free and did bullied Geraldine not take her revenge? And
what of Grocer Jack, taken for granted for so long, did he not curse the Town from
his grave? When it’s gone it’s gone and young love is only a part of this World.
And behind the curtain of every Teenage Opera ...perhaps something wicked this
way comes.
“I am sentimental about my childhood - not my own
particular childhood, but the civilisation which I grew up in and which is now,
I suppose, just about at its last kick”
“Coming Up For Air,” George Orwell
This is a quietly bitter record. Ray Davies put this
together at the tender age of 25 whilst battling with the insecurity of his
role as breadwinner for both family and band. He was recovering from a
breakdown, adapting to fatherhood and in career limbo due to an American
touring ban, which had The Kinks reduced to playing the Northern cabaret circuit.
The songs bear witness to the psychological unravelling of a British subject, mirroring the decline of the Empire itself with Davies drawing on his own family
for inspiration. But somewhere along the line, the archetypal affection for his
subject matter got lost. In fact the sweet hummable tunes and chipper delivery
make the lyrical desperation at the heart of it, all the more harrowing. The
political stance is ambiguous but as a summary of the first 69 years of the 20th
century, it stands as an eviscerating portrait of working-class servility. And it makes me think about my own family.
From a childhood smothered in the fag-end “Land of hope
and gloria, land of my Victoria”, Arthur miscomprehends his future.“I
was born lucky me, in a land that I loved”. Job, family, methodism for the
straight and narrow, “Scenes from the Afghan War” ‘tween skits at the Pally for
entertainment. But in a heart-beat, the military drums of “Yes Sir No Sir” establish
a life routine exercised on the shiny wet parade ground of school and barrack. “Stop
your dreaming and your idle wishing, you’re outside and there ain’t no
admission to our play”. An angry and pivotal song, it reads like a
manifesto of oppression. I think of my Dad’s Dad and his first trip from home in 1915.
Train from Oldham Mumps to Milton Haven, vomit filled boat to Channel fort , training
in weapons of mass destruction, application in Flanders mud and blood. “Give the scum a gun and make the bugger
fight and be sure to have deserters shot on sight, if he dies we’ll send a
medal to his wife.”My Grandad was buried alive on the Western Front but
dug himself out in time to witness the Canadian’s amphetamine charge at Vimy
Ridge. “Some Mother’s Son”, recounts heartbreaking sacrifice. “One soldier
glances up to see the sun and dreams of games he played when he was young”One
minute it’s cowboys and Indians in the rhododendron bushes of Alexandra Park, “…a
second later he is dead”.
Moving on into the post-war, we’re in the bread and circuses
of consumerism, courting in a rented jalopy, “Drivin’” to adventure, in…
Potters Bar. Forget, forget, forget. Like a thunderbolt “Brainwashed” deviates
from any semblance of the universal to directly address the condition of our
eponymous hero, punning on his genuflecting, carpet fitter profession. “Look
like a real human being but you don’t have a mind of your own. Yeah, you can
talk, you can breathe, you can work, you can stich, you can sew but you’re
brainwashed. Yes you are, yes you are. Get down on your knees!”.
In 1934 my Grandad was on his knees, convalescing on the
dole and my 4 year old Dad went with mother to visit the cotton mills of
Massachusetts. This was no holiday, it was reconnaissance for escape. It didn’t
happen. Arthur contemplates a similar still-born fantasy in “Australia” where “nobody
has to be, any better than what they want to be”, where “nobody has a
chip on their shoulder”, where “…everyone walks around with a perpetual
smile across their face”. The song starts in playful style like the Terry Gilliam-esque
artwork on the sleeve, but the aboriginal sounds and tooting jazz soon turn it into
an end of pier nightmare. There is no crock of gold. The crumpled Thomas Cook
pamphlets, salvaged and smoothed out on Whitehall desks, selecting Australia as
test site for the Bomb. A future destination for the airmen sent like lab-rats into
the atomic clouds billowing over the vaporized atolls.
Arthur reaches the summit in an alternative “Shangri-La”
somewhere in one of those suburbs that spread like gravy over the Nation’s
tablecloth. “Put on your slippers and sit by the fire, you’ve reached your
top and you just can’t get any higher”. It’s the emotional and musical peak,
with urgent strummed guitars, tinkling harpsichords and lyrics hammered out
like last rites. “You need not worry you need not care, you can’t go
anywhere”. You can’t go anywhere!
In short fashion the Second World War breaks out and as “Mr
Churchill Says”, “ gotta fight the bloody battle to the very end”, withthe conflicterupting in a surreal barrage of raga-rock. Post-war
austerity follows and the raucous pantomime of “She Bought a Hat Like Princess
Marina” parades working class pride in the face of adversity. In the interval, Palestine
and Mau-Mau on the newsreels, for the main feature, “The Dambusters”. Then coming
up for air Arthur reflects on his “Young and Innocent Days” indulging in a
nostalgia, that seems not what it used to be.
In “Nothing to Say”, the albums grinds towards it’s close
with a glimpse of the isolation of age. I think of Dad and his Dad, I think of
us all watching the football, their shared Unionism, their local pride and their
stoicism but I also think of their strangely distant and jarring communication.
For Arthur, his son is on his own aspirational path. “I’ll have to go soon cos
I’m getting bored, I gotta be home early to see a good play”, and I think of my Dad’s transcendence of both his parents and his class.
By 1969 Britain had effectively become an archaic vessel in receipt of American culture, so it is strangely appropriate that the title track concludes as a
country-style hoe-down. Davies had been commissioned to write the album for a
Granada TV play, but it never got off the ground due to funding issues. The album
was thus delayed and on release unfavourably compared to the heavy sounds of the day. “Shangri-La”
was issued as a single but found no takers. Like the country The Kinks were suddenly out of time. But the lifting of the American touring ban opened up new horizons
and like my Dad's speculative journey in 1934, The Kinks set sail in search of a new land of “hope
and glory-ia”.
Only a generation after it was at war with nearly everyone,
Germany was evidently at war with itself. The nation, divided by political
ideology, was culturally and physically separated: one half apparently in
colour, with all the trappings of modern life; the other almost in shades of
grey, one eye cautiously looking over the wall at how the Other Half lived, the
other eye frantically looking around for Stasi informants.
For the capitalist Westerners, life was grand. The middle
classes were doing just fine and apparently extremely comfortable with the
situation as it was… apart from a spirited proportion of the youth. Outraged
that the older generations weren’t suitably ashamed of the atrocities they had
taken part in - or at best, placidly gone along with – and railing against the
traditional middle class system, they mobilised into movements, communes, to
shake the Olds out of their cossetted armchairs and shock them into actually
thinking.
Amon Düül II rose out of the ashes of the original Amon Düül
commune (with band members who could actually play their instruments this
time), whose mission was to play music which was diametrically opposed to the
bland, saccharine, mindless Schlager pap that was infesting the nation at the
time, a cultural manifestation of the unthinking sleepwalk their elders were
stumbling through.
By 1970 it arguably reached its zenith with the
astounding Yeti. Nothing about this album is comforting: the cover is an
ominous, shady character with a scythe - presumably eyeing up Heino, or some
other egregious middle-of-the-roader - and the music is gloriously brutal,
unsettling, cacophonous and dissonant. This is not an LP to have on while you
do the dishes, it’s one to start raging fires to.
The opener Soap Shop Rock is a kind of
expressionist mini-opera, played out in a fever dream of interweaving vocals
and stabbed guitar lines… it’s phenomenal, even if I have zero idea what it’s
going on about, and lines like ‘SMOKE… COMING OUT OF THEIR EYES’ have etched
themselves into dark recesses of my brain, to resurface when I wake, blinking
and confused at 3am.
It’s an LP full of collisions: She Came Through the
Chimney starts out as a calm, lilting guitar arpeggio, until jarring
strings collide to make it feel like a bad acid trip. Archangels
Thunderbird is almost mainstream with its crunching guitar riff, and at
the same time unconventional due to the 6/4 rhythm and Renata Knaup’s unhinged
vocals which barely manage to stay in tune. The Return of
Rübezahl sounds like an eastern-tinged heavy prog version of
Spirit’s Fresh Garbage, but it only lasts for a couple of
minutes. Eye Shaking King sounds like the name suggests: it’s a slow,
twisted, assault on the senses which occasionally adheres to harmonic and
rhythmic structures, but possibly only by accident.
It’s a remarkable LP, about as far away from comfort,
contentment and consonancy as it is possible to get; as a reaction to the
societal norms of the time, it’s as stark and as jarring as they come.
The late 1970s in the UK, as in much of the world, were a
time of turmoil politically, socially and economically. The Vietnam War had
ended in abject failure for the USA, countries in South America had overthrown
elected governments and wars started in Angola, Lebanon and the Cold War was at
a high point. The enthusiasm and sense of hope that people had felt throughout
the 60s was fading as the entire world seemed to be heading toward depression.
Throughout the 70s there was a growth in what would become
the dominant form of music, at least in the singles charts, club scene and
amongst the young and racially and sexually mixed younger generation of the
time. The hedonistic and borderline solipsistic influence of disco presaged the
direction the world would take in the coming decade, but in the 70s it was the
abandonment of the dominant morals of the time, even if all it amounted to was
people dancing and drinking on the deck of a sinking ship; but coming over the
horizon were a bunch of bad tempered, ill-mannered buccaneers keen on tearing
everything apart.
Punk arrived like a boot to the crotch of society and a lot
of people with a vested interest in the status quo felt the pain. Punk shared
some elements of the approach to society of disco, and even the hippy movement
that went before that, in that it was inclusive, non-discriminatory and wanted
to change the society in which it was created, but that was where the common
threads ended. Punk lacked the hedonistic sense of the previous sub-culture,
chose confrontation rather than peace and an aesthetic of the used, cheap and
torn over designer labels and glamour, and few bands would ever express this
attitude more than X-Ray Spex.
X-Ray Spex were a political statement as a band, regardless
of the music that they would produce. Five teenagers possessing various levels
of musical ability fronted by the gloriously named Poly Styrene, a mixed race
woman with very obvious braces on her teeth, as a collective they looked like
the kids who had become friends because there was no-one else who would be
friends with them, possibly because they had something to say and they were
damn well going to say it.
The first song that brought the band to the attention of the
public was the provocatively titled “ Oh Bondage, Up Yours! ” which started
with Poly Styrene speaking the line “Some people think little girls should be
seen and not heard but I think; oh bondage up yours!”, with the name of the
song yelled into the microphone. This was not a reference to the style of
clothing that would become associated with the punk movement, but more to do
with a sexual practice favoured by right wing members of parliament; it was
also the statement of a rejection of the restrictions placed on women and their
place in society. Curiously this track would not feature on their debut album
“Germfree Adolescents” but the tone of their debut single would continue
throughout.
From the opening track “Art-i-ficial”, with its themes of
consumerism and identity, through the final track “The Day the World Turned
Day-Glo”, with its imagery of fake products and waste, there is a continuous
focus on consumerism, misogyny, authoritarianism and the mental states these
factors can induce. “Obsessed With You” turns the normal focus of obsession on
its head, foreshadowing the tracking of digital identity across multiple
platforms, with the notion that it is those in control who are obsessed with
the commercial activities of individuals, an idea that is extended in “Plastic
Bag” to the ubiquity of advertising affecting the way people think and see
themselves, once again an idea that we would be all too familiar with today.
“Identity” expands on these ideas, drawing on representation in media and how
that reflects back on those who consume it, often resulting in people adopting
false personas in the hope of fitting in or impressing others, as alluded to in
“Warrior in Woolworths” and “I Am A Poseur”, the latter being possibly the most
self-explanatory of all their titles.
Several tracks on the album, though still dealing with the
notions of identity and consumerism, take a darker turn. "Germ Free
Adolescents" is about the repressive effects of obeying societal norms,
but also reads like a description of OCD, while "I Live Off You" is
quite blunt about the way modern society needs to exploit people for gain. “I
Can’t Do Anything” speaks of someone who is stuck, unable to progress, with a
suggestion of attempted suicide; a description that today would be easily
recognised as depression, while “Let’s Submerge” employs imagery of hell, as an
allusion to night life and the underground, that would not be out of place in
Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy. “Genetic Engineering” has a strong
dystopian, Brave New World influenced feel, but the way the song starts, with
Poly Styrene counting to four in German, suggests that there may be a different
meaning to a song about science creating “a perfect race”.
“Germfree Adolescents” would be the only album that X-Ray
Spex would release, the group breaking up due to the negative attention that
fame, however minor, would bring, yet this album would go on to influence bands
in the years that followed; not least of which was the Riot Grrrl movement over
a decade later, though how much it was an influence is open to debate. They
were a different voice in the early punk movement, not as aggressive or
confrontational as The Sex Pistols or extremely political as Crass, with much
wider musical influences than most punk bands of the time, but what they had to
say is still very much relevant to this day
The Tropicalia movement started, like so many it seems, as
a small group of musicians and poets, amongst whom the most famous is probably
Gilberto Gil, in the north-east of Brazil, before shifting the whole movement
to Sao Paulo, where, through a series of connections, they would come into
contact with a band by the name of Os Mutantes. Gil invited them to play with
him at the 3rd Annual Festival of Brazilian Popular Music, which, the following
year, led to them being invited to work with him in 1968 on his eponymous
second album as well as featuring on the album Tropicalia: ou Panis et
Circencis, a statement album for the movement as a whole, which would create a
connection that would lead to conflict with the military government of Brazil.
In the same year they would release their debut album, titled Os Mutantes,
which would start their journey to becoming one of the most influential
Brazilian bands to make themselves known beyond the borders of the country.
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