BLODWYN PIG - Ahead Rings Out

XXX WARNING: One of the below posts makes an unpleasant allusion to necrophilia XXX

(PS)

Late last year we said farewell to Mick Abrahams, or at least some of us did. His passing seems to have crept under most radars, as he is somewhat of a footnote in the history of British rock; but he really shouldn’t be.

As lead guitarist on Jethro Tull’s first (and some say, best) LP he deserves credit for adding a bluesy, jazzy feel to a band that became increasingly less interesting in the years after his departure. However as founding member and creative force behind Blodwyn Pig his legacy is far greater, no matter how short-lived the band itself was.

1969’s Ahead Rings Out is one of those albums that genuinely has everything for me: rock, blues, jazz, folk… it’s a complete masterpiece which has been overlooked for too long as far as I’m concerned.

Songs like It’s Only Love, Leave It With Me and The Modern Alchemist are jazzy romps with some lovely interplay between guitar, flute and saxophone supported by the swinging drums of Ron Berg; the latter track being one of the real highlights of the LP, it’s a purely bonkers, untrammelled joy from start to finish. I even get a bit of the quiet/loud section from Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man in there, although it’s somewhat less intricate and protracted on this track; but as the LP was released while In the Court of the Crimson King was being recorded, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that it might’ve had some small influence (until the great Fripp himself shoots me down, that is).

Bluesier moments are Dear Jill with some soulful slide guitar and Up and Coming; both of which take things down a notch following moments of frantic mayhem, adding calm and balance to proceedings. Folky bits are the wistful Change Song (complete with mockney introduction which would likely be completely lost on American listeners) and Backwash, serving as an overture to the album closer, Ain’t Ya Comin’ Home Babe? which perfectly combines blues, jazz and heavy rock with the delicate balance between light and shade that so few songs manage.

The star of the show for me is the pulsing rocker Sing Me a Song That I Know, with its driving beat that propels it along its few minutes’ duration. Again, it’s got that light, sprightly opening saxophone & ride cymbal riff pitted against the heavy rock juggernaut that is the body of the song. A full-throated vocal delivery from Mick caps the performance on a song that I will never tire of hearing as long as I live.

The album cover is one of the most iconic images in rock and the liner notes show Mick’s quirky sense of humour, which unfortunately was more intrusive and somewhat irritating on the 1970 follow up Getting To This, which had its moments but was a disappointing return. A couple of worthy solo projects in ‘71 & ‘72 followed (incidentally, check out the Mick Abrahams Band’s appearance on German rock show Beat Club, it cooks) before Abrahams’s retirement from music for several decades; but this debut release was something very special indeed.

Suffice it to say that I bloody love this LP and it will always have a place in my all-time top 5; I even wrote to Mr Abrahams some years ago to tell him just that, whether he got the message or not I will never know. When I shuffle off this mortal coil, I want my remains to be cremated: one half should be scattered over Sofia Vergara, the other half pressed into a copy of this album and played at full volume on each anniversary of my passing. Let it be so.

(MS)

Blodwyn Pig emerged from the slurry of the late 60s British blues boom. Just one of the B-list acts squealing like a litter of runts in search of the audience vacated by The Yardbirds and transatlantic Stones.

To say they emerged suggests some sort of trajectory to greatness, as if launched, like an ocean liner or rocket-ship into the musical firmament. A band embedded deep into our collective pop consciousness with an oeuvre of genre shifting albums critiqued and revered by the venerable music press of the day. Their guest musicianship harnessed by peers across a plethora of contemporary recordings. Photos snapped alongside the 70’s glitterati at all the right places. Recreational and sordid excess dissected in the tabloids of the day. The candid quotes, the dollybirds, the editorial condemnation, the appeal to moral authority. The newsprint splattered with sauce. And egg yolk. And ciggy ash. And oil. The thick dark spots transfiguring Anita Pallenberg and Keef to exotically hued cameos on page 7. “Marsh Magic topples Hammers!”, on the back-page. Belches, coughs. “Two double egg, chips and beans”, “Chish and Fips...who’s the Chish and Fips!”. A Luton caff, the Blod’s very own Chateau Marmont.

“Ahead Rings Out” opens with the barnstorming It’s Only love, the sort of thing you’d hear late at night, on the other side of the tracks, on the edge of town in an illicit, good-time Roadhouse…somewhere between Worcester and Dudley. Multi-instrumentalist Jack Lancaster sounds like Roland Kirk on this one, or rather Coliseum’s Dick Heckstall-Smith doing Roland Kirk, with everything stuffed in his gob. I only wished the drums had been placed in the centre of the mix. Switching to flute comes Dear Jill, a sweet country blues with slide that sits nicely in second place even if it does expose Mick Abrahams somewhat expressionless vocals. The fat driving Sing Me a Song That I Know is probably the best thing they ever recorded and found its way to more households than were interested via the popular “Nice Enough to Eat” Island sampler.

Island was investing in a multi-talented roster of jazzy-blues at the time and the Blod’s found a natural home amongst some stellar names; Chris Wood’s contributions to Traffic, Dick Morrissey’s multi-album If project, the Keith Tippett era King Crimson, Wynder K Frog’s party LP’s. And the guest slots like Chris McGregor and Lyn Dobson’s input to “Bryter Layter”, Harold McNair on John Martyn’s “The Tumbler” and that groovy Spooky Tooth b-side “Lugar’s Blues”. And of course there was Ian Anderson in Mick Abrahams old alma mater, Jethro Tull. You get a sense of all this in Lancaster’s closing track to Side One, The Modern Alchemist that snakes about in full progressive jazz-rock territory. But maybe that was it, save the guitar riffing on the closing track Aint Ya Coming Home. In between it’s more of the same but less and though it doesn’t really matter there’s a very good song they missed from the sessions for this LP called See My Way that the record company held onto for the band’s final LP in 1970. There’s even an American version of this album with other non-UK tracks, so someone blew it I think with the marketing.

Anyway about halfway through side two I found myself re-reading the sleeve notes that suggest the appalling gatefold sleeve is cut in half and worn on your head like a party hat. Those hip hipsters Hipgnosis didn’t think of that did they? Then I’m on the A638 to Pontefract. In the back the 25-50 year old-looking drummer has picked up a bird and with the van skidding to avoid Pete Brown and Piblokto speeding South, the rear-view mirror gives the driver a front-row view of a big pimply arse going through the motions. That’s what I hear in this music.

(LK)

I have not listened to Blodwyn Pig, more specifically Ahead Rings Out, for many, many years; I think the last time that I actually listened to the whole album was when I was a teenager, so when the subject of this album came up I was met with the awkward realisation that I don’t like Blodwyn Pig. Obviously there is nothing wrong with not liking a band, regardless of what people might say, but the awkward part of this confession is that I have no idea why! I have thought about it quite a lot over the years when the name has popped up; it’s not the music, though I wouldn’t say that they are my favourite band musically, and it’s not their image, which I’m not sure they actually have in any meaningful sense. Certainly there is the name which to me sounds like an insult, though I’m fairly sure that it isn’t, but when you put a traditional name from a culture that you are not a part of next to a commonly used insult there is always the possibility of a misunderstanding; but that is not the reason why I am left with this feeling of dislike toward the band. So I have to wonder, what is it about this band that has left me with this reaction, what, in my limited experience with this band, has caused me to dislike Blodwyn Pig?

The origin of Blodwyn Pig is a classic story, one that is so common that it is now a music history cliche, where a member of a band leaves due to “creative differences” to form another band closer to their idea of what makes good music. In this particular case the first band was Jethro Tull, the person leaving was Mick Abrahams and the band he formed was, rather obviously due to the context, Blodwyn Pig.

Formed in 1968 as a four piece they would release their first album, the aforementioned Ahead Rings Out, the following year, which would receive both critical plaudits and commercial success. Their music is generally placed in the blues explosion of the late 60s in the UK which included bands such as Fleetwood Mac, Cream and Free, though they generally sound more like the blues influenced bands from the early 60s; whereas the likes of Fleetwood Mac and the others were moving to a style that was extending the nature of the blues via amplification, effects and distortion, both in the nature of the sound that was produced and the way that the music itself was structured. Ahead Rings Out, Blodwyn Pig’s first album, generally stays close to what may be considered a standard blues style, they do show influences of other musical styles, but rarely is this ever developed into something different.

The first three tracks are fairly standard blues with the exception of Sing Me A Song That I Know which, although still based very obviously in a blues style, dares to do something different and, nearly sixty years on from its release, still feels original and interesting. I would go as far to say that this is probably the stand-out song on this album.

The fourth track completely changes the dynamic of the album with a complete shift in musical style. The Modern Alchemist you might expect, due to the title alone, to be something of a mix of musical chemistry, bringing the influences from the different band members together to create something bigger than the separate parts, but it simply isn't. There are a few suggestions of the blues in there, but they disappear quickly to be swallowed up into what is a fairly standard jazz track, albeit with some distortion on the guitar which may be considered atypical for the genre. This is not to say that it is bad, I find it quite enjoyable as jazz goes, but it leaves you unsatisfied with the sense that there could have been something better. The same can be said for Leave It With Me, another jazz number that reaches for something a little different, but this time it’s folk music that features. The difference here is that rather than hints of folk music that don’t really go anywhere, you have interludes within the track where there is a sudden outbreak of folk music which just as quickly stop and play no further part in the track.

The other tracks are decent examples of country, delta and Chicago blues and, in a strange way, this is the fundamental problem with this album; if you told someone that each of the tracks was by a different artist or group, I genuinely believe that most people would want to know who each one was and want to hear more from each one, but that doesn’t make a great album. What you get instead is a collection of tracks where it appears that a band is showcasing their talent with the hope of impressing their audience.

So, to return to the premise from the beginning, do I have a better idea of why I seem to have a dislike for Blodwyn Pig? The simple answer is no, I still don’t know why this band engenders such feelings. There is nothing wrong with this album; I would even go as far as to say that it is a good album that I have developed a greater liking for the more I’ve listened to it, but, as I have already said, it is hard to escape the feeling that this is a band that is trying to showcase the range of their talents rather than create an album.

MARCO FERRARI -Touche Pas a la Femme Blanche!

 Released January 1974

Marco Ferrari

It's a western! A continental western from the mid 70's when the western was winding down. Terence Hill and Bud Spencer wern't in it, though it did have a lot of stars. But none of them had ever made westerns before and they'd never make any others again. Same goes for the director. It wasn't shot in Almeria either, it was shot in Paris. In fact it's set in Paris. On a building site.

The Italian director Marco Ferrari was a maverick, somewhat avant-garde figure, very much in the shadow of his many more illustrious compatriots. Something of a Dadaist, he had more in common with Alfred Jarry than he did Roberto Rossellini and by the early 1970's his career was flat-lining with each obscure-by-intent, release. In his contemporaneous films of the period he'd cast his favourite actor, Ugo Tognazzi in "L'Udieze", as a pimp working for the Vatican, and in "Dillinger e Morte" it's Michel Piccoli as an ennui-filled bourgeois who absent-mindedly murders his wife. In "La Cagne", Marcello Mastrioianni stars as a Messerschmitt obsessed Robinson Crusoe who finds himself besieged by a woman who wants to be his dog. Pretty odd films.

Michel Piccoli, snacking 

Inspired by a sumptuous banquet that precipitated life-saving diabetes treatment, Ferrari gathered his actors together for le film de scandale of 1973, "La Grande Bouffe". With the addition of Phillipe Noiret, they portrayed a group of respectable men of society, who inspired by somewhat elusive motives, affect their own demise through excessive over consumption. Along the way they indulge themselves with a group of prostitutes and overcome dangerous bouts of flatulence. The film chimed with the post-May 68 political climate which saw many established directors paying homage to the radical agenda set by Jean-Luc Godard and the younger generation of cineastes he'd inspired. At one end of the scale Pasolini's "Teorema" (1968) made it's radical commentary within a minimalist context, whilst Fellini's papal fashion-show in "Roma" (1972) took things towards giddy excess. However nobody could begrudge Ferrari's effort as being crowned the intemperate "Citizen Kane" of this whole period; a film that would inspire adulation and revulsion in equal measure.

High on this reception, Ferrari immediately re-assembled his cast and plunged straight into his next
project. This time round his incarnate love of absurdity and improvisation would hit un-paralleled heights. 

The film was shot in the summer of 1973 in the vast crater burrowed out from the demolished Les Halles food
market. For 800 years this central space had functioned as the Le Ventre des Paris or Belly of Paris, a designation immortalised in Emile Zola’s novel of the same name. But like London’s Covent Garden, Paris had long outgrown the efficiency of hosting such services in a congested central location. Under Georges Pompidou, plans were made to re-imagine the area as a central hub for the subterranean RER rail interchange, with shopping and culture sat aloft like a concrete layer of icing. That this gateau was not to the taste of the Parisians is of no great surprise and subsequent attempts to sweeten the pudding have been met so far with very little civic enthusiasm.  I like to think that Ferrari was prescient in this regard, with the setting not merely a happy accident but one imbued with a deeper sense of iconoclasm. It also preserves a la Aragon’s Le Paysan de Paris, an immortal record of a city in turmoil and transfiguration. 

In this hollowed out building site, Ferrari decided to shoot of all things a satirical recreation of the Battle of the Little Big Horn…with Custer’s last stand…Indians et al. He juxtaposed the semi-straight depiction of the story by actors in authentic period costumes, against the jarringly modern setting. Scenes are clearly shot whilst the demolition is in progress. At one point an Indian massacre is conducted in the fire lit to topple on old market chimney and cannons are fired bringing down the iron-work of a large covered hall. Soldiers idle in street cafes awaiting orders and executions are held in the site’s moulded plastic viewing platform. At one point Sitting Bull leads an expedition to a boutique to purchase guns. In another an exhibition is held of embalmed Indians, their bodies stuffed with back copies of Paris-Soir. 

Wounded Knee 1973

The mood is comical but dark, with the history of the Indian genocide linked to contemporary American foreign policy. There is a whiff of Vietnam in the air and pictures of President Nixon decorate the walls with Watergate referenced. In the February of 1973, a few months before filming commenced the ghosts of the Big Horn were revisited in the Wounded Knee Occupation which resulted in a 71 day stand-off between the American Indian Movement and the FBI which resulted in three fatalities. In the film, the character Pinkerton, a Professor of Anthropology, oversees events dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. As the 7th Cavalry descend on the Oglala Sioux, his shirt is emblazoned with the letters CIA and he exits the stage en-route to Chile. It’s that sort of film. 

Perhaps the closest comparison to this film is the surreal end scene of the contemporaneous “Blazing Saddles” when the mass bar room fight collapses into the Busby Berkeley sound stage, though the farce here never quite transcends the polemics.

The cast however look like they’re enjoying the shoot and with the director inserting himself into the assembly we are forgiven for thinking the whole thing was shot in between courses for another of Ferrari’s gastronomic feasts. In addition to Mastroianni as Custer, Noiret as General Terry and Piccoli as Buffalo Bill the film is a-wash with European acting talent. Alain Cuny plays a stone-faced Sitting Bull, Serge Reggiani with shaved head japes as a king's fool and Catherine Deneuve is Custer’s romantic foil. The film's title "Touche Pas a la Femme Blanche!" (Don't touch the white woman!) is a phrase addressed repeatedly throughout the film to Ugo Tognazzi's character Mitch, the Indian scout who plays a pivotal role to the film's chief protagonists. His character carries the greatest satirical depth and pathos. Ridiculed by his Army paymasters, abused by the Govt. civilians and despised by his Indian brethren, his painfully duplicitous role is revealed as a blessing compared to his miserable existence in a subterranean sweat shop.

So its a film about colonial exploitation, racism, economic subjugation and the folly of valour...amongst heavy-duty earth-moving machines. It’s a curio and one worth seeing. At least once, anyway, if only to remind ourselves that wise lessons about civil insurrection used to be a subject of inspiration to the producers of mainstream entertainment. 

Whereditallgo?

OS MUTANTES e a Revolução Tropicalista

 (LK)

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 19^th 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 3^rd 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.

SECONDHAND - Reality

(MS)

“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.