MARK WIRTZ - A Teenage Opera ...continued

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.

SIDE ONE

SIDE TWO 

SIDE THREE

SIDE FOUR

VIV STANSHALL & SEAN HEAD SHOWBAND -Labio-Dental Fricative

(PS)

Much has already been written elsewhere about the bizarre and unpredictable career of Viv Stanshall, with good reason. His best-known work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band was, if never really ground-breaking, frequently interesting and highly amusing; especially with belters like Can Blue Men Sing the Whites? which brilliantly skewered the late 60s British blues boom, or the Noel Harrison-esque Canyons of Your Mind which took that poetic imagery one step further from the ridiculous to the sublime. During a Bonzo’s hiatus, his short-lived bIG Grunt project was one of the oddest things ever broadcast on TV and went to prove that Stanshall wasn’t pretending to be a loon, or hamming it up for effect: he really was that odd to his very core. 

Released in February of 1970 Labio-dental Fricative came shortly before the bIG Grunt episode and I love it because, much like Stanshall himself, it doesn’t really fit anywhere. It sort of has one foot in either decade, straddling the 60s and 70s; perched on some sort of fence separating them like Mr Slater’s Parrot, bobbing its head between the two. Also Stanshall and Clapton weren’t exactly natural bedfellows, how the hell did that collaboration come about? 

The song has the hallmark of Stanshall’s irreverent Bonzo lyrics, with the alliterative tongue twisters tripping along like an Edward Lear poem, but still rooted in the 60s with lines like “Big fat Fred sticks fur to his head, cos he thinks fur makes him freaky”. Silly, but great fun. The line “I got up at eight, it was half-past two” is also perhaps a window into Stanshall’s personal situation – I mean, we’ve all been there after a heavy night out, but you get the sense it was more a way of life for him. And when was the last time Max Bygraves got a namecheck in a pop song? Over the other side of the fence and there’s a vague sense of the nascent 70s vibe coming through as well, with the Willie and the Hand Jive-type chucka-chucka sound that became all too familiar with Clapton’s early-mid 70s records; but there’s that middle eight right next to it that absolutely reeks of the late 60s with its dream-like lyrics, leading into a solo that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the Blind Faith LP from the previous year (by the way, those who say that album was a failure couldn’t be more wrong, it’s a masterpiece).

Incidentally some may see this as sacrilegious but I regard this as one of Clapton’s last decent recordings, released some months before his first solo LP and Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Evidently hitting the hard stuff during his time with Derek & the Dominos and his subsequent crippling coke & booze addictions took their toll in terms of quality output. People may argue he released material worth listening to after 1970, but again, they’re largely wrong. Anyway, back to the single: of course, it didn’t trouble the charts; the record-buying public’s mind was elsewhere. Perhaps it was asking for trouble being released on Friday 13th, but it was nowhere near the zeitgeist of the period; for comparison, Black Sabbath’s debut album was released the same day and it's hard to find an LP that better sums up the mood of 1970 than that one. I don’t care though, I love it – it’s joyous, silly, fun and makes me grin from ear to ear whenever it comes on (ok, whenever I put it on). There’s not enough genuine eccentricity in music for my money, everyone seems to be engaged in some sort of vain popularity contest. And when did that turn up anything interesting?

(MS)

And here's an excerpt from " Frank and The Captain's Big Night Out" with Terry-Thomas on vocals!!

THE SPECIALS - I Can't Stand It

 (MS)

In the summer of ’81, we had a family holiday on the Broadwater Farm Estate in north London. The previous summer Jerry Dammers had filled that big gap in his smile with this delightful swing into Muzak; a song that somehow manages to be both genuinely affecting and wilfully ironic. 

A highlight of the More Specials LP it commenced the exploratory direction he would soon be sending his re-imagined Special AKA Orkestra and at Wood Green Shopping City I first heard it via a Twofer Double-play cassette that combined it with the band’s eponymous first LP. Guest vocalist Rhoda Dakar sings this in a pastiche call and response (ED: not really) like a shell-shocked bar maid who’s just been asked to fill-in 'cos the singer's not feeling very well, but she carries it off with un-tutored aplomb. For years I thought she was the girl ambling about the Leamington Spa canteen pictured on the LP sleeve but it’s not her. That slight warble in her throat gives a foretaste to the unspeakable horrors so graphically outlined in the following year’s “The Boiler”, one of the more unlikely singles to grace the top 40 and not one I’d recommend listening to late at night. At the other end of the duet is Terry Hall the monotone-faced blank expression of the whole Coventry scene. A Fun Boy One grimly drifting on towards the terrible revelations he would later reveal about a valium-numbed childhood induced by abuse at the hands of an international paedophile ring. Bookended by the dark lounge of “Stereotypes” and “International Jet Set” the song is best heard as part of the bigger concept of the LP, which like all the best things can be viewed as having if not an all embracing theme…at least an all-embracing mood. But in isolation there is much to enjoy in those Pearl & Dean backing vocals, Jimmy Smith organ stabs and the verdant and intoxicating jungle ambience of the exotica rhythm track. I often reflect that a few years later all the Twofer Double-play cassettes got looted from Wood Green Shopping City.

Anyway thanks for this one Rhoda.

(JF)

As usual from The Specials a great sound full of energy and you can understand why they remain a popular live act to this day. It can be no coincidence that the group had several black British members and it is interesting to reflect on the musicality and politics of the personnel.  Without them I suspect it might be the case that the social consciousness of the sound would be reduced to a rant, reducing the band to more of a cult sound. The songs are delivered in the usual sardonic fashion associated with the band and I think this in itself is part of The Specials mass appeal and longevity

(PS)

Hmmmm... This came at me out of left field somewhat, so I’ve had to quickly scrabble into the late 70s/early 80s section of my vinyl and give it a dust off. Finding only the first Specials LP there, I gave that a couple of spins and then followed it up with an introduction to the second LP online… and at this stage, I remain unconvinced. 

When I think about what defines The Specials for me, it’s those earlier tracks that spring to mind (Rudy, TMTY – although definitely the live version over the album one), with the addition of the non-LP single Ghost Town… those were great, memorable songs that get your toes tapping and fingers popping even 40 years on. More Specials had less of those for me, possibly because of the new musical directions the band took after their debut. 

I get why a band would want to do something different on their second LP, in fact that should be widely applauded – but I do feel that some of the tangents taken on More… were less successful than others, and I Can’t Stand It is one of those lesser ones to my ears. Firstly, it seems like a couple of different songs stitched together: I like the opening bass riff and drum pattern, but after it all goes a bit bossa nova it stops working for me. Also the structure of the song is a bit sprawling, with the vocal lines and harmonies getting lost at times. The melody isn’t catchy enough and the whole thing seems neither here nor there, ending on a bit of a whimper with the goodnights from Rhoda and Terry… maybe that’s the point of the song, but it just felt a bit ‘meh’ to me. 

Where I think the new directions on the LP do work, songs like Rat Race, Sock it To ‘Em JB and Pearl’s Café – by the way, the latter’s refrain of “It’s all a load of bollocks” could’ve been written & sung by our very own GV – there’s a kind of South London vibe flowing through them that gives it them a real charm. Enjoy Yourself would’ve been a highlight too, if Jools Holland hadn’t permanently ruined it for me – I can hardly blame that on the band, but still.  

I’m afraid that the easy listening sound just didn’t do it for me though. 

CAN - Paperhouse

 (GV)

When I first started watching this it took me back to the early 90s when I would attend gigs in crappy pubs or clubs and watch a line-up of bands featuring 'friends' of friends who were 'really cool', usually judged by the length of the lead singer's hair. Back then, within ten minutes I would invariably be asking myself why I'd had so much FOMO and bothered coming before swiftly reverting to the trusty strategy of getting absolutely shit faced to the point of not being able to stand, talk or hear anything anymore.

However, this performance was different. Had I been lucky enough to know people who knew people who could pull off a live performance like CAN I would have remained standing throughout and then creepily rushed up to the band afterwards to tell them how good they were (they needed my endorsement of course), probably avoiding the bassist and his stare. I would probably still be talking about the experience today too. I love how this progresses from what sounds like a warm up and a drummer in need of better cymbals to a fairly standard woe-is-me progression, before quickly turning into a belter of an instrumental. Sounds and looks very Doors-y and I loved the jazz influence. Brilliant.

(PS)

A few years ago I spent a summer delving into krautrock, immersing myself in the other-worldly sounds of Can, Tangerine Dream, Neu!, Amon Düül II and the like, and I found there was something unsettling yet compelling about the genre; once I was sucked in I found it hard to climb out again for quite a while. 

For me it’s the way the music is so sparsely produced: desert-dry with no frills whatsoever to fill the gaps between the notes; your ears take a while to adjust to the economy of sound, so cosseted in endless overdubs and reverb as we are now. It all sort of hangs together in a way that suggests it’s about to fall apart like a house of cards at any moment, but of course it never does; and the opening track of the trance-like masterpiece Tago Mago from 1971 is no exception.

In the opening bars Holger Czukay doesn’t play a standard bassline, he’s almost acting like a second lead guitar, playing arpeggios which hint at a harmonic foundation – but it does mean that Damo Suzuki is very exposed with his gentle opening vocals, and it makes for a rather shaky, uncertain start to the song; but it’s after a minute or two when the pace picks up, Czukay’s role becomes more traditional alongside Jaki Liebezeit’s expressive drumming and Michael Karoli can rock out in front with some soloing which is halfway between structured and improvised. 

For me, Suzuki’s vocals are far more suited to the rockier sound, so when he screams out “YOU JUST CAN’T GIVE BACK NO MORE!” it really has an impact and brings the song to a satisfying, expressionist climax. Fraught, melodramatic, but always somehow in control... this is great stuff. I can see myself getting sucked in again for another summer.

(MS)

For what seemed like years I used to humour a friend of mine who would regularly rant about the impossibly brilliant music created by Can. At a certain time in the night he would put down his pint and elucidate at length about the devastating contribution made by each exotically named band member. In truth his words never moved me to actually want to listen to the music though I always liked to listen to his overbown fervour, even though he repeated it in Clapham, Bow, Kilburn or wherever else our nocturnal ramblings might take us. Many years later I still find myself wandering the nooks and crannies of the city, only now I do it to a soundtrack of actual music, acting out my own personal movie. And in the last month this soundtrack has been exclusively scored by Can.

Paperhouse is the opening section of one of a compelling quartet of startling quasi-rock LPs that sound quite unlike anything else being recorded in the early 70’s. The band started out mixing Stockhausen with a shot of Velvet Underground then started to shake it all up with James Brown-like funk and jazzy-rock noodling. The music lent itself well to ambient atmospherics and they soon found themselves treading the same landscape as pre-Dark Side Floyd, scoring soundtracks to obscure art-house Euro-films. I’ve seen a couple. One of them “Deadlock” is a contempoary western shot in the disputed Israeli territories during a lull in fighting between the 6-Day and Yom Kippur Wars. The other “Deep End”, an erotic tragi-comedy with the flame-haired Jane Asher set in an East End Swimming baths filmed in Munich. It’s ideal music for background colour, leaving any number of actors to wander around vacantly whether on film or in the flesh, like me wandering up and down Earls Court Road in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. 

Their albums were assembled from miles of tape and then edited down like Miles Davis’ stuff into what we might describe as suites of sound, so in the midst of the seriously funky Hallehuwah we get a mini section where a helicopter seems to arrive to play a little jazz thing on the keyboard before giving up to take off again. A listen to this one and Pinch always make me think of The Stone Roses, another band with a semi-articulate vocalist. I’ve often explained to people that a band can prosper without a great vocalist as long as they are compensated by having a great drummer. A fact proven that in reverse it doesn’t matter how talented the singer is, the band will always fail with an agricultural, if enthusiastic tom-tom basher. Can are a case in point.

When you listen to their stuff like the live bootleg taped at Hatfield Poly in 1975, it becomes evident how true this is. For a good, continuous 40 minutes or so the band lock themselves into a groove peppered with guitar riffs and cascading washes of keyboard, punctured now and then by thunderous bass notes booming in and out. Way up front, disciplined in his funky metronome, the drums of Jaki Liebezeit lead a sonic assault clattering and throbbing across the soundscape. The band take off in the directions he dictates and you feel that if the rest of the band fell off the stage it wouldn’t matter too much, he’d just keep on going, holding it all together; like a grooving Hannibal mountaineering pachyderms over the alps, scattering troops asunder, lumbering on over hill and dale.

In the mix the vocalist fills in spaces in the sound, almost jazz scatting in his rambling abstraction, bluesy and wordless at times, painting sound patterns, occasionally strangulating barely decipherable grunts. At about 25 minutes-in during a brief lull in play the vocals are suddenly exposed and a lone voice from the crowd lets out a cry of “Rubbish!” with the timing if not impact, of Morecambe to Previn on the 1971 Xmas Special. It provokes a sole wolf whistle in the crowd and a temporary restlessness that dissipates with the band dedicating the remaining 12 minutes of the gig to an entirely instrumental improvisation. I’d like to think that this was the moment the singer retreated into the street and launched a TV set through a car wind-screen but I understand he did that later in the month outside Drury Lane. But then Tim Hardin was forever awash with his demons.

Yes Tim “If I Were a Carpenter” Hardin. This was the third phase of Can as they began to unravel, filling that space in the sound with whoever might fit. Hardin was briefly passing through, having re-located to the UK to register for methadone on the NHS. His time with the band wouldn’t take him into 1976, or indeed anywhere else after an overdose in 1980. Someone needs to write a book about him. I digress. The Can peak years between 1970 and 73 are full of mystery and well worth the investment of multiple-listens. But it is telling if you listen to the mountains of retrospectively released un-edited stuff from Miles Davis’ “In a Silent Way/ Bitches Brew” period, to discover there was good reason why jam material is edited down and it’s the same with Can. Various lost un-edited tapes have surfaced over the years that give us much more than we need diminishing their magic through interminable impro-ramblings that veer a little too close to the “Ummagumma” end of pre-Dark Side Floyd. This TV performance with the magical presenter zooming our way is frankly a bit sloppy too compared to the studio version but when Can were good they were spell-binding. Give the albums Soundtracks, Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi and Future Days a spin. Whether walking around W12 or not.

(JS)

I first encountered Holger Czukay as a guest star in Canadian avant- garde science fiction comics by Matt Howarth. He was always outside the main plot twist, fiddling with tapes or waiting for the drums to start. He didn’t really play a role but the cartoonist always presented him in a universe of his own. Paperhouse is from Can’s golden period. It appears to be a jazzy improvisation with a shirtless man shouting over the top of it. A brief exploration of the literature credits Can as being one of the most influential bands ever. So what’s the fuss about?

Forget that Can spawned Krautrock. Forget that Holger Czukay studied under Stockhausen. Forget the influence of the late sixties German free jazz movement. Forget the undeniable gravity of American prog rock and the significant lures of Mammon. The music of Can defies categorisation.  Most music is produced to act like an arrow from a bow, its tone, rhythm and lyrical foreshadowing are directed at you to evoke a particular feeling by the musician. The musician whether low or high culture, aims to evoke a feeling in their audience that encourages a commercial response to their creation. It has created a sprawling industry of multi-facet genres, and subsidiary trades.

Compared to the structure of most music Can can read as less structured. Compared to most music using lyrics to support their communication bandwidth Can’s lyrical contents make their music more ambiguous. Compared to most traditional popular musical 3 minute song structures, the music of Can relies on a much looser structure, facilitating greater individual musical improvisation, which in turn leads to greater song length. So what do we have then, highly drum and bass driven explorations of conflicting scales, avant-garde titles, structured musical improvisation, ambiguous lyrical content, very early use of sampled and mangled tape effects and a demand that their audience listen. The drum and bass form the overarching structure of the piece and the guitar and keyboard and other noises join in and have a conversation. Its sounds improvised and free form, but the ardent student quickly learns the improvisation is highly structured and form is developed from hours of recorded improvisation. And as the cherry on the cake the vocalist starts speaking in tongues over the top of it all.

I've tried to like Can for years, and even though there would be no My Bloody Valentine without them, they create the illusion of music with no form or shape other than that the audience projects onto it. It’s very highly structured and would in my opinion benefit from a less is more approach. Its conception is too dense, and I fear that even Paperhouse is probably more fun to listen to than play. Going back to my original analogy of the musician being an archer. I don’t care if the musicians bow is made of the rarest sandalwood. I don’t care if they can get 5G reception twenty years before 5G is invented. I don’t care if they are making music no one has heard ever before. It’s important that I believe that they are thinking of me, and what they are trying to say to me, because my needs in the musical equation matter too. I need to know I am some kind of target, even if they miss. When I listen to Taylor Swift or the Sleaford Mods or Fiona Apple or Joanna Newsom (obviously not on the same playlist) their cast is more focussed on winning my acclaim, to the extent I can convince myself they care about me. Whilst I’m never going to the prom and get some cowboy to marry me, I can sort of understand what Taylor swift is singing about. It transports me for an instant into fantasy romance land, the transition is easy. With Can this is so much harder. They don’t give a shit about me, they exist in an intricate prison, endlessly talking to each other in a language I can’t even glimpse, never mind understand.

THE KINKS - Rich Man Poor Man

This is an imaginary album that may have come out in 1967.

Pop music has a terrible inbuilt weakness of destroying itself through over-familiarity. The constant and cynical repackaging of music served up as random compilations to recoup the investment of record companies, is a particular curse of the industry. Exposed to constant replay, individual songs lose meaning in their contextual association with inappropriate company. In short it loses it's power. Yet when done right, a collection of songs carefully sequenced to aid an overarching theme can occasionally rival good fiction or film. The medium is relentless and in a concentrated 40 minute sitting, there can be fewer more intense artistic experiences to achieve so much whilst demanding so little effort. At it's best it envelops us.

This stereo double album compilation by The Kinks, may or may not have been prepared for foreign territory release in the mid '70s. Either way the oil crisis and copyright problems with the sleeve design sidelined it until this copy with hebrew text on the label surfaced at the end of last year. Had it been widely distributed it would have joined a multitude of other such releases to seemingly milk the band's 60's heyday. Yet look again and you can see it is so much more.

Rich Man Poor Man appears to have had it's source in an original and previously lost all embracing theme that pre-figures the arc of concept albums The Kinks released from the late 60's onwards. The period was marked by relentless touring that took a physical and mental toll on the band. Poor management by upper class chancers with severe cash-flow problems exacerbated the pressure on the band to deliver hit after hit and Ray Davies found his visionary ambitions frustrated with each song either rush-released as a self-serving single, b-side or album filler. 

The songs reflect what he was witnessing close at hand. The class inequalities were bursting through the veneer of swinging London and we can clearly see why he would return again and again to the recurring theme of innocents abroad. The Kinks like many other bands were regarded as no more than walking pound signs created to keep a small army of users fed and clothed. As the years passed Davies would become more explict in calling this out, but in 1966-67 this anger was largely supressed behind a facade of elaborate metaphor and satire. I would argue that had this record been released at the time it would have greatly altered our perception of The Kinks and seen them ranked on an equal footing with the progressive long-play output of their Beatle and Beach Boy peers. As such it's a remarkable discovery. 

RECORD ONE (36 mins)- a sharp tongued pantomine set to music hall rhythms mocking the rise and fall of old money from school, office and discotheque. The fortunes of the protagonist collapsing through a conspiracy of govt. policy and poor English weather, leaving him adrift from both family and class.

The first side follows the fortunes of a single character, a certain David Watts, "head-boy at the School, ...captain of the team" whose immense

superiority is recounted in detached third person by a narrator we imagine machine-gunning from the School roof in Lindsay Anderson's "If...". "He is so gay and fancy free.." he spits "... and I wish all his money, belonged to ME". But the old money stays with the old money, as made evident in the summer '65 song A Well Respected Man which acts as a touchstone for the whole concept. This was the first song released by The Kinks to reveal the inner sardonic mind of Davies who affects a sneering vocal to the following priceless couplet, "And he plays the stocks and shares and he goes to the Regatta, he adores the girl next door, cause he's dying to get at her". And on this record, as though it was always meant to be, the final strummed chord miraculously segues into the opening strummed chord of an alternate Dedicated Follower of Fashion, breathing new life into Davies great misappropriated anti-swinging London anthem (see my RAY DAVIES-Spring 1966 entry). 

Then amongst the subterranean-set, the drums poundng like an impending coronary, our narrator encounters the cast-off Little Miss Queen of Darkness, a waif like Jane Asher in "Alfie", burnt-out "cause the only boy she had, went and cooly stepped aside"  by... a now far too randy Dandy rampaging across the Mayfair nightlife. Here the underside of the swinging City is laid bare in all it's debauched futility. Our privileged toff dragged over the coals in the accusatory rave-up, House in the Country ,"Well he got his job when drunken Daddy tumbled down the stairs, from that very day this boy has more than had his share." It ends side one with a sense of hubris...for those whom the God's would destroy. And, "One of these days I'm gonna knock him off his throne", sings his old classmate. It's like a promise. 

The guitar reverses into Side Two like the beginning of the end because "He went and spent all the money that he had, because he had a heart and not a head”. The net result, his Most Exclusive Residence for Sale. An alternate version of Afternoon Tea follows the downward spiral, switching the narrative to first person. It's references to an absent tea-room tryst under starry skies, signalling a delusional descent in both ambition and libido. 

"The taxman's taken all my dough" sums it all up, Sunny Afternoon or not, with his property loss ill-compensated by forced inertia 'neath changeable sunny skies, the future is bleak. Lazy Old Sun is like that chilly moment as we watch the cloud cover the ground before us and we wait for it's inexorable shadow to roll over our spot. The song is a woozy nod to the downer brought on by too much excess whether material, chemical, sunshine or ...booze. An inspired shift back into Pop, the third person Mr Pleasant though arrives like an unwelcome guest. The chirpy upbeat mood clashes with the bleak truths like something out of Dickens. And even Mrs Pleasant has gone. "Wintertime is coming, all the sky is grey, summer birds aren't singing since you went away" closes the End of The Season curtain like an old show tune at the end of a rain-lashed pier. "I just can't mix in all the clubs I know” he moans, “Now Labour's in, I have no place to go". And so part one ends. The swinging snapshot of the Capital city now forced to look into itself. 

RECORD TWO (35 mins)- a parallel world on the other side of town under the same grey skies where the stakes are so much higher. Characters break free and fall under the City's wheels, before blissful redemption awakens them to the life-affirming realisation of the wonders they've always had. Even if it's not that much.

Side three opens with studio chat into a short instrumental run-through of Waterloo Sunset that drifts straight into the profound Autumn Almanac. "This is my street and I'm never gonna leave it and I'm always gonna stay here.." sings a proud everyman until the mysterious inner workings of the mind are revealed like an actor's split-second expression, "because the people I meet seem to come from my street and I can't get away... the street is calling me. Come on home!. Hear it calling me, Come on home!". 

And Billy Liar is left at the train station as Julie heads off for the streets of gold. The London bells introduce us to the Big Black Smoke and immediately we consider her fate, as told by a bristling stentorian voice, "Well she slept in caffs and coffee bars and bowling alleys and every penny she ha-a-a-d, was spent on purple hearts and cigarettes". The words bowling alleys spat like a blasphemous rebuke from the pulpit. Rosy Won't You Please Come Home follows the lament of her abandoned mother, whilst Too Much on My Mind may be the song of them all. A study in mental anguish where to these people, human choice and happiness are forever at the mercy of chance. But smile, smile, smile as long as you've a lucifer to light your Harry Rag eveything's ok. And at the beginning "Susie and Johnny were happy... earned enough to pay the rent" but these new characters are introduced to bring us back into the circling kitchen sink of it all. It's Davies most Marxist scenario. The Situation Vacant reading like a death notice for Johnny's broken dreams,“Susie’s separated living with her Ma" and "little Mama’s satisfied”. The fourth song on the side to contemplate the happiness or otherwise of a Mother.

Inevitably side Four finds us in Ken Loach territority on the aptly named Dead End Street. A trad jazz coda plays over the fade like a New Orleans funeral parade, before a thunder crash empties the streets with apocalyptic portent. “The reckoning was beckoning, they’re living to their doom, there is no hope, no reasoning, this Rainy Day in June”. And “…everybody felt the rain”. Everybody, Johnny, Joe, Tom and Susie, like Rosy before her, free from Mama again but in the mire. Like a miracle Susannah’s Still Alive, but only because we see her breathing and its all too true that it “Doesn’t matter what she does, she knows that she can’t win”. The harpsichord waltz of the Two Sisters, which Davies wrote about himself and his brother, introduces two more characters to the mix, “Sybilla looked into the mirror, Priscilla looked into the washing machine” but through an unexpected moment of grace (in the maisonette), the mood is transformed, “Priscilla saw her little children and then decided she was better off than the wayward lass that her sister had been”. And that's all it took to return to the beginning and this is my street and This is Where I Belong. It's a blissful mini anthem of hope and it seems to circle back to Record One and the "house upon a hill" character, now "with no place to go". And at the end of it all we are made to understand that the bright London lights shine with illusion and as they recede back into the darkness, a glorious Waterloo Sunset lights up Terry and our Julie, who we leave to their life of simple pleasures.

On reflection the whole thing is a synthesis of the 60's cinematic working class dream, re-channelled by a writer in the thick of it. It's tuneful, simplistic and at times quite moving. It also breathes new life into songs you thought you knew. Try and track down a copy (or make your own). It's a great enveloping listen.

JOHN MARTYN - Run Honey Run

 (JS)

Well I wish I could think of some cliche to mouth

To make our parting seem less sad

But if I told you lies or promised you the moon

The truth would come trickling from my eyes

So run honey run, and hide in the wind

And never stop to look inside your mind

Well I wish I could wash all my weeping blues away

And watch them disappear on morning tide

Oh, but I seek after sword, after sounds of the sea

A charm forever round my mind

And I wish I could fly like a bat from a cave

Through the darkness of my ignorance to light

I'd forever live on the echoes of our love

And die like some star burning bright

Run Honey Run is the last track on side A of Martyn’s debut album, produced at island for an allegedly measly sum of 158 pounds. It’s folk in its conception, the songs are guitar driven and accompanied by Martyn’s thin voice. Musically the songs are simple. This song features a progression of C F D, but what made Martyn special was this ability to improvise and extemporise around a simple structure and breathe life into his conception. Its alarming in the context of the ravages drink and drugs would have on his reputation and future contributions to culture, that the song is about warning off his partner. That said this recording represents a pure moment when a new voice joined the choir of culture, and in joining, enriched the sound of the times. Exquisite guitar, exquisite vocal, just the right amount of both.

There is a modern problem with cultural revisionism in that as well as appreciated the art the artist produces, we also are bidden to seek approval of the person producing the art. Martyn presents an alarming problem for such sentimentalisation. He was an aggressive, wife beating, family abandoning, egotistical drug addict who was a guitar maverick. We can infantilise the historical record or attempt to excuse him, or try to contextualise his behaviour by describing his life in a culturally hermitically clinical way. In 1974 in an interview with ZIGZAG magazine Martyn’s describes his youth, the moments that his crystallises into the lyric and  structure of this song thus,

“Kick a few heads in or get looked upon as a pansy … You don’t have any choice up there, either you’re violent or you’re a weed. And I haven’t got the capacity for being trodden on. I’m a natural born coward just like everybody else, but I don’t like being taken advantage of. I’m probably still the same now. But at the time it was just either eat or be eaten … There were fights in school all the time and knives were bandied about.”

(Excerpt From: John Neil Munro. “Some People are Crazy”. Apple Books.) 

It should have ended better, but it didn’t

(PS)

“Island Was the Finest Record Label on the Planet From 1967 to 1974, Prove Me Wrong” is a sign I’m going to get painted to attach to a table, so I can sit outside US college buildings with a mug of tea and debate with differently-minded (i.e. wrong) people until they slink away with tails between legs and tattered opinions dragging behind them. Its remit wasn’t a particular style of music, or even anything commercially viable: acts just had to be new and interesting. That they took a punt on an unknown folkie in 1967 and basically recorded his live act in around 4 days is a testament to this.

John Martyn’s style sets him apart from many other singer/songwriters. His songs aren’t about having a catchy hook or even that many chord changes: it’s a vibe you settle into, the repetition of uncomplicated ideas with a percussive thumb being the metronome to make the song tick along. The nearest comparison I would draw from the same era would be that of Bert Jansch: one man and his guitar against the world, with attitude, style and technique to set him apart from the mainstream.

Run Honey Run is played in DADDAD open tuning which features on a number of Martyn’s earlier songs: it’s a stripped-down tonality which helps to keep the song structure itself very simple. The vocal melody feels like a pentatonic scale, which again keeps complexity to a minimum, almost harking back to early polyphonic music. There’s also a hint of the swinging style that Martyn himself said was a characteristic of his sound, albeit one that would become more pronounced in later recordings.

This is a case of ‘less is more’: a simple song with very slight ornamentation, played beautifully with one instrument and a voice, lasting under three minutes. The emotion in the voice isn’t overwrought, despite the charged lyrics depicting a harrowing breakup; it’s almost a matter-of-fact delivery, like this is familiar ground which he knows will be re-trod soon enough. Lovely stuff.

(CG)

In the early 1960s folk music had a prominent position in the contemporary music scene in the United Kingdom, being a mish mash of elements ranging from a rather fey model of the troubadour to a potentially subversive voice. This subversive voice often reflected the views of the marginalised, especially noticeable in Scottish and Irish contemporary folk where historical memory was drawn upon to challenge and question the centralised domination of the London Metropole as the seat of government (some things change not a jot). In the USA the widespread success of Bob Dylan, and earlier pioneers such as Arlo Guthrie, in the folk scene fuelled London record companies to produce a range of folk troubadours, most notably Donovan but also John Martyn, Nick Drake and others (along with groups such as the Humblebums who had Billy Connolly in their ranks and represented the more subversive edge of the marginalised). Dylan’s famous move to electric guitars and other instruments in 1965/6 heralded the subsidence of record company interest in the purist folk scene in the UK and an interest in crossover performers who followed the path of Bob Dylan. John Martyn was a prominent exponent of this mixture where often blues inspired arrangements were topped off with a mournful singing tone that nodded towards Dylan and especially Leonard Cohen.

Run Honey Run follows Dylan’s example of rejecting tightly composed and orchestrated lyrics executed within the three minute limit, or thereabouts, that were de rigour in the late fifties and early sixties pop music for a broader and more flexible creative canvas. However for the most part in the United Kingdom the epic canvases that Dylan and other American performers created was exchanged for a very English apolitical sensibility that chimed with class values of middle England. Further the radical changes in the pop landscape epitomised by the Beatles with their celebrated releases in the 1960s, culminating in the creative experimentation of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, was ignored as sullying the purity of this genre’s folk roots. Needless to say, this was quite the opposite of the creative mix happening in the states where to the horror of older generations of country and western aficionados musicians, such as Gram Parsons and The Byrds, were melding elements of rock with country and western.  For me, the difficulty with this song of John Martyn is inherent to this troubadour genre. The Run Honey Run lyric’s invigorating first line hook dissipates soon after, while the guitar work with its rather knowing blues influenced underpinnings sits uneasily with the sub-Leonard Cohen lyric and delivery. This is one for the John Martyn fans exclusively.

(CH)

I like folk music and often listen to The Folk Show with Mark Ratcliffe on BBC Radio 2. Overall, I quite enjoyed this song. It had a nice rhythmic and melodic feel to it, though I never did figure out why Honey needed to run.

(GV)

Run Honey Run instantly pulls me in with its strong alternating bassline and dancing, wistful melody. The style of the acoustic guitar very much reminds me of Bert Jansch's version of Nottamun Town, but the lyrics and Martyn's tone add a ladle full of melancholy, more in line with the Jean Ritchie version.

The echo and soft tone of the vocals gives a feeling of distance which contrasts the unvarnished intimacy of the guitar, probably an intentional representation of the bitter-sweet story of the song. The instruction for his lover to run and never think back is an expression of raw, loving selflessness, given with the full knowledge that his grief will last a near eternity - devastatingly sad, selfless and worldly, especially so when considering the age at which Martyn penned this incredible song.

(MS)

 

Run Honey Run is a fairly routine acoustic ballad in a folk-blues style detailing a familiar my-girl-done-gone-and-left-me type thing. It enters and exits the cranium in fairly swift order vaguely hinting at the promise of more substantial things to come. But a full listen to the accompanying album proves to be a rather underwhelming experience leaving us with little to focus on other than the chimneys on the sleeve-photo taken on the roof of Island Records boss Chris Blackwell’s flat on Cromwell Road. This “London Conversation” was the first departure for that label in terms of the blue-eyed folk-blues bandwagon, but this is less a conversation and more a few naïve tune-ups thrown like remarks into a furious debate then being conducted in the cellars at Benjies and Les Cousins. In the red corner Bert Jansch, in the blue corner Davey Graham.

To be fair John Martyn came to the party quite late, he was young when he recorded this. Back to Stay is quite pretty in a Girl From the North Country way and Rolling Home has some diverting if kitsch sitar work. But there’s a passe Dylan cover and things didn’t noticeably improve on the similarly bland second album that followed a year later. Produced by Paul Simon’s former flat-mate Al Stewart, the latter’s 1969 LP “Love Chronicles” would demonstrate what could be achieved when folkies managed to break free from slavishly diluted Dylanisms. And as we find time and time again, it’s the way the artists of this period responded to the progressive changes around them that make this such a fertile and interesting period.

 

After this the Island Records machine put their full weight behind John Martyn and they packed him off to Woodstock to make an album with new wife Beverley Kutner, famed producer Joe Boyd and members of The Band. This resulted in the excellent “Stormbringer” and a further LP “Road to Ruin”, where the supporting cast were also providing backing to Hampstead neighbour Nick Drake’s contemporaneous “Bryter Layter” opus. Both albums are good and due to Martyn’s later popularity (and infamy) more than a little overlooked.

 

Beverley had already released a few folk-pop solo singles and after “decorating” the product of her boyfriends, appearing on a Bert Jansch LP sleeve and delivering a spoken line on the Simon and Garfunkel “Bookends” LP, she secured a slot on the opening night at the Monterey Pop Festival. How they were pushed together as a collaborative couple on these LPs may be linked to some concern by Island over what to do with Martyn. The albums were unusual in that they seemed to downplay his guitar playing and shy away from explicit duets. He did a song, then she did a song and in many cases her stuff is the more memorable (check out Can’t Get the One I Want on the 1^st and Auntie Aviator on the 2nd).

 

So in retrospect it’s no surprise that he should emerge a little later with a completely different style, with his voice buried in an incoherent mumble beneath kaleidoscopic guitar and bass duels. No need to hear the lyrics when an overarching mood of instrumental dexterity became the selling point from “Solid Air” onwards. Perhaps it’s me or perhaps it’s the fact he was of a younger generation, only finding his style as it expanded into the no man’s land of the mid- 70’s, but it’s music that I’ve never warmed to.  I’ve long suspected that his inadequacies were skilfully covered up in both production and a macho mystic attitude with a little stretched out a long way. In more recent years his connection to Nick Drake as both friend and rival have overshadowed his own work, building up a narrative which portrays Martyn as a malevolent presence around the fragile canonised Drake. That may be a bit too much too.

 

So the song here is a youthful sketch but no more than that. Check out those two LP’s he made with Beverley for his most interesting stuff. Continue after that with caution.