1. DEATHBLOG;

Well it’s happened again. I’ve got a couple of good weblog posts lined up for the next few weeks, and then I get to about page 12 of the free paper on the bus into work this morning, and……. wham, another sledgehammer.

Hunter S. Thompson, R.I.P.

Characteristically, It sounds like it was pretty messy too.

As ever, I don’t really know what to say in the face of the death of someone I never met, but who nevertheless has had a huge influence on my life. “Massive influence..?” Well, yeah, I guess so. I’ve been reading the good doctor’s books and dispatches consistently since the age of 16, and pretty much from the first paragraph he established himself as one of the ever diminishing pantheon of larger than life cultural heroes who I always feel are fighting my corner, reporting back on the world in a way I can understand, and responding to it in the only sane way possible.

He probably made me laugh out loud more frequently than any other author. People say his writing style is a cliché, and they’re right, but fuck them – they’re probably the same people who say that rock n’ roll is a cliché. They’ve thought too hard and don’t understand the importance of energy, and of sound and fury and self-evident truths, and these are the things that HST put across in words on a page better than anyone.

It’ll be a damn shame though if he’s remembered solely as the Dr. Gonzo persona immortalised by Johnny Depp in the movie, because aside from all the (admittedly brilliant) gooning around and tall tales and self-aggrandisement (and the ensuing canonisation by generations of twattish journalism students), let us not forget what a stunningly powerful writer he was. As a young man, before the journalism and the drugs, HST was obsessed with driving himself, through hard graft and tough living, to write the Great American Novel, going as far as to retype the whole of the Great Gatsby word for word in the hope that some of the secrets of that book’s power would rub off on him, buried deep in the sentence construction and the rhythms of the writing. The best immediate result of that period was ‘The Rum Diary’, which is pretty good, but the true legacy of it can be seen throughout his later work – no matter how crazed or fragmentary it gets, the punch-to-the-gut force and beauty of Fitzgerald or Hemingway or Nelson Algren is always there, capable of giving you a good gasp or shiver when you least expect it. You’re also missing the point if you think the subjects of Thompson’s writing were anything less than deadly serious, just because he ditched pompous solemnity and revelled instead in the grotesque absurdity of the shit that runs our world.

I see that people are already writing off the death as the natural culmination of his gonzo-maniac persona, and some guy was quoted in the bit I read in the paper saying “this is sad, but predictable”. How fucking callous… most of the stuck-up tits of the ‘literary establishment’ will no doubt shrug their shoulders at the idea of some famous drug-munching goon shooting his head off, but let’s try and remember this as what it is – the violent and untimely death of a masterful writer, and a great journalist and a tireless campaigner for the cause of all that’s right and true.

If you look back a few months in this weblog’s archives, you’ll find a link to what I guess must be one of Hunter S. Thompson’s last published pieces – his pre-election address to the nation in Rolling Stone. It’s a great, uncompromising bit of writing, but in view of subsequent events, unbearably depressing.

Thompson throws himself fully behind Kerry in a surprisingly affirmative fashion, and tears Bush to pieces so virulently it makes his famous characterisations of Nixon look affectionate.

Having spent the best part of his life chronicling its agonising death-throes, he declares that a Bush victory would mark the final demise of the American Dream. This time it’s do or die, he says in effect - do the right thing or all hope is gone.

So here we are then – the last custodian of the American Dream has declared it dead and blown his brains out.

We live in dark times indeed.

And the Mt Olympus frequented by my living literary heroes is starting to look pretty lonely as well. I think poor Kurt Vonnegut is wandering around on his own up there, looking for someone to talk to. Somebody, anybody, PLEASE write a mindblowing, inspiring book that really kicks out the jams – give him some company. Please Mr. Publishing Man, can we have some GOOD BOOKS again…?

But that’s a rant for another day. For now;

Dr. Thompson, Raoul Duke, Dr. Gonzo, the Mighty Lono, the Mayor of Fat City – R.I.P.




If you’ve never read it, I insist you go and plough your way through ‘The Great Shark Hunt’ in tribute. Now.



2. ONE WORD;

A couple of years ago I borrowed a copy of Low’s ‘Things We Lost in the Fire’ from a friend, having not heard anything by them before (I think the name kind of put me off for a while). So I stuck it on, and heard the band’s justly celebrated male/female harmony vocals launch into;

“When they found your body,
giant answers on your eyes”

And I instantly ceased whatever it was I was doing at the time and froze, struck by perhaps the most stunning opening lines to a song I’d ever heard.

A couple of days ago, I went to see Low play in Wolverhampton, and they came back on for the encore and did ‘Sunflowers’, and through the louder and clearer sound provided by a concert, and the ever-so-slightly-different pronunciation of a live performance, I distinctly made out;

“When they found your body,
giant X’s on your eyes”

It’s still a great song, but it’s not quite the same anymore.

Aside from that though, it was a suitably stunning performance – the beauty of the sounds Low make, both vocal and instrumental, instantly sets them apart as something special, and the intensity they invest in their music makes them even more so. The new material sounded superb – not as bitter or angry as lazy pre-release press has suggested, but just strong, striking, defiant songs that, unlike some of their previous work, refuse to play nice or fade into the background. Really, really brilliant.

3. MAGAZINE WHORING UPDATE;

I’m informed that the third issue of Beard magazine is going to the presses as we speak. It’s a terrific little publication, and this issue promises to be the best one yet. And I’m not just saying that because they let me write stuff and do stupid drawings. Hit the ‘Beard’ link to your right and find out how to get yourself a copy. Oh, go on, do.

The new Plan B is out too of course, and this time even my local HMV has copies of it, so you’ve got no excuse for not checking it out. It’s a great issue too – it’s really finding its feet as a more varied and accessible magazine for people outside the Everett True / Careless Talk.. ghetto, but without sacrificing any of the quality of writing or presentation. The films, books, art etc. sections at the back are getting bigger and more worthwhile, which is good to see, and obviously all the star writers and illustrators are still kicking ass re: the music content.

I’d imagine there must have been some heated exchanges (probably still going on – I haven’t had a chance to check the messageboards) over the decision to put Smoosh (a band consisting of two 12 year old girls) on the cover. I’m kind of in two minds about it I guess – from a purely artistic point of view, why the hell not? Is our culture really over-sensitive to the extent that a perfectly normal and harmless decision like this is automatically seen as weird and note-worthy and a point of controversy? Well if so, it shouldn’t be, so fuck it, who cares – good move.
But from a more practical perspective, for a magazine that needs to establish itself as a valid contender for shelf space amid all the crap, ‘weird’ and slightly ‘unsettling’ cover choices aren’t going to help matters in terms of attracting distribution or new readers.

As for the band itself, I guess it’s pretty much the natural culmination of the Langley Schools Music Project / ‘childlike’ naive music worshipping indie-pop mindset to start championing bands who actually ARE children… and whilst I can’t actually come up with a valid objection, I can’t shake the vague feeling in the back of my brain that it’s all somehow, well, wrong on some level…

Why though? Hmm… let’s have a bit of a think about this; I guess I’ve always thought the poignancy of people like Daniel Johnson comes partly from the fact that they obviously want to recapture the innocence of childlike thought processes, but it’s inherent that they CAN’T – they’ve grown up, and they’ve got to face the grown-up world – hence the sadness behind all that stuff. But a certain section of the naive pop audience seems determined to take things several stages further, into the realm of searching for music to help them actively regress to a childhood state for it’s own sake, and – with no disrespect to the band themselves – Smoosh on the cover of Plan B is the natural conclusion of this, and it’s an attitude that I can’t really relate to.. it just seems slightly weird to me. The very nature of innocence is that it can’t be recovered, y’know? That’s kind of the point. Listen to ‘Sugar Mountain’ by Neil Young, have a good cry, and move on.

Or alternatively, counter-argument;

A re-reading of Everett True’s Smoosh cover feature swiftly reveals that he’s sensibly kept the childhood-worshipping stuff to a minimum, and instead focused on Smoosh’s qualities as a good, intelligent and interesting band regardless of their age, and they indeed come across as such. So fair enough I guess – no complaints here. I’ll withdraw the above as a personal opinion, but post it anyway cos I think it’s still an interesting argument.

Crikey, how did I get on to all that?

Well anyway, buy Plan B, it’s great.

1. WE'VE GOT A TICKET TO RYE (AND WE DON'T CARE)

Yes, I booked tickets today for the - boo, hiss! - Vincent Gallo curated All Tomorrows Parties in April.

In stark contrast to previous years, in which we've struggled to round-up the necessary four people in time to get a chalet, this time I'm led to believe that the party departing from Leicester is filling at least two chalets and hiring a bloody mini-bus! You'd think something like that would point somewhat toward a fulfilling social life, wouldn't you? Well it's a funny old world. On the off-chance that you're going too, don't hesitate to drop me a line.

2. AN EXCITING NEW VENTURE!

I've been getting a bit back into the old routine of making mix CDs this week, as, after a positively ridiculous delay, I finally feel inspired to put some music together for the great Jack Fear (see 'Fear' on the list of links to your right), who was kind enough to send me a couple of superbly assembled discs a few months back.

Endlessly and fruitlessly compiling great mix tape/CD track-listings is probably my most geekish and obsessive pass-time (which I guess is saying something..), and one of my few genuine talents. I was thinking this week how cool it would be to make a magical and mystifying compilation with suitably cryptic cover-art, and then just leave copies of it around the place, like flyers or something, for the unsuspecting to stubble across…

After a few minutes thought, it becomes clear that that probably wouldn't actually work very well, but what I think WOULD be a cool idea would be to irregularly make a CD of strange and wonderful music I've been listening to, and sort of assemble a mailing list of people to send copies of it to, kind of like issues of a magazine. Free of charge, obviously. I'd certainly get a kick out of it, and hopefully the recipients would too. Could make a nice old fashioned alternative to the daily barrage provided by MP3 blogs.

So what do you think? Comments please: thingonthedoorstep@yahoo.com

3. SOME MOVIE REVIEWS FROM BACK IN NOVEMBER THAT I MEANT TO POST HERE BUT FORGOT;

7/11/04
The Mindscape of Alan Moore (Dez Vylenz & Moritz Winkler, 2003)

Went to see a screening of 'The Mindscape of Alan Moore', a film about, well, Alan Moore, obviously. It's basically just a glorified 90 minute interview with the big man. He talks about his upbringing in Northampton and how he ended up writing comics, which is quite interesting, then they go through a few summarised explanations of his major works and then smash straight into the precise details of Moore's myriad thoughts concerning history, politics, sexuality, science, metaphysics, religion, magick, imagination, evolution, cosmology and Mithras only knows what else. Much of what he has to say is well worth hearing, although the film's attempt to cram 25 years worth of weird notions and paradigm shifts into just over one hour of screen time makes for a bit of a headfuck. Moore just drones on and on in his comfortingly thick, rumbling midlands accent (forget spoken word, he could make a killer avant garde drone album just by humming for a while) whilst the filmmakers, clearly out to avoid the monotony of a long talking head interview, and clearly having been granted a bit of a budget to waste, go completely off their rockers, bombarding us with a seemingly endless assault of brainmelting visuals, featuring everything from spiralling extreme close-ups of comic book panels and flying occult paraphrenalia to CGI zooming-to-the-heart-of-the-atom science documentary wigouts, and even distinctly dodgy live action reconstructions of scenes from Moore's comics. Which is all rather off-putting to be honest. Moore's relentlessly Mercurial, dope-addled magickal/intellectual headspace, in which BIG IDEAS clash like titans over smouldering heaps of dense pop culture esoterica, is enough of a sensory assault in itself without all the visual ramalama. And anyway, nothing they're able to conjure up can possibly compete with the psychedelic glory of Alan's mighty beard and scary bloodshot eyes. Or maybe that's just me.
Well whatever, I await 'The Mindscape of Grant Morrison' with baited breath and a stash of headache tablets.

8/11/04
Switchblade Romance (Alexandre Aja, 2003)

Krist almighty.. in retrospect, I really, really could have done without going straight from a horrible day at my horrible new work to see this French horror movie. Somebody once said of Hershal Gordon Lewis' hilarious b-movie classic 'Bloodfeast' that “if the violence was in any way realistic it would be utterly unwatchable”, and the makers of this nasty and dismal picture seem to have set out to prove that point. Starting off like a thoroughly professional contemporary Euro-art film - crystal clear footage (with obligatory drained colour cinematography), lots of lingering close-ups and can-hear-a-pin-drop-a-mile-away soundtrack. And then an utterly ridiculous axe-wielding maniac turns up a few minutes in and, oh fucking hell, this isn't heading anywhere pleasant, is it?
If you're the kind of film viewer who gets off on brutal, unremitting carnage, terror and misery - a Takashi Miike fan perhaps, or somebody who rushed out to buy Salo on DVD - then you'll love this one. By any standard you may care to apply, the parade of bloodcurdling atrocities presented here is intense and gruesome to the point of being difficult for even horror fans to sit through without squirming. Lurid close-ups, relentless screaming, rusty, blunt instruments and blood-spewing, gaping wounds are the order of the day.
Which would be dandy if the film was in any way engaging or, god forbid, made some kind of a point. As it is though, despite it's delusions of art and hamfisted attempts at Hitchcock style tension, it's basically ludicrous, exploitative, misogynistic, boring and - I can't stress this strongly enough - so utterly, utterly brainless that any viewer with an agenda beyond stomach-churning violence and sadism might as well be watching Friday the 13th part XII or something. It gave me a godawful headache (so LOUD!) and taught me nothing except what happens when you repeatedly batter somebody's face in with a barbed wire covered fencepost. And, oh look, here comes a totally nonsensical M. Night Shawaddywaddy style trick ending! Didn't see THAT one coming!
I'm sure 'Switchblade Romance' will find itself an enthusiastic audience amongst 'visceral cinema' fans and the ever-reliable gore fraternity, but from my perspective it's garbage, quite frankly.


9/11/04
Queimada! (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1968)

Now this is an interesting one. Ostensibly an old school cast of thousands historical epic relating the bloody colonial history of the Caribbean island of the title, and staring a mid-period Marlon Brando as a charismatic English rabble-rouser of uncertain loyalties, it's a film that doesn't get shown very often. The reasons for this are abundantly clear; Firstly, in cinematic terms it's pretty flawed - it has that inconsistent, slightly confusing quality that suggest they filmed as much as they could before the money ran out and then went home and cobbled it together into something vaguely coherent in the cutting room. And secondly, it presents a heavily political anti-colonial tale in a grimly realistic manner devoid of empty rhetoric or easy answers. So for the casual '60s cinema-goer: dull, hard to follow, dispiriting and a little uncomfortable. But to the discerning modern viewer prepared to overcome such obstacles, the spirit of an ambitious and uncompromising film is just sitting there waiting to be appreciated.

Brief plot summary: Mid-Nineteenth Century, Quimada is essentially a big Portuguese slave labour sugar plantation. Brando's two-fisted, straight-talking ex-Navy aristocrat turns up and swiftly establishes contact with the island's scattered network of proto-socialist types who are trying to organise a slave uprising. Not one to fool around, he swiftly picks out a black man with the appropriate look of defiance in his eyes and, before the poor guy knows what's happening, Brando has helped him and his mates undertake a gold heist and flee across the island and has appointed him the new rebel king.
“We'll die if we stay here, won't we?” asks the nervous rebel king.
“Yes,” deadpans Brando between sips from his hip-flask, “be a bloody massacre most likely.”
Cut to footage of women and children celebrating their new freedom and the blood runs cold.

So anyway - a bunch of other stuff happens, the rebels eventually take bloody control of the island and set up camp in the governor's mansion. Having won their friendship and trust, Brando quietly reveals himself to be an agent for British intelligence and says cheerio, leaving the island as the smiling Englishmen with chequebooks descend to negotiate terms for reopening the plantations. Cut to ten years later and our rebel king has decided he dislikes British exploitation as much as Portuguese. He's taken his men off into the mountains and war has been declared. Brando is tracked down by the sugar company and called back to sort things out. The liberal white prime minister is swiftly assassinated. The army is in charge. The deadeyed 'citizens' are herded into concentration camps. When initial overtures of friendship towards his old revolutionary pals are brutally refused, Brando finds himself wading into a self-destructive guerrilla war against the rebels he created, and that's when things really start getting unpleasant.

The deeply cynical (and essentially realistic) way in which Queimada portrays the cruelty, confusion and mindless greed of Empire is pretty radical for a film of it's period - even these days you'd be hard pressed to find a political critique this harsh anywhere outside the realm of documentary.
Inevitably, 20th century comparisons abound - South America? Haiti? By far the most striking parallel is with Britain's war against the Mau Mau guerrillas in Kenya I reckon.

Queimada was filmed on a real Caribbean island (don't know which one), and the epic crowd scenes featuring the massed hordes of recently 'liberated' slaves engaging in celebrations and street parties, riots and battles are impressive and authentic, although it's sad to realise that they probably didn't have to issue any costumes or build any sets to make the island and it's occupants look the way they did over a century ago.

Brando turns in a pretty good performance - the key scene towards the end, when his hard-nosed exterior nearly breaks down in the face of creeping doubt and confusion about what he's doing, is stunning - you can see the birth of the energies he would dredge up for his portrayal of Kurtz in Apocalypse Now a decade later.

Nobody in the film is the hero, nobody's the wise man. Nobody learns anything, and everybody loses out (except the cheery stockbrokers back in London who are briefly shown discussing turbulence in the price of sugar). The film's conclusions are staggeringly bleak.

28/11/04
Battle Royale II (???)
As a big fan of the first instalment, I had high hopes for this one, but am sad to report it's pretty awful to be honest. Proof the Japanese can make a sequel just as dunderheaded as any American one. The plot initially sounds promising :- the boy who survived at the end of the last film (Nanahara) has become a terrorist / freedom fighter leading a gang of other BR survivors/escapees in a quest to bring down the government that developed the whole crazy scheme in the first place. So far so good - you'd think some gnarly urban warfare and further examinations of a diseased political system which forces it's children to kill each other would be on the cards. But the film is lame and ignores these interesting possibilities. The plot barely makes sense at all - “Hey I know,” decides someone at the government, “our crazy scheme to make school kids kill each other has backfired and led to the creation of a deadly network of terrorists who threaten the security of the world! So let's send another force of terrified, untrained school children out to get them! That's sure to work out nicely!” And the 'terrorists' are conveniently holed up on another abandoned island, so it all starts off as a rather ridiculous 'this time it's war' re-run of the first film. And then the surviving kids eventually meet up with the terrorists, who it turns out blew up two skyscrapers and now prefer to skulk around not doing much and releasing the occasional video tape. You can see where this is going. Yes, in an attempt to make something of a film completely devoid of intelligence or purpose, they make it into a big and rather nonsensical metaphor for Al-Qaeda and TWAT. At one point, the Prime Minister of Japan even turns up to warn rather vaguely that “that country” is on the verge of bombing Japan unless they get rid of their resident terrorists, and Nanahara reels off the familiar list of places that “that country” has bombed in the past, accompanied by grim stock footage of them in case we'd missed the point. Quite how/why he seems to have ended up being so anti-American (sorry, anti-“that country”) is never explained, and neither is the exact nature of the political situation in the film's world. But then as I say, the film fails to engage with the issues it purports to explore to such an extent that it's completely farcical.
But anyway, lots and lots of people run around and shoot each other in an attempt to outdo the violence of the first film, but because of the 'war' scenario there's no tension or variation at all, and it quickly gets tedious. Lots of characters who have barely even been introduced are granted histrionic death scenes (plenty of excessive shouting of each other's names in the traditional Japanese manner), and the dialogue is atrocious throughout.
It's a testament to the filmmakers' incompetence that a film that initially seems to feature so much of my favourite kind of stuff ends up being such a waste of everybody's time. By trying to be a serious political tale it loses all the stuff that made the initial concept so gleefully entertaining, but it's so dumb and devoid of style that in the end it fails to make any kind of point whatsoever and is just thoroughly monotonous. Next time let's have less empty political hamboning and more schoolgirls with scythes.

SORRY FOr RECENT LACK OF UPDATE ACTION.

HERE'S A ROUND-UP OF SOME COMPILATIONS I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO RECENTLY:


Gimee Skelter (Buddyhead)

A handsomely assembled compilation in which Aaron North and Travis Keller of the Buddyhead website and record label put together music by a lot of bands they like - namely an unwholesome selection of contemporary American guitar-slingers, plus token Old English Dudes Primal Scream and Wire.
Things couldn’t kick off much better than with curator / spiritual godfather Iggy Pop delivering a hilarious diatribe against Moby (“..that fatuous bastard!”), before Mudhoney give us the gleefully salacious ‘Hard-On for War’ (“It is our patriotic duty / to make sweet love tonight”) and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs do their trademark 90 second lo-fi shred attack. Other highlights include Burning Brides and Dead Meadow drawing us into a gnarly narcotic haze and Primal Scream almost making up for their frequent shitness by letting Kevin Shields off the leash on a blazing live version of ‘Shoot Speed/ Kill Light’. Le Tigre contribute ‘Mediocrity Rules’, one of their punkiest and therefore best tracks (I would have thought all the casual sexist / homophobic banter on the Buddyhead website might have made them reluctant to take part… obviously not, thankfully for us listeners) and the gender ratio is helped out further by all-girl new wave revivalist types Radio Vago. Your attention is also drawn to a cheery tune from the terrific Beehive & the Barracudas, and a fucking great track from the much underrated Your Enemies Friends. Proceedings conclude with a taped interview with Iggy, who amiably chews the fat about cocks and obscure ‘60s Detroit bands with an over-excitable DJ. Add some typically spot-on Raymond Pettibon artwork and a most satisfactory compilation is achieved.
In many ways of course, the Buddyhead gang’s belligerent outsider rhetoric is a complete con. They may declare that “Corporate rock sucks cock”, but about half the bands represented here are signed to major labels, and the likes of Weezer and Cave-in are hardly likely to blow anybody’s mind. It’s all good hedonistic fun though, and hey, maybe we should be glad that big corporations are throwing money at some of these shifty fuckers – they’re sure to waste it all on noisy, impenetrable albums, sell no records and get dropped. Fun for all the family.

The Psychedelic Experience Volumes 1&2 (Subliminal Records)

A fairly recent collection of terminally obscure American ‘60s psyche sides which have somehow been ignored by the countless previous compilations and bootlegs in the post-Nuggets universe, coming at us from Stockholm based label Subliminal. Some awesome death goddess cover artwork and thoroughly entertaining sleevenotes bode well, but the immediate drawback here is the sound quality – in stark contrast to the amazing remastering jobs on the Nuggets and Pebbles collections, these tunes have been ripped straight from dusty 35 year old mono 45s with no enhancement or cleaning up at all, and it shows. Obviously fans of stuff like this will easily be able to overcome the murky sound, and if nothing else it helps to add a certain cultish mystique to sound of a bunch of San Bernedino dropouts banging around trying to sound like the Doors, but still – an advance warning on the packaging would have been appreciated. If I’d bought this for full price I’d have been pissed.
Nevertheless though, the general quality of the music here is great. The compilers’ decision to concentrate exclusively on the more druggy/deranged end of the garage spectrum yields up some total gems of freakery. The unpromisingly named Dirty Filthy Mud give us ‘Forest of Black’, an utterly mindbending 1967 excursion into dimensions of alien sound which have rarely been heard before or since. Combined with a haunting melodic vocal and some serious freakbeat drumming, it’s a classic of the “what the hell were these guys ON??” variety. ‘I’m Not What You Are’ by Jason Merrick & the Finders sees the startlingly angry Mr. Merrick ranting incoherently about ‘pure bourgeois’ posers over a rough n’ ready garage backbeat – an unlikely precursor of The Fall? The Fantastic Zoo’s ‘Light Show’ meanwhile stinks so strongly of Hollywood hippy kitsch you expect Peter Fonda to come reeling round the corner looking for a groovy trip. And, well, I could go on…
Inexperienced psychedelic adventurers are directed straight to the Nuggets box set to get the basics on one of the consistently bizarre and joyous subcultures in pop history, but for greedy aficionados this disc will provide a good few days lysergic feasting.

A Soldier’s Sad Story: Vietnam through the eyes of black America 1966 – 72 (Ace Records)

The number of soul cuts dealing directly with the Vietnam War puts supposedly more radical white musicians to shame, and this excellent collection, much championed by John Peel shortly before his sad passing, does exactly what it says on the tin. Quality is top-notch throughout with some of the cream of sixties black talent represented. The tracks are arranged in roughly chronological order to suggest a journey through the typical black soldier’s experience, with relatively upbeat tunes such as ‘Marchin’ off the War’ (William Bell) and ‘He’ll be Back’ (the Players), both from 1966, slowly giving way to the more uncompromising likes of ‘Bring the Boys Home’ (Freda Payne) and ‘Stop the War Now’ (Edwin Starr) in the early ‘70s, culminating in Swamp Dogg’s rendition of John Prine’s devastating protest song ‘Sam Stone’.
Hearing the previously limited range of soul music subject matter expand to include foxholes, gun battles and lost limbs is chilling, adding a whole new layer of urgency and yearning to the more traditional love songs, as “I’ll see you tonight baby” is replaced with “I’ll see you in three or four years baby”, or indeed “Viet Cong everywhere I look now baby!” (courtesy of Johnny & Jon on ‘Christmas in Vietnam’), and the artists here manage to address the difficult political and social issues at stake with the same hard-hitting purity they give to songs of romance and redemption.
Highlights aren’t hard to find. The Monitors ‘Greetings (This is Uncle Sam)’, featuring great drill sergeant backing vocals, poignantly captures the feelings of a carefree young man who wakes up one morning to find he’s in the army. Mike Williams' ‘Lonely Soldier’ is absolutely stunning – a foreboding and questioning song, beautiful and universal enough to make anybody sit up and pay attention. In the ridiculously bombastic ‘I Believe I’m Gonna Make It’, Joe Tex introduces us to the rather disturbing notion that thinking about his girlfriend makes him want to “get up and cut down two more enemies!”. Gloria Edwards presents us with a despairing vision of her man finding happiness in the arms of “some slant-eyed woman” in the bleak ‘Something you Couldn’t Write About’, and Carla Whitney’s ‘War’ is a great hard-driving slice of politicised funk.
I’ll resist the obvious comment about these songs being more relevant now than ever before, and simply say that to call this album ‘essential’ is an understatement.

(I used that same line about the Rough trade Country comp a few posts back didn't I? Well never mind, it's still true. well-chosen compilations are where it's at.)