Jeffrey Lewis Runs Down the History of Punk in New York City up to 1975 for you...

...in case you were wondering about such things;

I'm not sure I share Jeffrey's admiration for the second David Peel & The Lower East Side album (it's pretty bad), but otherwise, spot on. Clinton Heylin and Griel Marcus must be kicking themselves.

I found this great video a couple of weeks ago, following some Youtube links after some nice person doing publicity for Rough Trade thought to email me a video for a song off Jeffrey's new album, which I am looking forward to venturing forth at the weekend to buy a copy of.

I realised a while back that I must have seen Jeffrey Lewis play more times than any other artist/band ever - perhaps on about 12 to 15 seperate occasions over the years? And because he kinda seems to always be around, always seems to have loads of great new songs to play, fun new stuff to do on stage etc., it's easy to start to take his overall greatness for granted.

I've recently found myself listening back to all Jeffrey's Rough Trade albums for the first time in a while though. That is, actually listening to them all the way through whilst I mooch about doing other stuff, rather than just picking out and obsessing over my favourite songs, like I usually do. And, damn me if they don't all really stand up as GREAT albums. Real satisfying, self-contained listening experiences in the classic vein, to enthral, educate and entertain in timeless notice-something-new-every-listen type fashion. For all his lo-fi self-deprecating humour and such, let us not forget that this guy is the real deal.

Labels: Jeffrey Lewis, punk, videos

A Brief Tribute to Billy Fury.

One of the best gigs I went to in the whole of 2008 (and boy did I ever go to some good ones), and one of my best memories of last summer overall, was Calvin Johnson, playing at a youth club in Finsbury Park.

I won’t talk about the show in great detail, cos that’s not the point of this post, (although if you go to the Upset The Rhythm website and refresh the banner at the top enough times, you’ll be rewarded with a shot of myself and various pals looking rapturous in the audience), but: go see him!

During one of his always entertaining digressions, Calvin started talking about how he’d always wanted to play in Liverpool when touring with the Beat Happening, but had never been able to, until now. “You see, one of my greatest musical heroes came from Liverpool”, he said. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the audience respond with psychic eye-rolling smileys. He kept going on about it though, talking about what a great, musical city Liverpool is, and how dubious UK promoters had always discouraged him from going there for one reason or another…. until finally he exploded; “I mean, BILLY FURY came from Liverpool!”

I think I was still laughing my ass of at this classic reversal-of-expectation, as Calvin – obvious a sincere and very big fan - explained that he’d gone to visit a statue of Billy Fury when in Liverpool a few days previous (and what a statue – see above), and proceeded to rhapsodise about the pure genius of the lyrical phrasing on one of Fury’s b-sides (sadly I forget which one).

If I was familiar with the name Billy Fury at all at this point, it was as one of the memorably nom-de-plumed stable of prefabricated late 50s/early 60s pre-Beatles British pop idols managed by archetypal gay Denmark St. impresario Larry Parnes (also see Johnny Gentle, Marty Wilde etc.). Runners up to Cliff Richard basically, playing watered down rock n’ roll and Tin Pin Alley standards in an ‘all round entertainer’ mould to square seaside theatre crowds.

Count the unfair assumptions in the preceding sentence and despair I guess, but nonetheless, that’s the way canonical rock history has judged these guys: look elsewhere punks, nothing to see here.

Reinforcing this impression, I next came across some references to Fury last month, whilst reading Ray Davies’ superb and bizarre autobiography/paranoid ego fantasy ‘X-Ray’ (read it, read it, read it). Early in their career, Ray relates, The Kinks were assigned a fastidious git of a tour manager, to drill the unruly teenage rockers into a shapely entertainment unit. This guy, it seems, was particularly keen on talking about how he used to work for Billy Fury, and what a consummate entertainer and gentleman Billy used to be, in contrast to the disobedient young thugs he was now forced to deal with.

Reprimanding Dave Davies for absent-mindedly pissing out of the window on one occasion, it seems this tour manager, when challenged, exclaimed that not only did the sainted Billy Fury restrict his pissing to designated toilets like a decent human being, but, IN FACT, Billy Fury was such a professional that he never remembered him going to the toilet AT ALL.

Cue hilarity from The Kinks, as the generation gap widens further, and Billy Fury’s professionalism becomes a running joke amongst them forever more as a procession of grown ups try to tell them how to behave.

But, as a slightly overenthusiastic contributor to Billy’s Wikipedia page puts it, “Fury's fans and contemporaries in music knew he was a rocker and the real thing musically”, and, curiosity suitably piqued by these contrasting references, I’ve recently been listening to ‘Billy Fury: The EP Collection’ on See For Miles records. And I’m afraid to say, I’m going to have to side with Calvin and the Wikipedia guy, because, genital-less anti-rock n’ roller or not, some of these Billy Fury tracks absolutely kick ass!

Ok, there are some lame songs (and a ‘Christmas Prayer’), but, especially compared to the morass of sloppily recorded MOR dreck that comprised much of pre-Beatles commercial British pop, most of these cuts are just extraordinary in their shining, slinky, fulsome awesomeness, comparable to the contemporary work of Sam Cooke, Buddy Holly, Phil Spector, Elvis… etc.

Check it out:

Wondrous Place
Saved
Play It Cool
Don’t Jump

If I don’t hear those gettin’ laid down at the next Upset The Rhythm noise scenester type happening I attend, something’s going wrong.

(Stereo Sanctity does not condone pissing out of windows by the way, even if you are Dave Davies.)

Labels: 1960s, Billy Fury, Calvin Johnson, pop, The Kinks

I Like Thee Oh Sees.

Although it passed me by when it first appeared last year, ‘The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In’, debut LP from Thee Oh Sees, John Dwyer’s latest assault on the world’s sensibilities, has recently come back outta nowhere (or “the internet” as we call it these days) to claim a place as one of my, like, totally favourite things of recent months.

(I know they’ve got a new album out on (where else?) In The Red soon and/or now, but I’ve not heard it yet, so for now I’ll keep on talking about their old one if that’s alright with everyone.)

Like many others I suspect, I’ve been a bit hot/cold on Dwyer’s previous bands, as experienced via the garage/noise of The Coachwhips and the noise/noise of Pink & Brown. Listening to both of those groups, I felt a mixture of respect for Dwyer’s pure energy in honing in on exactly the kind of demented, unconventional sound he was after, and disappointment that the results were often so chaotic, inconsistent and self-sabotaging. With Thee Oh Sees though, he’s shifted focus quite a bit, playing to his sonic strengths and really hitting the jackpot, letting loose a beautifully skewed mess of jangling psychedelic rock n’ roll, resurrecting the spirit of the earliest 13th Floor Elevators material and splicing in strains of mutant rockabilly and contemporary noise-rock thunder, equal parts melody and chaos over a relentless party-time backbeat, nailing an absolute killer sound.

Perhaps ironically for a band with it’s roots in San Francisco, Thee Oh Sees sometimes seem to be aiming at an ideal of psychedelia that draws a direct line between basic, backwoods rock n’ roll and total whacked out strangeness, writing the unnecessary baggage of the British invasion, folk-rock and hippie blues-jam phases out of history entirely. The sound of weird, sub-beatnik kids sticking forks in their third eyes back when everybody else was still wearing matching stripy shirts and playing ‘Louie Louie’. Barring the odd Townshend-derived riff, tambourine and some faint ‘we-listened-to-Dylan-on-acid-and-it-was-awesome’ Elevators-esque folk vibes, a lot of these Oh Sees songs sound like some kinda freaky thing that might have been birthed had the boys down at Link’s three-track shack just thrown caution to the wind and got waaaay out there one night.

A good dose of Dwyer’s lunatic-with-a-megaphone distorted vocals have survived from Coachwhips, but here they’re translated for the human race by co-vocalist Brigid Dawson, the two voices more often than not coalescing into an uncanny, genderless alien howl, framing a seemingly endless series of deliciously strange psych-pop readymades and surfy Monks/Seeds groove-stomps. You probably won’t get any terribly deep lyrical sartori from this Oh Sees album, but the odd snatch of vocab and titles like “Ghost In The Trees” and “Graveyard Drug Party” combine with the juggernaut of sound to tell you everything you need to know about the kind of scene being explored here.

Everything in Thee Oh Sees world comes served via an overdriven tube amp roar, slathered in slapback echo and tremolo. Almost every song jumps into life from a swamp of murky, delayed clatter, a ubiquitous “1,2,3,4!” sounding like it’s being beamed in from a distant ham radio, before the frantic rhythm section lays down the law and Dwyer’s applaudably demented, wild man guitar-playing proceeds to steal the show, slicing his way through Troggs-worthy hulk riffs, twangy jack-in-the-box rock n’ roll leads, pure destructo noise and endless fried solos with all the restraint of a kid on xmas morning.

For all the nerve-rattling racket though, these tracks are always accompanied by a tune to write home about, a pre-verbal yellalong chorus and the kind of honest-to-god crowd-pleasing hooks that most straight-laced garage bands would die for. Opener “Block Of Ice” and definitive dilated pupil girl-ode “Maria Stacks” present the band at their pop-est, like some inexplicably amazing two minute epiphanies you might find buried deep on a ‘Psychedelic Experience’ comp or ‘Pebbles Vol#36’, and proceed to obsess over for years. Longer groove-based cuts like “Two Drummers Disappear” sound like they have their root in some absolute killer rehearsal jams - ones that were WORTH KEEPING, would you believe - and even the more abstract items, such as the perplexing “Visit Colonel”, featuring as it does a roar of sound that makes me fear I’m about to be run down by a train every time I play in on my earphones, still rope in a melody I could probably hum for you, had I not let all the other competing Oh Sees melodies bounce happily around my brain for so long.

Across this album’s whole forty something minutes, only penultimate track “Quadrospazzed” begins to lose focus and run out of steam, and the closing “Koka Kola Jingle” makes up for it, a beautifully wasted, barely there lament, hinting at an entirely different aspect to the band’s music, before ending proceedings, as is only right & proper, with a resigned, echo-wrecked guitar drop/plug pull. Sadly you’ll have to add in the closing footsteps leaving the recording booth yourself, but no matter, ‘The Master’s Bedroom..’ still evidences a plain fantastic hit-rate for music this essentially spontaneous and crazed.

Thee Oh Sees is timeless, damaged freak music of a kind that’ll have 70 year old weirdos chortling for joy and 20 year old squares turning pale and reaching for the pause button. This one stands alongside those Greg Ashley solo discs, Oneida, Dead Meadow, Animal Collective and The Heads ‘Undersided’ on the long-list of my favourite psych-rock albums of the decade.

Mp3s>

Maria Stacks
Two Drummers Disappear


Thee Oh Sees myspace.

Buy this album from Norman.

Download some rare Oh Sees singles from the increasingly unbeatable Pukekos.

Labels: garage, I like, Psychedelia, punk, Thee Oh Sees

Easter Everywhere.

Sorry as ever for the lack of recent posts. General busy-ness, lack of internet access, etc. It's seems though that we've hit Easter - always one of my favourite times of the year. Sacrifice, rebirth, resurrection, winter into spring, blah blah blah - good stuff. As such, rest assured I've got some new posts coming up later this week. And, in the meantime, why not pay oblique tribute to the 13th Floor Elevators' easter-tastic 2nd LP by enjoying my new 8 Track full of choice Texas garage band madness:

Labels: 8 Tracks, lameness, Psychedelia, punk, Texas