Of course, Alan Vega will be remembered for what he brought to Suicide’s first album; it would be foolish to try to claim otherwise.

Words (and delivery thereof) as simple, as striking, as dangerous, as lustful, as otherworldly as anything that emerged from the ‘50s/’60s rock n’ roll / rhythm & blues culture he obviously admired so much, and just as much of an indelible part of American culture (or at least, the segments of it that matter) as a result.

Forty years on, you cannot reduce these songs, or laugh them off. You cannot play them on the radio without getting complaints; you cannot play them in the car with friends or relatives without breaking a sweat. “Punk”? “Avant Garde”? Posturing? Stupidity? Success? You tell me. Love them or hate them, once you’ve heard them, they will be with you forever.

You’d have to be a pretty unhinged individual to have owned and enjoyed everything Mr. Vega has put out over the years (in fact for a long time I had a record shopping rule that whilst solo/collaborative discs bearing Martin Rev’s name should be purchased immediately, anything involving Vega should be treated with extreme caution), but I’ve been undertaking somewhat of an accidental reassessment of his post-’77 oeuvre of recent, and am hopefully in the process of gaining a greater appreciation of the uniqueness of his voice, and of the perverse, compelling artistry that ran through all of his work, even when (as was often the case) he was making records that sounded like most listeners’ idea of hell.

The way I like to look at it is: if the still much missed Lux Interior (Satan rest his soul) summed up his stage persona as “half Elvis Presley, half Frankenstein’s Monster”, Vega – consciously or otherwise - took the idea behind this combo far further, developing a style that sounds like the wandering, unquiet spirits of Presley and Roy Orbison being evoked through some sort of unholy electronic séance, issuing tormented, incoherent fragments of rock n’ roll jive and damning indictments of the culture they see decaying around them, channelled seemingly at random through Vega’s reverb-drenched tonsils. Ghosts of an old America, crawling from the bricks, the pavement and the recording consoles, passing baleful spectral judgement on the weaponised bummer of a country that now surrounds them, crying out in weird, leather-clad despair.

Whilst some of Vega’s best moments saw him indulging in straight narrative and street level reportage, more often than not he went in for what sounds like a wholly improvisational, almost unconscious, approach that, once you get a taste for it, proves kind of extraordinary.

It’s like rock n’ roll as reduced to a series of desperate, garbled exhortations from another plain, related over a grinding, ritualistic back-beat, presented like an ancient incantation whose precise meaning has long been lost to the ages, but that can still occasionally melt without warning into pools of pure, shimmering tenderness, with Vega’s ghosts rising to the occasion in response. (“Finally, this I understand!”, the hazy greaser apparition declares, pulling a comb through his hair as he enters full seduction mode, lost in some Lynchian velvet dream of the perfect moment of love, until the stentorian reminder of modernity intrudes again via Rev’s juddering drum machine (or nearest available equivalent), forcing him into another tirade of swaggering, subway stalkin’ confusion.)

And… I could probably continue in this vein for some time. For now, let it simply be noted that, hare-brained and unapproachable though it may often seem, I believe that Vega’s body of work holds depths and mysteries that very few of us have yet managed to get a handle on. Take a deep breath and throw the dice the next time you see his name on some weird looking 7", and maybe one day we’ll catch up with him.

Whilst writing this yesterday, I threw together a quick Mixcloud effort in tribute to Alan Vega. Perhaps it will help illuminate some of my blather above, perhaps not. Selections are somewhat limited by the lack of stuff I currently have in mp3 format (I would have liked to include something from Suicide’s bleak post-911 comeback album ‘American Supreme’, but can’t find it right now, whilst other bits and pieces are trapped on vinyl), but whatever – if you want to dig in, it’s here. Track listing and time codes as per below.

Labels: Alan Vega, deathblog, mixtapes, Suicide

Watching Dog Chocolate thrashing about in the basement of Deptford’s estimable Vinyl shop/café/venue recently, it struck me that they kinda, sorta, in some sense remind me of The Band. (Yes, that The Band.) An off-the-wall comparison, I’ll grant you, but bear with me, and we’ll see where we go with it.

You see, the joy of listening to both bands arises primarily from hearing a group of musicians who each have their own uniquely idiosyncratic musical personalities nonetheless coming together and, without in any way compromising their individual styles, fusing themselves into the tangled, mangled, exultant celebration of their own collaborative fellowship, each element fitting together like a puzzle whose completion seems so organic and inevitable you wonder how you could ever have contemplated the idea that the pieces didn’t fit together just so.

(Pauses for breath.)

Live, Dog Chocolate are a band who seem to be almost preternaturally skilled in the arts of flexibility and spontaneity, adapting to potentially challenging performance situations with an ease that is little short of awe-inspiring, whilst their interaction with their audience fosters a sense of positivity and inclusivity that it is difficult for even the grumpiest of souls to resent. Whilst I am obviously lacking in first-hand experience by which to make a comparison, I can easily imagine that The Band were similarly gifted in this respect, and certainly, it is a spirit of practical, adaptable music-making expertise and an indefatigable dedication to the delivery of FUN that shines through strongly in their recordings and pre-stardom concert footage.

Can you imagine a member of either band grumping about and halting the show for the sake of a broken string, an irksome audience member or an iffy power cable? No, I say, you cannot! And I would further venture perhaps to suggest that such admirable stage conduct is a much under-appreciated barometer in assessing the qualities that go towards making a band truly great.

What separates the two bands of course (well, I mean, clearly you could write an extremely lengthy list of the factors that separate the two bands, but sticking to one most pertinent to my argument here) is the fact that, whereas The Band built their chosen aesthetic upon a deep immersion in American roots music and all the comforting, ol’ timey homeliness that that entails, DC (if I may) arise from a culture that in many ways seems the polar opposite of such fusty, authentic, furniture whittlin’ type concerns, borne instead from the waste, detritus, trivial anxieties, shallow consumerism and perpetual dislocation of 21st century urban life, as filtered through the seething backyard paddling pool of obtuse art-rock and disgruntled DIY indie.

Which is to say, there is no dream of Ragtime Willy’s rockin’ chair for these restlessly imaginative “cats”, for that time has passed and gone. What we face now is more the brute reality of some plastic shelled Ikea office chair you found on the street, one wheel missing, that kills your back even to look at it, but you dragged it home a while back cos you needed a chair and now what are we supposed to, lug it all the way to the Refuse Reclamation Centre, or whatever it is they call “the tip” these days? Could we just chop it up and put a piece in the bin each week like chair serial killers, hope no one notices? But we’d need some sort of hacksaw for that, and the blade on that cheap one I bought broke almost straight away, so, fuck it, let’s just continue sitting on it anyway.

You get the picture. (You get the back ache.)

When this train of thought first occurred to me (well, not all that shit about the chair – the basic Dog Chocolate / The Band stuff), I couldn’t take it much further, as someone was headbutting my back and I had to find a safe place to dispose of my empty beer bottle, but I later found myself returning to it whilst playing the Dog Chocolate’s first proper LP ‘Snack Fans’ at excessive volume whilst walking home from Lewisham High Street in heavy rain (optimum Dog Chocolate listening conditions, I would suggest).

Whereas a high standard of bonhomie and banter lends a jovial character to the brightly hued abrasion of DC’s live appearances, the LP swiftly reveals a darker side to the band’s headspace, as dissonant, trouble-packed songs whose rough edges can so easily get lost in the shuffle on stage become fevered, nail-biting expressions of anxiety and loss of control. Suddenly, musings on random objects (‘Plastic Canoe’, ‘Wet Bandana’) and temporarily uncomfortable states of being (not knowing, being on a roundabout) – the kind of thing you’d expect a comically inclined band to shrug off as a goof, in other words – are set upon with an intensity that eventually becomes quite harrowing, as the off-hand technical proficiency behind the “someone is emptying a bin on your head” chaos of the band’s music tips over into a vicious breed of wacky, art school grindcore that really does not sound terribly healthy for either creators or listeners.

The twiddly-ness is an issue for me here, I’ll admit. Not egocentric, guitar soloy twiddling (I am *always* cool with that), but more the kind of Deerhoof/Ponytail styled hyper-active structural twiddlyness, if you get my drift. All this stop-start and sudden left turns and cascading, octo-fingered sing-songy riffs - it’s just not my bag, man. No critical judgment intended of course; it’s just that, as a person with generally low energy levels who dislikes surprises, I tend to favour pieces of music that start out doing a thing and keep on doing it until the end with a minimum of variation. [You can check back over my lists of favourite records from past years for surprisingly compelling evidence of this broad generalisation.]

Live, the more technical aspect of Dog Chocolate’s playing tends to get lost amid the clamour and good cheer. One member (Matt?) plays one of those tiny, rectangular guitars with no body (you know the ones) fed through a board of about a dozen Boss/Digitech sized pedals, and it’s a sort of running joke that we can never really hear very much of what he’s doing, his modest contributions lost beneath the gleeful puppy blurts of Rob’s straight-into-the-amp overdriven Les Paul. On record though, properly mixed, we can finally hear the two awarded equal prominence, and the full reality of their queasily off-kilter, interlocking lead lines, driven on by the staccato conjurations of drummer Jonno and the barking, shrieking gang vocals led by front-man Andrew, is often utterly bananas, to be honest.

Were I a concerned parent or elderly relative, I could easily find myself pondering darkly on the details of the horrendous lives lived by young people driven to create and enjoy music like this, not in the name of the kind of self-conscious “extremity” that drives metal and grindcore, but just as a manner of course, as a natural mode of self-expression, primarily concerned with relatable, everyday topics.

A headache-inducing trip and no mistake, I would recommend taking ‘Snack Fans’ in small doses – perhaps five or six minutes max – and I feel the results of such compressed listening could prove extremely edifying.

After all, ‘Trout Mask Replica’ forever sits as exemplar of alienating, oddball twiddling utilised as a vessel for eternal, visionary artistry that it is nonetheless practically impossible to sit through front to back, and, although there is obviously no direct comparison to be made between Dog Chocolate and The Captain (at least six maze-like barriers of chipboard and plexi-glass separate the two vis-à-vis aesthetics and ambition), DC’s more down to earth outbursts are certainly on the side of the angels vis-à-vis the pantheon of twiddley-structured hullaballoo.

THAT SAID THOUGH, perhaps I’m over-stating the twiddley aspect here somewhat.

After all, songs like ‘I Don’t Know’ and ‘Every Day Is The End Of The World..’ on this record’s first side aren’t even twiddley in the slightest. In fact they sound more than anything like the kind of giddy, hyper-active nerdy “punk” songs that Jeff Lewis used to record with his brother (and, god willing, potentially will again in future). I think it is probably more the second half of ‘Snack Fans’, with ‘Wet Bandana’ and ‘Bent Wire Situation’ and such, that set me off on that tangent. I’m sorry.

So - I don’t know where I’m going with this really… I’ve hit a dead end. I hope this doesn’t end up sitting on the top of this weblog for too long – it’ll get embarrassing.

In conclusion then: Dog Chocolate represent a phenomenal expression of contemporary culture, making delightful fun & games from the rawest essence of honesty and self-doubt. If you are planning or organising any kind of event whatsoever, you should DEFINITELY book them for it – whatever the occasion, you will not be disappointed.

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If planning some of those above-suggested compressed listening blurts, my top 5 favourite songs on ‘Snack Fans’ are:

1. Plastic Canoe
2. Con Air
3. Be a Bloody River
4. I Don’t Know
5. Emotionally Buff

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You can buy ‘Snack Fans’ as a splendid, extra-packed LP package, or presumably in some slightly less extra-packed alternative formats, from Upset The Rhythm. There’s some much more informative and helpful writing about the band and their music on there too, should you prefer.

Dog Chocolate can be visited on Tumblr here.

Labels: album reviews, blather, Dog Chocolate