Of course it’s never been my intention to turn this blog into an all-obituaries-all-the-time kind of effort, but my love and admiration for the musical cultures of our fading civilization’s ‘50s-‘70s peak era (plus adjacent decades) remains vast and unquenchable, whilst we are meanwhile faced with the bad luck of living through an epoch in which the remaining denizens of said cultures are, to not put too fine a point on it, dropping like flies.

As some kind of self-appointed memorialiser of such things, it’s really been getting on top of me recently… it’s difficult to find the necessary time to process, let alone get anything suitable down in words.

Sticking strictly to those whose music I am familiar with, or that has affected my life in some small way, there’s Little Richard, Florian Schneider, Phil May, Henry Grimes, Betty Wright, John Prine, Lee Konitz, Henry Grimes…. am I missing anyone here? Almost certainly. Smaller, non-household names and non-band leaders especially, I’m sure. Syphoning news has become increasingly challenging lately, so please hit me up in the comments if there are any other departures I should be aware of.

It’s interesting to note that, of the more elderly folks on the above list, very few have had covid explicitly linked to their deaths, yet the numbers, compared to the quantity of noteworthy musicians we’d normally expect to lose in any given Spring, remain exceptionally high. Makes you wonder, doesn't it…. but this is most assuredly not a good time or place to take one’s wondering off in that direction. It won’t end up anywhere nice. Let’s all just pray daily for our surviving heroes and heroines who are not on the above list. Wishing health, long life and the divine spark of creation to them all.

SO, ANYWAY – Little Richard. That’s a strange one, right? Seems like much of the entertainment media didn’t quite know how to play it. Perhaps in some crazy sort of fashion, we’ve still not quite caught up with him yet.



Seems to me that, for the generation of more rebellious/anti-authoritarian rock fans growing up back in the day, he was little short of a GOD, the real number # 1, not-to-be-fucked-with well-spring for that wild, anarchic rock n’ roll energy, but his perceived importance seems to have waned pretty significantly over the years, to the extent that to those of my age or younger, he’s often not much more than that guy did track 5 and track 7 on that Big Bumper Retro Rock n’ Roll hits CD comp you always had lying around.

Perhaps he’s suffered to a certain extent from “wow, is he still alive, I had no idea” syndrome, a symptom of the long, slow 50 year plus come-down experienced by almost all of the household name ‘50s rock n’ rollers, doomed forever to some gothic, ‘Sunset Boulevard’-esque existence – a long life defined almost entirely by the shadow of some mad shit they laid down without a second thought in their early ‘20s.

For the old timers though, growing up without a supply of raging feedback and animalistic punk/metal nonsense on tap at all times…. well, he was something else entirely. As Simon Reynolds notes, writer Nik Cohn significantly christened his pivotal poetical history of rock n’ roll tome ‘Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom’. I just pulled it off the shelf to check the spelling of the title, and to quote from within (pp. 31-34):

“For instance, the first record I ever bought was by Little Richard and, at one throw, it taught me everything I need to know about pop.
The message went: ‘Tuttie fruiti, all rooti, tuttie fruiti, all rooti, tuttie fruiti, all rooti, awopbopaloobop alopbamboom!’ As a summing up of what rock n’ roll was really about, this was nothing short of masterly.
Very likely those early years were the best that pop has yet been through. Anarchy moved in. For thirty years you couldn’t make it unless you were white, sleek, nicely-spoken and phoney to your toenails – suddenly now you could be black, purple, moronic, delinquent, diseased or almost anything on earth and you could still clean up. Just so long as you carried excitement.”
[…]
“Most of his records sold a million each – ‘Long Tall Sally’, ‘Lucille’, ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’, ‘Keep a Knockin’’, ‘Baby Face’. They all sounded roughly the same: tuneless, lyric-less, pre-Neanderthal. There was a tenor saxo solo in the middle somewhere and a constant smashed up piano and Little Richard himself screaming his head off. Individually, the records didn’t mean that much. They were small episodes in one unending scream and only made sense when you put them all together.”

Man, that’s a great book. I should read it again.

Jumping off from this idea, I distantly remember Greil Marcus (I think?!) waxing lyrical about Little Richard as the guy who first introduced a sense of surrealism / situationism to rock n’ roll, marking out a space in which meaning and coherence entirely disappeared – form transmuted into pure energy, combined with a kind of musical glossolalia (and, that’s a trick which naturally ain’t gonna hold up too well over 60+ years).

Personally, I’ve always found Little Richard’s music – great tho it it – makes for an odd fit amongst the first generation rock n’ rollers with whom he is invariably lumped in. Really, his stuff feels less like fully-fledged r’n’r, and more like a form of super-hyped up jump blues, foregrounding horns and piano and powerhouse vocals in a manner that makes it feel more like a weird, ultra-aggressive adjunct to the parallel development of what would soon become soul music, than to anything connected with the thinner, ghostlier, whiter sounds emanating from the Sun/rockabilly universe. A kind of blunt-yet-brilliant musical dead end of the kind more usually dug up on static-drenched compilations of totally obscure, indie label 45s – not on the freakin’ radio, or the Sunday Times obits page.

In a way, he’s always struck me as the kind of anti-Chuck Berry. Whereas Chuck gifted us with smart lyrics and story-telling, emphasising at all times the primacy of the electric guitar, L’il R (as no one has ever called him) made a point of smashing the loose remains of verbal narrative against the wall until they died bleeding, then proceeded to do the same to a brutally over-miced piano, doing his best to drown out the holy rhythm section entirely.

In a sense, perhaps Bo Diddley serves as some kind of weird, stylistic peacemaker here. By which I mean, his songs told stories, but they were nonsense stories, full of his own self-aggrandising, made up blather, whilst he simultaneously drew our attention to the drums and percussion as the most important part of the pie, because I mean, of course they are, you idiots. But, I’m getting off the point….

Whereas Chuck could number the Beach Boys, Beatles and Stones amongst his white boy descendants, Little Richard took a flying leap straight to The Sonics – which kind of says it all vis-à-vis his place in the canon, I suppose. Punk lineage, A plus 1.

P.S.: having just google-searched his image (try it), I’m inclined to realise that, throughout his life, this guy managed to look genuinely insane and frightening about 90% of the time someone was pointing a camera at him. I’d like to see you beat that across six decades, entire world of heavy metal.

Labels: bad news, blather, deathblog, Little Richard, Nik Cohn, rock n' roll, thinkpiece

If you’re reading this and you’re a UK citizen, I’m sure you know what you have to do tomorrow, and I’m sure you’ve already been bombarded with this ‘advice’ from a hundred different sources, but what the hell, y’know?

Tactical voting is clearly the only way a decent and humane agenda is going to get anywhere near the finishing line on this one. So, if you’re registered in a seat where one of the main opposition parties is in a position to challenge the Tories, please vote for that party. If you’re unlucky enough to reside in a Tory stronghold, please vote for whoever’s coming second. And if you live in a safe Labour / SNP seat, please vote for them anyway, because some wise-ass will doubtless be on TV crunching the nationwide voting totals within 48 hours of this message, and the bigger that total is, the better. Clear? Good. Many thanks.

If you live in the UK but you’re not a UK citizen meanwhile, please be assured that I share your frustration – granting suffrage to the people who actually live in the place being governed would be top of my own personal agenda, but whatcha gonna do, eh?

And, if you don’t live in the UK, have never been to the UK and don’t give a hoot about the UK – I’m sorry to have wasted your time. Normal service will be resumed imminently.

Labels: announcements, blather, political shit, politics

…to be honest, I had a bit of rethink / change of heart on the records I was going to place at # 1, and I don’t currently have the time to unpack my feeling about them in any meaningful fashion – so basically, I’m not going to bother.

I won’t retrospectively edit the preceding posts or anything, but perhaps let’s just consider all the numbers shifted up one – cos let’s face it, nothing deserves to beat that Nigerian rock comp.

Meanwhile, I’m about to start work on my usual “best new records” list, and there is lots and lots of fantastic stuff that I need to cover on it, almost all of which I have neglected to write any words about at an earlier point in the year. I’ve got to fit it all somehow betwixt freelance work deadlines and family/social engagements however, so please expect things to drag on way into January at best. Last time I checked, records by contemporary musical units don’t turn into pumpkins at midnight on New Year’s Eve, so hopefully it won’t be too late for me to try to sell you on some good stuff you may have overlooked.

(Boy, I’ll bet you don’t get this kind of crap on Pitchfork, do you – come what may, I’ll always have my amateurism!)

Prior to all that however, I should note that this Saturday will find me standing behind a table at this record fair hosted by my favourite new London record shop in my favourite new music-focused London community space.



I’ll be manning my wife’s stall, and also flogging some choice mix CDs and VHS movies on a “name yr price” basis for the benefit of charity (a fairly marginal benefit, I’ll be the first to admit, but what the hell – it’s something). If you still read these benighted pages and find yourself in the neighbourhood, pop in and say ‘hi’. It’ll be lovely.

Labels: apologies, blather, lameness, plugs, self promotion

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.

---

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

---

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

Rest assured, for once the lack of meaningful content here of recent hasn’t down to apathy, but more the fact that all of my allotted music-time over the past few months seems to have been spent watching live music, making music and (gulp) even promoting a bit of music [obligatory self-promotion links: 1 / 2].

Though road-hardened punks may justifiably scoff at our puny endeavours, last month’s tour was a hell of a lot of fun, and left me feeling rather joyously reconnected to the world of DIY music and the fine people who enable / inhabit it. (Random pics visible here and here.)

Since then things haven’t let us much. Bong gig in Camden was obviously a colossal highlight, and I’ve got a ticket to see Pelt play for the first time this weekend, for god's sake. That aside, I’ve also been coming to the belated realisation that London is absolutely swarming with vicious, new self-taught punk bands at the moment, all seemingly keen to hack away the macho/muso culture that has built up around that music for so long, returning it to the basics of noise, rage, simplicity and chaos.

Rather than just being confined to one or two isolated examples of the form (Frau, Good Throb), there seems to be another one of these great bands popping up every time we leave the house at the moment, all, like most recent London music of worth, driven to a state of manic ferocity by the sheer shittiness of trying to continue to live in this city whilst maintaining some degree of personal dignity.

Maybe I’m over-thinking things here, but if the notion that urban creativity often flourishes when space is cheap and capital is scarce (cf: New York in the ‘70s and ‘80s), what happens in the opposite situation, when intense concentration of populous & capital, malign government policy and over-inflated property market do their best to bulldoze pretty much everyone into poverty? London’s current punk bands provide a pretty eloquent answer to this question I think, and it’s probably time to call “scene!” on the fuckers and invite some snooping journalists to get it all mixed up. Dregs, Bona HC, Snob, Semi, Cianuro – all are very worthy of your time.

Not entirely disconnected from all that, this month’s Static Shock weekend felt like a bit of a marathon, and, god knows, I only went to about half of it (wussed out on the ultra-h/c Saturday night show, and missed the Hard Skin headlined Friday due to prior obligations). The bits I did go to though were fucking brilliant – an electrifying few days, blessed with line-ups that barely ever the quality dipping below “great”, with frequent stylistic and demographic hand brake turns doing a lot to remind us of the kind of variety and energy still lurking filed under ‘punk’ in yr local record emporium (or, more likely, bypassing it altogether and going straight to the distros and merch table sales, as is only sensible).

Here then are five of the best bands I saw at these events, discounting the aforementioned Snob, who are limited to one shout-put per post.

5. The Splits

Playing early afternoon at the Power Lunches matinee show, these Helsinki-based ladies & bonus gent easily overcame their generic rent-a-punk band name with a set of dense, Wipers-esque clean-toned guitar jangle, smoke-lunged vox and relentless forward momentum. Really nice guys too. Recommended.

http://the-splits.bandcamp.com/

4. The Number Ones

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen these Dublin power-pop stalwarts once or twice in the past, but I dug their total oddball status on the Static Shock line-up (a paisley shirt and a ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo’ jacket patch certainly stand out amid the leather and hoodies), and I dug their music too. Though not in any way exceptional within its genre, it is realised with as much muscle, energy and good feeling as is possible in 2014, and brought to us by some fellas who know how to get down together and really make it work. A couple of nice, unexpected covers (The Byrds’ ‘Feel a Whole Lot Better’, The Clean’s ‘Oddity’) pushed them from “pretty good” toward “GREAT” at the Saturday Power Lunches show, and when they took the stage on a bleary and hungover Sunday after a couple of middling hardcore bands, I’ll admit it was a joy to just hear some good ol' rock n’ roll.

the highlight was an ad-hoc blast through The Undertones ‘Get Over You’, used to cover a string-break incident from one of the guitarists. Hearing him restringed and ploughing back into the song just after the other guy knocked out a ragged, Bob Stinson-esque solo was a real “raise your drink in salute” moment. The #1s are certainly never going to change your world or even your afternoon, but if you’re just in the mood for the kind of band that’ll kick some ass at your wedding reception or whatever – look no further.

http://staticshockrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-number-ones

3. Perspex Flesh

Straight-up hardcore is just swell, don’t get me wrong, and I'm glad it's there - but for me personally,it takes something extra for it to really make much of an impression. Thankfully, Perspex Flesh BRING IT, in capitals, proffering a vile, monstrous wall of aggro that’s something like the sonic equivalent of a musclebound, green-skinned mutant stalking toward you with a spiked bat. This is nasty stuff, building a sense of total unease and impending catastrophe solely through the noise dripping through the PA stacks, and without the need for the band to start strutting or getting in people’s faces. Not that they could if they wanted to, bless ‘em – the vocalist looks so exhausted after each song, he can barely bring himself to stagger a few steps and mutter incoherently before the next maelstrom commences.

I realise that describing somebody’s guitar tone as “totally sick” is a teenage punk/metal uber-cliché, but in the case of Perspex Flesh I mean it in a fairly literal sense - the sheer level of screeching filth this guy lays down is remarkable, occasionally breaking up the near-Skullflower-ish skree with a few of those evil little tri-tone riffs that will, until the day I die, always remind me of the music that used to play when the Decepticons were stomping about in the old Transformers cartoons (not a complaint). Rhythm section keep it together with a brutal, lumbering swing that puts me in mind of the kind of guys who might be playing in a new line-up of Black Flag in an alternate world where Greg Ginn isn’t a dickhead, and there you have it – a fucking beast of a radiation-damaged hc/grind nightmare, reminding me (more through sheer atmosphere than actual musical similarity) of ‘Scum’ era Napalm Death and early Earache stuff in general… and there are few higher compliments than that. As a closing band for the weekend, it’s more “fuck off, return to your homes” than “cheers folks, see you next time”, but I’m tired and cold so I can get with that.

http://perspexflesh.bandcamp.com/

2. Personnel

I saw this lot a few years back, opening the bill on a busy gig on a boat, and wasn’t particularly impressed. I don’t know if they’ve changed in the interim or if I’ve changed, but seeing them again, still opening the bill for a few early risers at the Power Lunches matinee, I thought were bloody great. Louie of The Love Triangle / Shitty Limits plays some fantastic, near Wilko Johnson-ish choppy / wiry clean-toned guitar, whilst the vocalist (whom I’m SURE I’ve seen in at least one or two other band s- reminder anyone?) belies his smart casual pub-bloke demeanour by coming on like as witty and charismatic a frontman as you could wish to encounter at 2pm on a rainy Saturday. Drummer is A1 too, and it’s nice to see the vocalist from Frau filling in the gaps on bass.

Like the now disbanded(?) Hygiene and many of the groups I was going on about earlier in this post, Personnel deal primarily with the kitchen sink banalities and sundry indignities of life in the UK, but, notably, do so with a dry sense of humour and a touch of soul rather than just inchoate rage. I like it a lot. If you want a snappy quote for the CD sticker, think an Ian Svenonious band as directed by Ken Loach and you’ll probably be dreadfully misled by such platitudes, but fuck it, it's late, it’ll do.

http://doubledotdash.bandcamp.com/album/ep

1. Rakta

For the best part of sixty years, we’ve been waiting for people to run out of new stuff to do with the basic guitar/bass/drums set-up, and it doesn’t look likely to run out of steam any time soon. Add a couple of Boss delay pedals to the equation then, and imagine the mileage a few driven individuals can get out of that. An all-female Brazillian band playing moody, ambitious sci-fi-inflected punk with loads of harsh noise and extreme use of effects, Rakta are, in short, probably the most exhilarating new band I’ve seen this year.

Not everyone’s cup of tea maybe (the vocalist’s monotone howl has a bit of a Zola Jesus-ish gothic bombast thing to it that may put some off), but with a solid base of relentless pounding from the rhythm section and a relentlessly imaginative skree from the guitar, bits of unidentifiable echoing racket whiplashing around the place, and just a hellish energy and sense of weird, unholy evocation going on… man. We were lucky enough to see them twice over the weekend, and on both occasions I was left speechless. They’re playing again in Peckham next Tuesday – you’ll find me front row.

They’re currently midway through a mammoth US / Europe tour, so if they’re pitching up anywhere near you – drop everything and get along. Just a fantastically exciting band. You'll be hearing more about them in these pages, I'd imagine.

http://rakta.bandcamp.com/album/s-t

Labels: blather, live reviews, Personnel, Perspex Flesh, punk, Rakta, The Number Ones, The Splits

 So it has come to my attention that this Saturday is ‘Record Store (SHOP, goddamnit, SHOP) Day’.

A theoretically fine and noble occasion - one that is closer to my heart than most self-imposed ‘Days’, but that has in recent years begun to attract more in the way of scorn and cynicism than enthusiasm from its presumed adherents. This has resulted mainly from the growing tendency for established record labels to flood the market with pointless Special Limitied Edition Record Store Day Items (generally of suspiciously slim cultural and aesthetic value), thus fuelling the widespread perception that this Saturday will see all remaining record emporiums flooded from dawn ‘til dusk with hordes of nefarious, tone deaf ebay speculators, blocking the doors and exuding the fetid stench of the grave as they clamber over each other in search of these much-vaunted ‘Special Items’, ruining the calm, rarefied atmosphere of near-bankruptcy that us TRVE music fans seek of an afternoon.

Whether this be truth or fabrication (and it’s more the latter than the former I suspect), the larger independent record shops seem happy to play up to this idea, orchestrating unwarranted events and PR-sanctioned ‘appearances’ to further distract us from our shopping, and generally doing obscene things like hiring Paul Weller to balefully oversee the carnage in the racks, like the drummer on a particularly listless slave galley.

Well friends, I have a simple solution to this – one which I hope will allow us to quietly celebrate and support the fading idyll of the record shop universe without making a fuss about it or succumbing to any of this general palaver.

Firstly, completely ignore the existence of these Special Items. Even on the off chance there is one you simply must own (in which case god help you, but I’m in no position to judge), you’ll probably find it sitting like an unwanted step-child in the 7” bin in Music & Video Exchange within two months tops.

Secondly, do not go to Rough Trade or your local equivalent thereof. Instead, head to some part of town you don’t normally go to, and look for some real down at heel, staffed-by-a-single-creepy-guy second hand record shop - I mean, the kind of ass-backward place where they probably don't even know it's “Record Store Day” and wouldn’t care a hoot if they did. I realise such places are few and far between these days, but that’s precisely the reason we should go out of our way to support the ones that remain. If you live in an urban area there’s probably still one *somewhere* within easy travelling distance of you. Have a think.

So you go to this place, and you do your record-shopping thing. Anyone who began liking music at some point prior to about 2004 will not require any further instruction. And as you do your rounds, and encounter the inevitable ‘maybes’… well today is the day when you’re just going to get them all.

‘Oh, a mid-‘80s Hawkwind LP, but hmm, I dunno, £8…’ = GET IT.

‘I think somebody once told me I should listen to this forgotten early ‘90s band, but hmm, I dunno if it looks like my kinda thing to be honest..’ = GET IT.

‘Wow, I have no idea what this is, but that cover art is unbelievable..’ = GET IT.

And so on.

As a result of your weird, self-serving quasi-philanthropy, the creepy bloke behind the counter will have a good day, temporarily convinced that his struggling boutique still has a role in people’s lives. And you too will have a good day, going to a new(?) place, breaking your usual routine, and heading home to put the kettle on and explore the strange and damp-damaged new world of sound you’ve just bought yourself a slice of. Everyone’s a winner, and the happy tradition of crummy, old fashioned record shopping limps on a little longer. Halleluiah.

Labels: blather, ranting, record shops

The Best Record Review.

Just a quick, off-the-cuff link post, but, having read it this morning, I would like to thank Andrew Breckerman for writing a record review that pretty much summarises all that needs to be said about the process of listening to rock / pop music in the 21st century into five easy paragraphs.

At the time of writing, I don’t know anything about the band Swearin’ or their album Swearin’, but when I’m home this evening with a computer that has speakers, I’ll certainly give ‘em a shot.

Regardless though: point is, I know that in future, on the increasingly rare occasions when I actually find a band playing song-based guitar/drums/singing music that moves me in some way, my first instinct will probably be to just take Breckerman’s text and paste in the appropriate details. Maybe I’ll try to avoid charges of plagiarism by rewriting in-my-own-words and throwing in some local colour and faux-journo blather, but basically there is little more that needs to be said on the matter. Case is closed.

Or is it? I mean, by this point in our lives, shouldn’t we have got over this idea that songs need to be “transformative”, or somehow exceptional? I know that in the past year or so in particular, I’ve increasingly found myself enjoying rock music on a purely utilitarian level – riffs and rhythm tracks and cool guitar sounds to get me from A to B. “Special” in quite a different way from all that rousing, heartstring-tugging song-centric stuff – music that prioritises its own basic craftsmanship: getting the job done, keeping the motor running.

I guess that every now and then, when a Royal Headache or Shoppers come my way, I’ll revert to the Breckerman hypothesis. The rest of the time, I’ll just listen to Creedence and shut up. Either way, I’m happy.

Labels: blather, things of interest, thinkpiece