Rockhunter, Issue 10, June 2004
“All England fears me / For I went back round again and came back sane.” — The Nougat Cordon, “Nazi Gold”
The Rays of Vital Force Have Set Me Free!!!
Okay, right, I’ve been out of the loop for a bit. But you’d better believe the Hunter’s back on track, this time, courtesy of Night Nurse and The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band! I’d avoided listening to WCPAEB for years, because they came highly recommended by Rob Sekula of the 14 Iced Bears. But after giving them a go, I’ve finally realised that they are possibly the finest of the leftfield rockers out of the US in the 1960s. With their unruly trebly maelstroms and fiery controlled feedback, they are really spoiling us!
My twin realization, when I got a handle on that bombshell a couple of weeks ago is that there’s a gold mine of softer, subtler-sounding rock as yet untapped by yours truly. Balls-in rock n roll, you might call it, with restraint as the watchword. Surprised, kids? Why not?! My motto is, if youre not surprising yourself, youre pissing in the wind. Or is that passing wind in the rain? Never mind. As I always say, here goes nothing!
It was about 18 months ago, after nearly a decade out of the music game, that I got back on board for the long haul home. Id come to the realisation that for too long I’d been crashing through the frantic Swamps of Madness, chased by fuzzed-up Freakbeat goons riding Satan’s Sickles of Howlin’ Badness!!!
Man, did I ever need a break from searchin’ in the wilderness for the ultimate feedback glitch in the rock machine!!! That’s one of the reasons I said a fond farewell to the boogie merchants in the last ish. That had been rattlin round my noggin for years, and it just had to come out, any which way. So now it’s time to rewrite the instruction manual, yet again.
And all that because of listening to the West Coast Pop Art one wintry early Spring afternoon!!! As I always say, here goes nothing!! Down the little red lane…
Ourselves Alone: British Beat Re-Boomed!!
You haven’t been able to move in the past god-knows-how-many months for rock journalists going on about 80s bands. Whatever they were. I remember a similar load of guff being expelled in the 80s about the 60s. As if were rationed to one sound per decade…
The game at the moment is all about finding the all-encapsulating micro-sound that sums up the current state of play on everything we know about rock and pop culture, all at once. Some of us still remember the dark days of the mid-80s, when a lot of ink was spilt about the perfect pop song. Well, that was what McGhee and Gillespie always used to bang on about when some berk asked them for a short quote about what Creation meant for them. What they meant by that was something around 2 minutes long, a few chords, good hook and plenty of changes.
Basically, think Love and, er, The Creation and you’re not far off the mark. It’s taken for granted these days that there will always be guitars, and, hopefully, bands failing to grasp the rudiments of playing them and turning out great stuff anyway. But the mid-80s in the UK was a bit like the early-60s, in that record companies were turning away from the group format and plying their evil trade through synth duos, as a supplement to the usual dopey twats theyd given advances to, whether solo or in bands.
That’s why the Paisley Underground Yanks — your Green on Reds, Dream Syndicates, Thin White Ropes, and their tedious ilk — hit it big. Basically, the record companies had to do shag all work, because the bands had it all sorted. Then along came Creation. Whatever your views on the Scotch twat, there’s little doubt that if McGhee hadn’t pawned his telly, sofa and bike to get a loan to put out some records by his mates, you wouldn’t be sitting here today reading this ill-presented piece of crapola. Without him the fanzine would have become nothing more than a dead hand on the tiller of pop sensibility, having pretty much petered out on the early indie scene in about 1981-82.
And without McGhee there’d have been no garage rock revival. Okay, perhaps that’s something we could have done without. I, for one, am mightily bored with boring little Oz, NZ and US chancers re-selling me the kind of stuff I’ve been digging for years. But at least it wont be around for long. The underachieving middle-class kids will soon find a newer and more exciting equivalent for the current intellectuals-slumming-as-white-trash style.
Oh, set me free, babe…!!!
I’m Not the Wizard of If
All this is no more than a bagatelle, a chipolata waggled in the Chunnel. I am a true antiquarian, attempting to regain that which what was lost. On the search for what makes melody melody, not mouldy. In the shifting tides of time. I’ve had dreams. I’ve divined contents by touch. I’ve even listened to nothing crackling away all by itself. Ive blown the gaff by showing it to be anything but a series of unconnected voyages in which elements were predictable. How many times I gotta repeat myself?!! I’m the Wizard not of If, but When!!!
Psychedelic Implosion
Like most things, my story really starts with psychedelic music, which had been threatening a comeback since the late-70s. Viz. The Raiders’ classic acid boogie tune (feat. Cook n Jones, no less) professing their love of same. After the mod revival, a psych revival was probably inevitable. And it did sort of happen, but mainly it was the groups and their friends buying each other’s records — and the nose-breathers in what came to be known from the late-70s as the collectors market.
In 1981 A Splash of Colour showcased the kind of London-based power pop that paraded as psych at that time. But you’d not have blown your mind listening to it, not even with a couple of tabs under your belt. Around 1985, there was Alice in Wonderland in Soho, that den of ex-goths and glam-merchants, and it was about as psychedelic as my grandad’s shed.
The truth was that the real psychedelic revival came around 1987-88, when the Terraces of our fair land rang with the shouts of pilled-up geezers! And, at the same time, pretty much overnight, city centres were swamped with tie-dyed teens turning on. Much ink has been spilled on that, but its true, that’s how it happened.
Back in the early to mid-80s, those of us in the know had no time for all the shit-served-up-cold that was sold to us as our choice of popular music. I shan’t dignify the culprits by mentioning their names, we all know who they are.
As if by magic, about that time, all the sussed Yank musos bought one-way tickets and decamped to London with their Rickenbackers. And what happened? Pretty much all the record collectors in Blighty — and I’m ashamed to have been among that drooling, softly whimpering number — gathered in stinking clumps waiting for their dying minds to be re-blown. Sadly, however, thats all that was likely to get blown, unlike the knobs of the exotic mop-head musos on stage!!
We used to wave Rubbles comps aroundlike the Paddington story where he bids at an auction, shouting “Fivepence!” excitedly but amid the 80s Yank Invasion, otherwise known as the so-called Paisley Underground (anyone remember shite like Rain Parade and the vastly overrated Long Ryders?) everyone forgot everything except Americana. And they seemed to forget all the ace music recorded in the past in these here British Isles, the continent of Europe, and basically all across the globe.
Oh yeah, and for the record, if I see Sid Griffin saying once more how much he’s done for Gene Clark’s reputation, I’ll go round his house pretending to sell brushes, ask to use the bog, then curl off a stinking turd and block it. Then burn the fucker down.
Basically, in the early-80s, apart from a handful of comps (your Choc Soups, Rubbles, etc.) as proof of how good music in these parts once was, pretty much all we had was Crazyhead and Gaye Bykers on Acid. As I’ve said before — and I’ll keep on saying it til you ‘orrible lot take notice!!! — real rock scarpered to the provinces sometime in the 1970s. And, like in The Heart of Darkness, the rockers were determined to travel back up river and spawn, like so many eels returning from the Sargasso Sea. Maybe Leicester around 1984 was the new Ladbroke Grove. Or something. Oh, yeah, and we also had the Dukes of Stratosphear and Naz Nomad and the Nightmares. Christ!!
So, it was not surprising that with a couple of failed psychedelic revivals under our belt, and the Yanks drinking all the free booze and getting off with our birds in their pointy boots and Ben Frank shades, claiming they had the psych-rock mojo in their back pocket courtesy of US rock history and superior air power, these Isles hit back with music that was ours alone.
Enter Creation & Co. Our special little musical Sinn Féin…
The Townie Controversy
What is it with all this “townie” shit? I got a mail from someone calling herself summat like Lizzie Maisie the other day, promoting The Providence, a new music venue, boasting that it would be a townie-free zone. Obviously, I got it by mistake, because I never go out.
So, apparently we don’t like “them”. Enough with the chauvinism already!! I grew up in Cambridge and because I didn’t go to the University, I, like all the other oafs, dum-dums and other, more sober, denizens of the town, was known by all the college-bound tossers as a townie. Right? With me so far?!! So I move from that weasel-beaked fantasy island dead zone to Brighton, where I can ease myself into the day with a beer and a chat with no lip from clever c***s.
Then, all of a sudden, 15 years later, I find the same thing happening!! Where does Little Miss Secretary of the Ents Committee get off calling people fucking townies?! This woman is doing no more than niche-marketing and perpetuating petty hatreds. It’s just another sad sign that rock music’s become a middle class career path.
One rotten hangover from the bad old days of Crass and their filthy ilk is the fact of anarchists and other dozy so-called activists regarding everyone else as consumer scum. Obviously, we all understand that buying drugs and booze and petrol for your rusting diesel bus doesnt count as consuming…
Okay! I digress, again!!! Now even the world of rock, formerly a haven for the self-destructive/harming/hating disaffected few, has been infected by lifestyle elitism, and all of a sudden everyone else is scum!! Townieism is no more than a late-adolescent fantasy of communal autonomy. Just say no to the Balkanisation of Brighton!!!
I’ve gotta get out of it, if this is what its come to. And maybe take up something useful, like poetry.
Edit: Within a couple of months “townie” was superseded by “chav” — and the rest is history. Class hasn’t disappeared. Despite Channel 4’s and the rest of the media’s best efforts.
Next time
Reviews of some stuff released since I last put foot to mouth. (Sheesh! Its been about a zillion years since a records release had any hint of unleashing a wild beast. But still we turn the treadmill. I swear its a life sentence, not a life style!! — Ed.)
Basically, we’ll be cracking on with the second and final part of “Ourselves Alone”. And therell be fulsome reports from the dank, foetid realm of the latest comps.
Big Hugs,
Ed.
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