Rockhunter, Issue 27, 22 September 2006
The Comp-Post Heap: New Rubbles, Unknown Unknowns, Hubbles and Welsh Rare Beat
Let’s get it straight. I’m not interested in cosseting the feelings of musicians or self-styled scene gurus. Including the hang-around cocksuckers who put out comp after comp. It’s like DJ-ing. Anyone’d think these creatures invented the tunes they were digging.
Take the New Rubble series. Namely New Rubble, Vol. One, My First Day Without You for starters. This rather shoddy article seems to have been compiled with the value of the comper’s own collection at the front of mind. Well, it’s his pension, or nest-egg, isn’t it? He’s been collecting for a zillion years, so why shouldn’t he try to get something back for all the hours, days and months he’s wasted searching for the ultimate monster earthquake history-killing punk-blues teenage feeback riff-fuck. But what the hey? Why would I wanna waste time putting the fellow down? This comp is chock fulla Beat, the way father used to make it!!! The soundtrack to good times and bad times, this comper’s christened his fave sub-genre “CLEANBEAT”. Call it what you like, we’re heavily into the “Import CD” category here. And I think we all know by now what that means. Let’s play safe, people. Radio silence. Code words. Don’t give the VAT inspectors or Intellectual Property Spooks anything to go on.
So, New Rubbles, Vol. One is pretty much 2nd string collection territory. It’s the sort of stuff you buy for the band name or song title in the hope it’ll getcha movin’. We’re in the land of the oddly exciting flip to a Big Beat balladeer’s career flop. That’s the bag. Give it a try. It’ll not change your life and you won’t have to listen to it more than once. Then you can put it alongside all the other comps you never listen to any more and make a full set.
Now to rubbish New Rubble Vol. 2!!! The drippy hippy who put this mixed bag together opines thusly:
“Prog/psych is a genre generally neglected by singles collectors as the bands of the time were known mainly for their album output rather than their 45s […] This compilation aims to set the record straight by bringing some of the best examples of the genre to the attention of the afficionados, a timely enterprise as many influential DJs are actively seeking Prog/psych singles to play, exposing them to a wider audience and driving up the price of originals accordingly. Singles such as Taiconeroga’s “Speaking My Mind” has recently shot up in the value with others sure to do the same. […] The value of Prog/psych albums has risen rapidly in the last few years, and 45s are sure to follo suit once they’ve been heard.”
No surprise for guessing who’d got a cupboard full of the Taiconeroga 45 featured on this comp. However, he should be congratulated for expressing, Homer Simpson-like, the thought running through his head at the time he was writing the sleeve-notes to his latest comp.
Vol. 5 of this benighted series features Glenda Collins’ “Thou Shalt Not Steal”. Okay, this shows Ritchie Blackmore at his volume-knob waggling, fast-fretting hottest. And it’s the best single released in 1965. Full stop. But comped? It’s already been rereleased a couple of times to my knowledge on better quality products. Pointless.
The Drippy Hippy’s next project? Insiders close to his operation inform me that it’s a series of comps called Here Are Some Records I Have From The 1960s Which I Like That Must Be Worth Something. There’ll be nine volumes in all. What a wanker!!
Forget what I sed some issues back. THE COMP IS DEAD!!!!!
Myth-Time Inna Music
I find it hard to understand why music’s organised in eras. What is this, the early 20th century? Are we really still grokking the matriculation of myth-time? Wood for the trees… vinyl for the plastic… that sort of thing. Why line ‘em up and take them one at a time? Letsbeaveinem all at once!!? Set the comp free!!!!
And that’s not a genre prejudice directed at the 6Ts crowd, either. These are my deep roots, too. Look, I hunt rock, OK? (Although I like light classical also; it’s like orchestrally-oriented psych, but more interesting). Let me set the record straight: the false divisions between rock, pop, reggay, electro, or whatever the latest ones are, also piss me right off.
Throw off your shackles of purchasing torment! (I think we’re aksing you to critique and reject the whole notion of “choice” — Consumer Affairs Ed.) Unwrap the hard-to- open packaging of taste!! Welcome familiar chords and words like a prodigal sister, not a space alien!!!
To provide total context for my current dismal state of mind (which is entirely the fault of shoddy comp-vendors) let me now deal with the super-crazy tri-action spazzola Unknown Unknowns series, where the value is in the finding and telling, rather than residing mystically somewhere within the mouldy old grooves. Or so I thought.
There used to be some honour in the record collecting game, and at one stage I’d hoped that UU was returning us to that special Golden Age. Of course the comp is not dead, as I previously explained in this organ. It’ll never die. It’s just a question of how much we can stand up in.
Unknown Unknowns Vol. 1 got me howlin’ like a cat in a combine harvester when it was released in 2003. I just missed its first ultra-limited pressing of 150, due to not having the readies, but I caught up with it at last, several months later, courtesy of a certain Brighton record shop, which had one stray copy, delivered totally by mistake.
Where do I start? (Here! Now!! Already!!! — Ed.) The stuff on Vol. 1 was utter dynamite!!! Magnificent ancient mouldy acetates — all crackly and sometimes a little too faint to grasp. Phwoar!! And wot a concept!!!! (Er, that’s the part of a church, next to the transept, where they sell people the idea that god will help us — Ed.) Woah there! These babies were all, as the title suggests, “Unknown” by Unknown!!! Can you get with that?!?!?! Except there was a nice little twist: the last track on Vol 1, side 2 was “Unknown” by The Unknowns — believe it or believe it not!!!
However, Vol. 2, which has just surfaced, is nowhere near as gee-reat as its vinyl ancestor. Sob!! Unlike on it’s recently departed relative volume, there’s no focus. It’s like a nightmare in a salad factory. A bit o’ fuzz-bound muscle here, a spartan beat monster there… It’s all very well, but I for one need a bit of light and shade for colour and comfort.
I’m envisioning a series of comps called Hubbles, which will basically provide a macroscopic view of the dark musical universe. As the sleeve notes will proudly boast: “Infinitely regressing from the hall of genre mirrors. Exploding, rather than imploding. With open hearts and unchained minds. Let us see the World of Worlds begin!”
Valleys Scoured By Needles
I can’t let this ish go by without briefly slagging off Welsh Rare Beat. It seems that one of the lads from the Super Furry Animals has comp’d a load of old Welsh toons released way back when by Sain, Wales’ premier Welsh language record label, which is still going today, apparently.
Although there are some lovely melodies therein, I find the Welsh nationalist agenda tiresome. Not to mention that the vast majority of the toons are a load of folky toss. What I found most boring was the lack of Beat numbers, for which the original label and the comp-artist in question should be horse-whipped. Does language-nationalism really have to exile decent music? Look at Van Morrison. He had to leave Ireland. The only halfway decent rocker in a mire of showbands. Oh, except for The Wheels, the original Afro-Celtic rockers. But I digress.
I’d like to know how such a low-key operation like Sain ran for so long. The compiler fails to inform us how much cash Sain Records got in subsidies from government sources in Westminster. (I’m willing to bet my first hand shandy of the day that they were funded up the wazoo!!) That’s probably because he can’t admit to himself that the hated English Government had anything to do with keeping the Welsh language alive through education policy and dual-language signage legislation, And it also helped keep the folk music flag flying atop Sain HQ. Funding and subsidies = the death of interesting content.
I’ve no problem with Welsh culture per se. The poetic tales from “The Black Book of Camarthen” and the transformative, if not exactly pre-Hegelian, bardic practice of Taliesin are constituent parts of the air I breathe. And what of folk? I can get with reconstructionist cultural endeavours every now and then. Jesus! I’m probably the only person in these Atlantic Isles who can construct an sensible argument linking East Anglian Middle English drama of the 14th century (specifically the Cambridgeshire morality epic, “The Castell of Perseveraunce”) to reality TV, via Marlowe’s “Faustus”. And I think I must be the last person in England to pronounce the “g” at the end of “London”. This charming Medievalism is just another one of my many endearing affectations.
More stuff soon.
Ed.
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