Glastonbury Review 2003

Tom Ewing’s Bit

THE RAPTURE
Almost everybody else I was with hated the Rapture. I loved them. I know the songs on the much-leaked album quite well, but that wasn’t why. The thing was, by Sunday afternoon I was sick of Glastonbury, I just didn’t know it. I was sick of the sunshine, the good feelings, the optimism, the chirpy cynicism of those cunting Q handouts, the remorselessly chugging music – I may even have been sick of indie girls in bikini tops. The Rapture, a band who have released no actual records in Britain and whose most famous song was known to maybe one-thousandth of the Festival, were put on the second-biggest stage at six in the evening. Did they win the crowd over? Did they bollocks – they played the spikiest, trebliest, scrappiest set of the whole weekend. Camp falsetto, ear-basting guitars, baking-soda disco rhythms – it was fucking horrible and I adored every second. Finally Bez came on to reward us and remind the Rapture about ‘fun’. They played ‘House Of Jealous Lovers’ and we freaky-danced like the good little masochists we were.

THE DARKNESS
My theory: much great pop music eventually turns out to be ridiculous, and more ridiculous music turns out to be great. Adam Ant’s axiom: ridicule is nothing to be scared of. If you love ridiculous music, as The Darkness might but probably wouldn’t tell you, make it more so. They gaze into the powdered face of schlock-metal and do not blink. Justin Hawkins has flames on his belly and a nice line in the splits. He also has two or three thunderously fine tunes – just as well, otherwise The Darkness would be pastiche, a metal Barron Knights, not the weekend’s most winning band.

CANDLE-POWERED BOATS
The apex of hippie craftsmanship.

JOHN CALE
Cale headlined to a half-empty new bands tent on the Saturday night, most of his crowd I’d guess lured away by Radiohead. I’d take one of Cale’s frozen-over ballads over any Radiohead song (even the very good ones!), and sorry to sound like a snob but Music For A New Society templates the Thom Yorke stance and pushes it into places that I suspect are just too stark for a five-piece band to go. It’s such a powerful record that I don’t even like it, but I certainly respect it, and respect is what carried me through most of John Cale’s set. New songs, made with synths and laptops and old session rockers by the sound of it – away from the man’s aura I suspect that they were rubbish, and there was much relief among the Dads when ‘Venus In Furs’ started up. Highlight for me was a gleeful ‘Paris 1919′ – directly afterwards Cale, with a horrid glint in his eye, played a gut-churning V/Vm style glitch-grind racket. After two disgusting minutes he started singing and we realized this was a version of ‘Fear’. The man next to me had been shouting for it all night.

2 MANY DJS
The not-so-secret of 2 Many DJs is out: their set, give or take a Benny Benassi, is an indie disco. We twigged this when they played ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ – the looks of delighted recognition among Steve, me, Alan et al were I fear a piteous sight. ‘Cannonball’ we knew about from the album of course (their set had a dispiriting ‘hits’/'new stuff’ dynamic to it, its only flaw really), but when they started on ‘Fool’s Gold’ we could only laugh. ‘They’re just taking the piss now,’ said Steve. Next stop Kennedy.

THE LONDON LLOYD WEBBER ORCHESTRA
If by any chance you’re reading this, and you were camping by the new bands tent this year, and on the Sunday night your Moby-induced chill was disturbed by a bunch of fuckwits playing Performance: The Greatest Hits Of Andrew Lloyd Webber on the world’s cheapest cassette recorder, and singing along, and holding the player above their heads, and trying to do a comedy falsetto to ‘Memories’, and then putting on some dancehall which sampled ‘Eye Of The Tiger’…we’re very sorry, very sorry indeed.

Andrew Farrell’s Bit

I probably said half a dozen times over the weekend that festival bands are to bands what airline movies are to movies (or internet downloads to singles): if it looks like it might be a good idea, there’s no reason not to try it. You’re hanging around anyway, right?

So people go to stuff, and wander into to stuff, and experience things they hadn’t intended to (cause that’s the point, maaaan). So there’s probably no reason to imagine that everyone at the Vice Party on friday night (in what used to be the Rizla Tent) was there to listen to Erol Alkan, or the Audio Bullys or because it was a great time last year, or even because it was open after midnight. It might’ve been some or more or less of these, but they were there to dance.

And Erol slapped on the chart hits, and at some point a serious bassline was heard, and whooping started. Everyone liked the hell out of this, whatever it was, and it was going to start. And it was White Stripes’s Seven Nation Army, and everyone went on loving it. And singing. And dancing. And dancing.

And then it was Saturday Night, and 2manyDJs, and the continued search for that moment again. And they play Seven Nation Army to an equally loud reception, and then a few minutes later, the guitars play a song I’ve known for ten years, and me and my friends are rocking out to The Cult’s She Sells Sanctuary, and so’s everyone. DJ Swamp had the slot before and was rubbish, playing a trick-heavy set that included murdering Smells Like Teen Spirit. As luck would have it, 2manyDJs are packing Lithium, and they show how to do it.

And then it was Tuesday back in Dublin, and I’m dropping by a computer game store on the way into work, and they’re playing a bootleg of Bootylicious over Smells Like Teen Spirit, which I’ve heard before, and thought it was pretty clever, and I realise that it isn’t just clever, it’s great. I used to love one, and now I love the other as well, and I’m not alone. Both the songs have ascended to the same heaven, and they’re still not the same song. It’s girls versus boys and both sides win.

(Ironically, Erol’s proper set in the Dance Tent was pretty much identical to the Vice one)

Steve Hewitt’s Bit

RECOLLECTIONS OF THURSDAY CANCELLED DUE TO PERRY
Friday, and, before the rain, The Darkness. Now, I was quite pro The Darkness before this and it was my enthusiasm that got several people off their behinds and over to the pyramid at the unreasonable time of half past ten. And it was so worth it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band win over an audience quite so spectacularly. Where to start? Costume changes, Justin playing guitar behind his head, that cover of street spirit? Don’t give me that blah, blah, they must be ironic and knowing bollocks, this is PROPER ROCK with screechy high-pitched vocals and everything, but more importantly, an ability to write damn good pop tunes and share the fantastic time you are having with the audience. To use a phrase not often heard since the Gay Dad debacle, The Darkness are The Best New Band In Britain.

Saturday, and after wandering back from the cabaret tent via dancing to The Smiths outside the herbal high tent and the tastiest chips ever (well that’s what they tasted like at the time, I was possibly not entirely sober), I walked past the dance tent, silent and deserted, the ground inside strewn with thousands of empty beer cups and water bottles. Four pure white scans roved over detritus, making their patterns for their own amusement seemingly. I stood and watched for a couple of minutes until the lighting guy moved onto his next pre-set for the following day.

Sunday afternoon, and after feeling a bit tired and low in the morning, I met up with the gang once more in time for the Sugababes. Looking around at the sunburnt smiling mob I felt yet another (non-chemically enhanced, I assure you) rush of love for this four days of madness. Oh and the Sugababes were alright too, but it’s not really about the music.

Then to top it off I spotted the ace of trumps in indie t-shirt bingo (if that’s not too mixed a metaphor), a Sultans Of Ping FC WHERE’S ME JUMPER t-shirt. The girl wearing it seemed somewhat bemused when I told her she’d won, pity we didn’t have an actual prize to give her…

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Freaky Trigger Pop Music Focus Group 8

Introduction & Nos. 20-16

What’s all this then? We took twenty recent hit singles and got a focus group to rate them each out of ten and comment on them. You were allowed to play a joker on one of your scores, which would make whatever you played it on count double. To bulk up the statistics a bit we also played all 20 records at a Freaky Trigger club night and handed out a ballot for people to fill in. We also sent the ballot to a few people who couldn’t make the group itself, mostly from outside the UK.

How does it work? Each record has an average score out of 10, and also a controversy score – the higher the score, the more it split our panel. The result is a TOTALLY SCIENTIFIC determination of which pop is Best.

What happened to the Seventh Focus Group?? Um….er…we used to run the Focus Group every six months, with 35-40 records and a lot more participants. These took a lot longer to do and by the time they appeared they were often a bit out of date. Finally the seventh focus group never actually saw publication – I still have a huge Word file full of edited comments and will do something with it soon, so your commentary has not been wasted!

Why wasn’t I invited? We’re trying to keep the numbers of participants down, so I just grabbed some names from my address book and sent it out to them. Get in touch if you want to be included in the next group.

Who are these people? See the Top 5 page for a list of commentators. Thanks to everyone else who filled in a form at the club night, and thanks also to Alan Trewartha whose handwriting defeated me at the editing stage – sorry Alan!

20. MADONNA – “American Life” Score: 2.57 / Controversy: 2.54

Squirly squirky squirly squirky squirly squirky squirly squirky. Ptunt ptunt ptunt ptunt. Fffffffff. Nnn-nn-n-nn. Uh-uhhhuh-uhhu. Strum-strum-strumstru-ahh-ahh-ahheh. Ghhhhhh-eah ghh-ghh-eah-eah. Stopstartstopstartstopstartstopstart stompstompstompstomp untuntuntunt sqee-ee-ee-ee-ee blat fft ink shhshhshhshh vrhhhhhhhhh ykykyk bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

She’s being a bit of a ponderous grown-up which is entirely her prerogative. This is really really ace, and I quite like the rap, so there. 8 (AL)

Raps as well as Brett Anderson. Good squidgy noises. Dreadful lyrics. 7 (SH)

The funniest song in the Focus Group – ever. Like watching a particularly nasty car crash. That more cars keep crashing into. When she raps a plane crashes into the whole sorry mess. 5 (PB)

The most disappointing of the selections, what was innovative has become old, what was fresh has become narrow. The only way she can hook up with Missy is a gap ad and everyone but her knows the producers that she should work with. For the first time since the 80s I no longer care what she produces. (The odd thing is that the sung vocals, stripped of their annoying production seems technically strong) 4 (AE)

I live in Archway / I buy things off eBay / I clean my own kitchen / But here I am bitching. 2 (MH)

**JOKER** This used to be my playground. **JOKER** 2 (JB)

A poor entry to her canon, entirely sunk by lyrics written for an O-Level English Empathy essay. 1 (MA)

That rap! Oh that rap! I quite like her Gap advert song, coz it’s like her old stuff. 1 (JL)

She should know better. 0 (AC)

Maybe this isn’t really totally unlistenable. It’s semi-OK until the rap…but the rap is so excruciatingly awkward it leaves me convinced that her once-peerless gift for saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right time has completely evaporated. She bares her soul and renounces the masks that made her both a star and a critical object of wonderment, and reveals herself to be obsessed with personal authenticity, somewhat insulated from the “real world,” and given to keeping people as pets — in other words, a dismally ordinary celebrity, something Madonna never before was, and never was supposed to be.

Five years from now, drag queens will not be doing routines to this. 0.0 (MD)

19. ROOM 5 feat OLIVER CHEATHAM – “Make Luv” Score: 2.58 / Controversy: 2.14

Does what it sez, convinces you to do what it sez. Extra credit for deployment of cricketchirp guitars (I stand defenseless before thee). 8 (JB)

All bow down before the advertising industry. Or bend over. 4 (MA)

I wore Tom’s Lynx in Barcelona and no women danced around me. 2 (IS)

A night out in Cleethorpes. 1 (TH)

This is a cunt’s trick. “I like to party / Everybody does.” Right! So stop spoiling our parties! Room 5 has just taken over from Room 101. 0 (PB)

Offends most parts of me. 0 (AC)

Much though I love them Daft Punk are to blame for this. Fucking awful. 0 (TE)

18. COLDPLAY – “Clocks” Score: 2.74 / Controversy: 2.21

smart enough to let the hook be song, savvy enough to have his voice break on the word ‘home’, fast enough to skip past Radiohead directly to U2. 7 (JB)

Cocks more like. Better when he does not sing. 5 (SC)

I’m sure my boss would like this. This is just them recording their piano exercises. Rock on Grade Three! 4 – oh, and cocks more like. (MA)

Usual sludge. Nice piano. Also cocks more like. 3 (SH)

Tick tock, please stop. 3 (JL)

Cocks more like. The Moped version is much better. Strangely the song has made me acutely aware of the clocks in the room. Not their worst. 2 (PB)

The weepy and melodramatic nonsense a housewife hears in the record store while birthday shopping for an ungrateful son. She buys the album, thinks for the first time she was 17 she is cool. She isn’t. 2 (AE)

Cocks more like. More relentless than Benny B. Shut up you self-satisfied heir to a caravan fortune tosspot. 0 (TH)

17. FAST FOOD ROCKERS – “Fast Food Song” Score: 3.79 / Controversy: 3.39

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! And it’s clever – ‘eat to the beat’. 10 (IS)

Eat to the beat! Best concept ever! A 10 for sure if it mentions Dallas Chicken. Ley change! Oh sod it. 10 (SC)

Cheap novelty, making the food is sex metaphor for the umpteenth time, so why
have I been humming it for an hour? 6 (AE)

It’s catchy, it sort of reminds me of Steps first single, when you thought they were just going to be a karaoke novelty act. FFR will be number one by Christmas, just give them an Abba or Bee Gee’s song to cover. Along with the Cheeky Girls watch them dominate the Tweeny market. 6 (JL)

How angry must the marketing director of Burger King be? Harmless playground fun and bonus points for planned obsolescence band name. Exactly as good as Electric Six. 6 (TE)

Pop is all about this: doomed romantic adolescents lay their souls bare. Passion and excitement and love. 4 (TH)

Never really convinces you of its desire
for or love of fast food (or “fast food”) the way David Trout’s “Fast Food
Song” did, and to pull off something like this requires you gotta mean it, man. 4 (JB)

Far too much verse! I had no idea! Needs a Scooter remix. 3 (SH)

Amiable chooon that would be much improved by being about ANYTHING apart from fast food and/or getting it on. Sparks would have done this so much better, and probably have. 3 (AL)

The first song played entirely on a polyphonic mobile phone. Fast Food Rockers promote healthy eating – and unhealthy listening. A song to get obese to. If you like this you are fast food rockists. 2 (PB)

Why is she singing in an American accent? This is how Steps started. 0 (MH)

My childhood set to a pounding beat. This is not good. Unrealistic portrayal of service in fast food places. 0 (AC)

16. PINK – “Feel Good Time” Score: 4.20 / Controversy: 2.75

When did Pink become my dealer for catchy sing along pop? When did she figure out when to make the perfect chorus? This must have come like a golden shower from Heaven, because something so perfect could not have contained itself in the studio. 10 (AE)

Beck wrote this ; it would be better if he sang it. 7 (MH)

Pink is the single worst artist currently working in any field of the arts anywhere in the world. I quite like this one. 4 (TH)

Destiny’s Child were assertive, sassy go-getting – attitude fired through hooks and beats to inspire admiration, ambition and respect. What on earth possessed somebody to replace them with Pink? 3 (MA)

She doesn’t sound like she would know any kind of good time. Her wretched vocals spoil what is quite good fun, hooky backing. Pink – stink more like. 3 (PB)

For god’s sake Pink stop trying to sound hard! The American Robbie. 2 (TE)

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John Otway At Glastonbury – Beyond The Fringe

John Otway plays every year at Glastonbury in the Cabaret tent, but no one ever goes to see him. He had a novelty hit single called ‘Cor Baby That’s Really Free’ in the late ’70s and has reputedly been living off that in a rather sad manner ever since. This makes him a somewhat unappealing prospect.

However, in the interests of science I decided this year that John Otway must be seen. So on a sunny Saturday afternoon I joined those taking shelter inside and caught most of his act. It turned out that he was surprisingly entertaining. The music is not so good, but he has a very engaging stage manner and for someone who has enjoyed so little success he is very good at working the audience.

His act is essentially a comedic one, albeit based around musical performance. He was accompanied by another guy on guitar, who looked like an escapee from A.R.E. Weapons, but he played guitar himself on most tracks, and used on a variety of gimmicks to keep us amused. One of these was his trick of folding a coathanger so that it became a hands-free microphone holder. More striking was when he wheeled on a theremin and strapped some kind of beatbox onto himself, so that he was able to dance and make music simultanaeously. Truly this man is a genius. He also had a great comedy roadie who had to keep running onstage to re-connect mikes and stuff, especially when Otway was using the coathanger microphone. The roadie was so funny to watch that I am still wondering whether he was part of the act and his interventions scripted.

The actual music was less important. I’m not sure if I caught the Hit, and a lot of the tunes performed were covers – e.g. ‘Delilah’ and ‘Two Little Boys’. Apparently the former of these was released as a single in the relatively recent past, and charted (albeit peaking at number 192), so Otway is now entitled to release a greatest hitS compilation. I always find ‘Two Little Boys’ strangely affecting – I mean, I know it is a mawkishly sentimental song for small children, but a lot of its themes touch my heart. When listening to it I always imagine some poor fuck on a battlefield somewhere waiting to die beside his dead horse, and then he is saved by his childhood friend. Hurrah. Also, the whole thing of sticking close to your childhood friends (something none of us ever do) is a great source of regret and guilty nostalgia.

Otway finished with ‘Cheryl’ – wasn’t this the song he released after ‘Cor Baby’, the track that no one bought, thereby dooming him to a career as a figure of fun rather than a proper musical artist? I found myself thinking that it is actually quite a good tune. Perhaps in an alternate universe John Otway is primarily famous as a songwriter and not as that surprisingly funny guy who always plays the Cabaret Tent at Glastonbury.

The Dirty Vicar

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WHAT’S A GIRL LIKE ME DOING AT A RINK LIKE THIS? – The Other Skate Nation

I often ask myself that too. Especially on “Adult nite” (Thursday),
which is like a singles bar — except that there’s no booze allowed and they play too much Motley Crue and everyone’s on quads (old-skool rollerskates, not designer drugs).

You’ll run into a wide variety of people at a roller-skating rink – literally! That’s probably why these rinks are still popular with the swingers who first came here in the 70s, when most USA rinks were built. Interestingly, most people who come here nowdays still look and act like it’s the 70s, especially the teens – who wouldn’t have been around for it the first time obviously, but who have somehow channelled that vibe : cheap glamour, endless flirtation, silliness, bellbottoms…

Rink skating is not so much “skating” as it is “avoiding”: when you skate indoors, you need to be a bit paranoid. There are fifty other people on the rink with you, and three fourths of them have never skated before (so they don’t know how to stop or steer). The other fourth are such good skaters that they’re bored with going round and round, so would rather go unexpectedly sideways — usually when you’re trying to pass them from behind. Ouch! But it’s a rare moment when a good skater actually loses balance. Most can twist themselves out of nearly any hazard.

And that’s the sad part. Seems that the better skater you are, the less interaction you’ll have with other skaters: you’ll be skating too fast for conversations; you’ll intimidate beginners just by donning your custom gear – and you’ll rarely fall down (providing fewer opportunities for someone who fancies you to help you back to your feet again — one of skating’s sweetest, most genuine gestures).

Oh, and about that falling down thing: you will do it at least once, no matter how good of a skater you are – so it’s best to dress for it. You won’t see the pros in low-rise pants ever. Low-rise is the height of fashion now, but if you fall in them, they will fall from you. (Trust me, you don’t want your thong displayed so prominently when there’s this many digital cameras milling about!)

Different subsets come to the rink on different days: on weeknights before dinner, it’s kiddie birthday parties and elementary school fundraisers, so I hear Destiny’s Child and Blink 182 a lot. Young kids only seem to like (or request) about different five bands. After that, we’re all at the mercy of those crusty party standards like “Chicken Dance”, “Macarena” and “The Hokey Cokey” … (sigh).

Kids are somewhat snobbish and cruel at these times — they bring their two hundred dollar inlines from home, and spend more time teasing (anyone wearing helmets, pads or quads) then they actually spend skating. Boys skate alone and aggressively, but girls huddle together like geese, making it impossible for someone who’s a faster skater to skate between them. Every so often, one girl whispers something, and then they all burst into giggles or excited screams. I’m wise to them now: I know they’ve got the hots for the referee who looks like Mike Hutchence. When I skate by, I often overhear them daring each other to do something “bad” to get his attention — maybe even get him to whistle at them, or lecture them personally by the side of the rink.

Late in the evening on weeknights, after the kids have gone home, the crowd thins down to just a dozen hard-core skaters — most of them in their thirties and forties, almost all of them on customized quads (except for the fifty-year-old who leaps about on his in-lines like a ballerina). These “regulars” like to skate backwards, sideways, concentrating on their form and footwork — always staring at each other, seldom speaking, always trying to figure out someone else’s moves. If you go out onto the rink late night like this, you’ll be scrutinized, too. Not only for your moves, but also for your shoes. Rented skates tell them you haven’t been “serious” for long — but if your form’s ok, then they might mumble a little praise when they see you in the food court next time. This crowd prefers time-tested tunes — familiar songs with slow, sturdy beats, tunes that they did routines to when they entered contests, tunes that they are now requesting over and over so that they can teach their moves to others.

Do not go late night if you don’t want to hear “You Dropped A Bomb On Me” or “Billie Jean” at least twice.

“Adult Nite” attracts some of these good skaters too, but often has a more desperate vibe. People show up in Hooters and Spanky’s t-shirts, comparing their tattoos and piercings while ranting about their disfunctional ex-spouse(s). Then the Deadheads wink at the Surfers who wink back, and they all leave at once for the parking lot. When they come back, they’re smiling and their clothes reek of pot. Adult nite music is heavy metal — with the occasional Soft Cell song thrown in by a desperate DJ. Heavy metal generally isn’t good to skate to — it’s too fast — but AC/DC is the one exception.

Saturday night is when the gang-bangers come out to skate. They usually hog the floor, even though they’re rarely good skaters. Once on the floor, they do a lot of pushing (both kinds) — usually only at each other, but with large enough gestures that those skating nearby sometimes get caught in a ricochet. Music then is mostly gangsta-rap (as difficult to skate to as metal is), but sometimes the dj slips a diva into the mix, and that’s when everyone else who was complaining to him about the rap stuff lightens up and goes back to the floor.

Then later that night, teen-agers pile in from the amusement park nearby, dragging their cliques behind them. That’s the worst time to skate — too much shoving and smooching — you’ll get elbowed in the ribs or face. That’s usually the time when I give my skates back to the ref behind the desk and call it a night …

To be honest, skating rinks are pretty funky places — and sometimes scary too — but I’d rather go there than to a proper gym. The music’s quirkier, crowd watching’s more fun, and since there’s so many distractions, it just doesn’t dawn on you how hard you’ve worked-out –

– until the next day.
When you up with sore muscles.
In yesterday’s clothes.
On the downstairs couch.

Stripey, October 2002

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I Know It’s Crazy But I Can’t Stop – The Honeycombs

I’m in love with Honey Lantree, and anyone who cares about pop should love her too. Look at the cover of The Honeycombs ‘I Can’t Stop’ – she’s above the boys, looking to the left and slightly upwards, red lipstick and dark back-comb. If you could see her body, instead of just her head, you might expect to see her seated at a typewriter, clockwatching the last ten minutes of a working week, looking forward to tonight’s club, tonight’s friends, tonight’s music. She’d be wearing a skirt slightly too short for the typing pool and perhaps a little too much make up – but there’s no time to go home to the suburbs and change before the 100 Club. No time to waste.

Well, it’s not quite as ordinary as that. Although at one time a hairdresser, Honey Lantree was 60′s pop’s greatest drummer – The Honeycombs’ one woman popstomp explosion. For a week or more I’ve been immersed in the four Honeycombs songs on Castle/Sanctuary’s staggering new Joe Meek anthology The Alchemist Of Pop . Not only does Alchemist replace the fairly difficult to get hold of ‘It’s Hard to Believe and the various volumes of The Joe Meek Story as the definitive Meek comp, but it’s also absolutely compulsory listening for any pop fan. Hang on – I don’t want to talk about The Alchemist of Pop here – read Marcello Carlin’s Church of Me article for a brilliant overview of the whole thing – I just want to talk about The Honeycombs. About Honey.

Let’s take them one at a time. First – ‘Have I the Right’ – the BIG one. Where to start? A debut Number One in August 1964 – two minutes and fifty six seconds of hormones-out-of-control pop mayhem. As with all great records, the intro sets everything up perfectly – an urgent, slightly marching-on the spot, backbeat with tambourine topping and Meek’s trademark compressed beyond belief guitar and ice rink organ. Dennis D’ell’s weird growling and gargling delivery is one of the great pop vocals, cranking himself up to a frustrated howl on the chorus (“‘I’ve got some love and I long to share it!”) over Honey’s brutal thump. The slightly off-mike ‘Alright’ after the second chorus sounds as if D’ell has fallen to the floor unable to continue, leaving it to the guitar to carry the tune while he recovers. Here, Honey punctuates with skipping end -of phrase off beats – I told you she was good. The empty-cinema ambience of the production is amazing, Meek ensuring that you have to lean in and listen hard. But still you always feel that something in the mix is still out of reach, as yet unheard.

It’s no surprise that they never equalled ‘Have I The Right’, spending the rest of their short career casting around for another big hit. Follow-up singles either failed to chart or ran aground well short of the top ten, although they did manage a sizeable hit overseas with ‘I Can’t Stop’, which oddly was never released as a single in Britain. To put it bluntly ‘I Can’t Stop’ is fucking mental. An obviously speeded up Dennis D’ell yelps and growls over a stripped down and scratchy R+B/Merseybeat hybrid. The bridge is bonkers – D’ell squeaks a camp ” A-we can’t go on kissing – like THIS” while Honey alternates thundering rolls with a proto-glam thud. Martin Murray’s guitar solo, meanwhile, battles against insane amounts of compression which at times reduces it to a high whistle and only Alan Ward’s Vox Continental escapes the crush as Meek runs riot on the desk. D’ell declares in the second bridge, “You’ve driven/ me wild/ from the start – WOW!” and we go around again until Honey’s cymbal flaying finishes it. Genius!

The third Honeycombs track on ‘Alchemist’ is a 1965 Kinks cover, ‘Something Better Beginning’. While the original is a pretty good, slightly Mersey-cheesy album track from ‘Kinda Kinks’, this version is gigantic – the best Kinks cover I’ve heard. Better even than The Raincoats’ ‘Lola’ or The Nomads ‘ I’m Not Like Everybody Else’ – that good. From the off Meek punctuates another cavernous production with a blend of groaning baritone sax and muted trumpet, gliding in ballroom strings halfway through the first verse. This time Honey’s beat is pure driving pop-Motown, pushing D’ell’s hopeful vocal to a dramatic falsetto conclusion. Massive – but it only struggled to number 39 in the charts.

There was one last hurrah – a summer 1965 number 12 hit with re-recording of the Howard/Blaikley ballad ‘That’s The Way’ from the previous year’s album ‘The Honeycombs’. Here Honey gets the microphone, joining a mixed-down D’ell in a soaring bubblegum duet and she sounds, well – heartbreakingly beautiful. A few more singles stiffed in 1965/66 before the band ground to a halt sometime in 1967. Well, maybe not quite – The Honeycombs have existed in various forms on the clubs and pubs circuit until just about the present day, usually featuring Dennis D’ell as the only original member. Honey Lantree never featured again except for a rumoured 1996 attempt to put the original line-up back together. I read somewhere that her mother had kept Honey’s sixties drum-kit in her basement in Hayes and that she planned to use it again, but somehow it never happened. I just can’t imagine how the heck the kit had survived the beatings she must have given it thirty years before.

So that’s why I love Honey and her Honeycombs. Sometimes everything- the sound, the look, the songs – is so irresistible that you can’t help yourself. You can’t help making them part of a story, part of a dream. And that’s the way you fall in love.

Dr C

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The Geezaesthetic Manifesto

A Manifesto, by Various Geezers

Geezaesthetics was coined by ILE’s Jerry The Nipper as a one-word summary of our critical stance. What did he mean? Only he knows (printing this is at least partly a nudge at him to tell us!) – we took it as an affectionate diss, and over a few beers decided to reclaim the word. Since it’s rather a good one.

Hence this modest sort of manifesto, our version of what being a Geezaesthetic might involve. It speaks for itself, but I’ll use this introduction to make a couple of extra points. First of all, the manifesto is unfinished. It will probably always be unfinished, but add to it yourself if you like. Second, and importantly, we know that the word ‘geezer’ carries a gender implication. We also know that everyone who drafted the manifesto is a man. Geezaesthetics, though, wants to show no gender bias: whether it has avoided any is something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

1. We are critics as soon as we listen to a record, watch a film, experience any art of any kind. Any reaction, from rapture to depression of the off switch, is an act of criticism. We’re not necessarily happy about this, but we’re stuck with it so there’s no point being unhappy about it either. more »

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UK Garage In 2001 – Down Down BIZZNIZZ

Part 1: The Scene

I’m obsessed, I know; I bang on about it endlessly, analysing minute shifts and gradations, imagining radical mutations that only exist in my head, devoting reams of print space to nothing much in particular. And yet, despite all this, UK Garage is an awfully difficult area of music for me to write about. Difficult because I’m aware of how personally involved I am in the music’s success – an involvement that cleverer and healthier listeners tend to shy away from. Sometimes I feel like my patronage – downloading tracks, buying compilations, visiting clubs by myself if necessary, and then turning those experiences into something I can write about that might interest others – is all that keeps the style on its feet, keeps it generating delights for me in some sort of elaborate karmic feedback loop. To be obsessed with an artist is one thing, but to have such an attachment to something so abstract as a ìsceneî or ìmovementî is quite another, and even then UK Garage seems an odd choice, requiring a particularly skewed worldview. Clearly I’m not the right person for an impartial assessment.

For to immerse oneself fully within garage is not just to enjoy the odd track, but to wholeheartedly buy into – and believe in the success of – a musical narrative that stretches over a decade, encompassing whole genres (‘ardkore, jungle, etc.) within a broader sound that can perhaps best be called ìthe sound of the piratesî. It’s to become so intimately associated with that story’s sonic twists and turns that the style’s constant musical characteristics actually become objective values in themselves, bestowing worth upon a track simply by being present. In fact UK Garage, much more than the sounds that preceded it, is music about that story, distilling every worthwhile element into a heady mixture that is undeniably ìpirateî music. In this way, garage is sonically more true to itself than jungle; the producers have a better instinctive understanding of the passage of the broader narrative they’re swept up within, and maybe because of that seem to know better where it should go next.

But where did garage go in 2001? The unbelievable rise of So Solid Crew excepted, from the outside it’s hard to tell that it went anywhere at all. It’s in fact arguable that by the end of 2000, garage had no sonic stories left to tell, having completed its street-to-academy progression by achieving both pop crossover (Arful Dodger, Craig David) and serious muso acclaim (MJ Cole, Wookie), not to mention its own breakaway sub-genre in the form of ìbreakbeat garageî. At any rate, it may have seemed as though garage had left itself little space to develop, and that the rise of the MC was a result of this: the areas of progression within the scene would now be vocal, lyrical and cultural, but not musical.

Garage’s chart-action less pronounced last year too, with less fabulously sparkling pop gems lighting up the higher reaches than during the Golden Age of The Artful Dodger. In truth there were probably more garage pop hits last year than prior, but their sheer diversity – from Misteeq’s enthusiastic helium-pop to Oxide & Neutrino’s angst-rave to DJ Pied Piper’s happy-go-lucky MC-vehicle to The Streets’ oddball geezers – undermined any impression of a full-frontal assault. But as any music critic will tell you, diversity and disparateness doesn’t equal interesting stories.

Instead, 2001 may go down as the year of breakbeat garage, and that would be a bit of a shame because last year this development, which had once seemed potentially invigorating, revealed itself to be a massive red herring. There were a multitude of tracks that followed the same deadening one-bar trudge of looped breakbeat + squelchy bassline, spiked with wacky noises or edgy dialogue sampled from martial arts films; a formula that quickly became played-out to the point of strong irritation. More crucially though, even at its best breakbeat garage comes across as both inessential and little more than a subtractive style: not only are creativity and invention thin on the ground, but the very stylistic foundation it rests upon – the use of a ‘funky’ and ‘natural’ looped break rather than 2-step’s trademark sub-Timbaland beats – excises the dangerousness of garage’s rhythmic excess, replacing it with a reassuring but unexciting familiarity.

At the same time, the sparkling pop-fluff vocal tracks began to lose their attraction, due to the drop in genuinely exciting productions (although as always there were exceptions like Selena’s trembling ìGive It Upî, and of course anything by Mis-Teeq) and the rise in the endless succession of useless remixes. With this radical tapering off at its extreme edges (pop vs. breakbeat), garage’s healthy diversity was beginning to resemble an Achilles’ heel. It’s easy to imagine many garage producers literally recoiling in horror from the twin dooms of over-sugared pop tracks and deeply uninteresting breakbeat dirges; consequently, instead of pulling the style into two distinct groups, these extremes actually cancelled out each other’s magnetic forces. The challenge facing producers was (and remains) discovering how to work past these two pitfalls, as opposed to simply remaining caught between them.

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The Stockholm Monsters

EVERY TIME IT HAPPENS IT HAPPENS SO FAST

A hot Friday night, Summer 1985. Inertia everywhere – there’s not a lot left here for me, in 6 weeks I’ll be gone, leaving for London. But tonight something special – Factory Records are in town and everyone I know is crackling with anticipation. I bunked off work and got there early, drinking with the France brothers and Shan Hira. Gradually everyone assembles – D and S over there in the corner talking to a couple of roadies, E at the bar. F enters with a brief shimmy of the Ian Curtis dead fly dance, nods at the Monsters and picks up a pool cue. The buzz is that Hooky will drop by to do the sound or something.

Meanwhile, while hammering back the Special Brew, I’m looking out for her. Thus far I’ve screwed the whole thing up oh, sixteen or seventeen times. Spent too long honing my two world-class talents of saying the wrong thing and not noticing what’s under my very nose until it’s gone. Ah shit, she’ll show up, have another pint.

What’s so great about the Stockholm Monsters anyway? It’s this – there are no layers of style to get in the way, no third-hand signifiers to get in the way of the process. Because there’s no dirty great ball and chain to drag around, The Monsters get to punch home the point time after time without needing to worry if their hair looks good, or how they fit in. There’s no effort wasted in saying ‘Look, we’re doing this’ or ‘This is what we’re about’, they just DO it, and that’s why it goes straight to the heart. That’s why it hurts. Has a band ever responded better to the challenges that Vic Godard laid down in ‘Ambition’ and ‘A Different Story’? No learned rock and roll moves here – ‘Alma Mater’ is a pure hit of the strong stuff, a record to make you SHIVER. A shifting bass-line, THAT voice, a muted trumpet in the distance and you’re lost for ever.

It’s been said that The Smiths cut through to the heart of the matter like this, but I don’t think so. You can peel back Morrissey’s carefully constructed layers for ever and find yet more artifice. Listen to the first two singles and you’ll know all there is to know about how Morrissey’s world has been fashioned, but you’ll never get a glimpse of Morrissey himself. You’ll just see yourself in a mirror looking back. With the Monsters it’s all out there for you, all on the surface and it’s more than you can take.

Where was I? Oh yes, back then. ‘Everything’s wrong, Everything’s Wrong/I Understand Where I Belong’ swirls over me – a ride in a rattling rollercoaster – peaks of euphoria, troughs of despair. Lost in music, too far gone to resist, punch after punch, head spinning. I don’t remember exactly what they played, only that they were giants – effortlessly great. She turned up alright -late. Late and beautiful. We walked a tightrope of drunken possibilities – back to yours, back to mine? Neither actually, I ended up walking the streets in the small hours again and guess whose music was playing in my head.

December 1st 2001 – it’s my 40th birthday party. Sixteen years on and I haven’t learned much – I still drink too many, too fast, too often. This time she was early. ‘It could’ve been me’ she said as we stepped outside and kissed. God, it’s hard enough to keep things together without having your life rewind and get real like this. And now those bastards at LTM have re-issued Alma Mater and more. I suppose the best way to describe it is to admit that I’m completely fucked. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Dr C

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The Jubilee Stuff

1
The weather matters. Saturday 1st June: 8pm, and the sky out of my window is still fading pale blue, weightless, benevolent. A jubilee weekend of rain would be a symbolic down: but then, we are long used to finding a meaning in the rain. Not just we aesthetes (‘I’m happy when it rains’; ‘You’re happy cos you’re cosy and the rain comes rattling in’), but British Life in its broader-stroking manner. ‘It wouldn’t be Wimbledon if it didn’t rain’: ‘Queuing’s our national pastime – especially queueing in the rain’ – all of that has its kernel, but has been stretched to banality. We may yet be able to test whether it gets wheeled out over these four days. But for now, the miracle of the sun: to which we adapt and flock instantly, despite the myth of a rainy people. more »

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C90 Go: Number 3

The Qt Of Blood Technique

Having spent the latter half of 1999 away from tape making due to self-imposed mix detox, the acquisition of a CD burner during that year’s Yuletide sent me back into the hobby with a mad frenzy. I didn’t fall off the wagon so much as I gleefully leaped from it, clammy palms and all. The Qt of Blood Technique (a foolproof defense tactic that doubles as a Trading Places reference) was one of the first CDRs I made but it was misplaced shortly after that. Lo and behold, the forgotten disc was discovered recently while rifling through some old paperwork and several credit card offers that were waiting to be ripped in half. It was made with the intent to be given to my brother Dave, who since the time of this CDR’s finalization has had to wade through more than enough of my mixmaking crud to the point where it would be redundant to give it to him now.

‘Street Life’ isn’t merely one of my favorite Roxy Music songs; it’s one of my favorite album openers as well, and it seems to be ideal for the opening scene of a movie involving a group of people who conduct their business on the streets and in dimly lit clubs of ill repute. Cliche! When I was assembling the tracks and sequence, I thought about how great it would be to open the mix with this and close it with the Crusaders‘ ‘Street Life,’ even though it was already used for Burt Reynolds’ 1981 thriller Sharky’s Machine. So bam – there could be a theme of some sort! A few other songs came to mind that fit along the same lines of those like-named songs, and all I could think of was a soundtrack for some imaginary film stuck between the blaxploitative likes of Detroit 9000 and a more recent film like The Limey. Gutter-ridden but sleek in a sense. Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman would most definitely have to be in this film.

Primal Scream‘s Vanishing Point – which cribs dialogue and thematic content from the ’70s movie of the same name, another inspiration for this mix – is a really uneven record, and the instrumental ‘Get Duffy’ might not be its most representative moment, but it has the right glassy-eyed flow to follow Roxy Music with its ’70s rhythm box and an atmosphere that lends itself to a backroom scene at some joint where all the decor is dark red and black.
With a forceful swipe of organ, the possible party sequence is kicked off in the form of Latin percussionist Candido‘s monstrous version of Olatunji’s
‘Jingo.’ This mix is six and a half minutes long, over three minutes less than the version most are probably familiar with. Even in its truncated form, it’s still able to build up, break down, and show off all those intricate layers – the percussion duel between the left and right channels, the swelling organ, the galloping bass, and… everything else (this time constraint is no good!). There’s so much going on and yet it’s easy to take that fact for granted when it’s so reflexive to simply delight in its direct-to-the-hip lusciousness. Hooah!

The bass line gets deeper and slows down a bit for S.O.U.L.‘s ‘Burning Spear,’ another instrumental that’s one of maybe five songs containing flute that I actually like. A big reason why this song appears here is to set up
Axelrod‘s ‘The Mental Traveler.’ ‘Burning Spear’ actually begins somewhat like the breakdown of drum and bass of that song that comes along later, but it has its own charms to distinguish itself apart from the song it’s more or less assisting for effect’s sake. ‘Burning Spear’ makes me think of early
’70s Bar-Kays with the keyboards replaced by flute. It’s pretty much the lead instrument here, ducking in roughly 20 seconds in and skipping and winding around the rhythm and plaintively strummed guitar for the remainder. Everything’s direct and amiable until it speeds up at the very end, where it ends abruptly.

‘Bassthema’ – by Einstürzende Neubauten’s dapper Blixa Bargeld – is one of those songs with a title that tells you just as much about the song as any desperately rushed description. Thanks to some muffled production values and lots of revrrrrrb, the primary bass line is even deeper than the one in the song preceding it. Paranoia-inducing chime-y effects (bells?) and a slight rhythm hover, and then a jolting succession of pungent thrums jab and jab and become louder and louder and louder until – gasp! – suddenly dissipating with no tension resolved. This could be the crime scene.

The shuffling ‘Shadows’ by Superpitcher creeps out of the sewer holes and, like Kompakt mate Dettinger’s Intershop, it sounds like the ideal accompaniment for driving down a barren damp avenue around 3 a.m. A looped ghostly sample of a female vocalist intones something that sounds like
‘Breathe in the sympathy/ When the shadows fall.’ Now I know the ‘when the shadows fall’ bit could indicate that it’s from a version of ‘Willow Weep for Me,’ but I just can’t place it because of the ‘sympathy’ (?) bit. Any help with this brainwracking issue would be appreciated.

I am, however, positive beyond a shadow of a doubt that the origin of the
Black Box Recorder song that follows is in Althea and Donna’s ‘Up Town Top Ranking.’ Black Box Recorder’s claustrophobic angle on the young duo’s original picks up nicely after the eerie murk of the Superpitcher track. This is rather different from the original, not only in the production but the delivery. The vocals seem to come from someone whose idea of a good time involves robbing a bank instead of double-dutch.

Oh no it’s another ’70s spy-type deal – mallets, cascading keys, seesawing strings – this time from Tindersticks. ‘Paco’s Theme’ is a b-side to one of the few singles of theirs I’ve bought. The only reasonable defense in this being relegated to a secondary spot would have to be that it was recorded after the album was done (in this case it’s Curtains). It’s better than anything on their soundtrack/score records to date, more lively but pensive and seemingly put together in an off-the-cuff fashion with a brilliant result.

‘The Mental Traveler’ ups the drama with all of David Axelrod‘s legendary trademarks: the fat chords, the breaks, the crisp but graceful touch – acted out by all-star personnel. Speaking of all-star personnel, some label should anthologize bassist Carol Kaye’s session work. Such a thing would have to include songs by the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, Nancy Sinatra, Quincy Jones, Joe Cocker, Cannonball Adderley, and Axelrod. Now there’s a mix. I reckon you could also devote a whole disc to bassists who mimic Kaye’s style (hello Broadcast, hello His Name Is Alive). But back to ‘The Mental Traveler’ before it vanishes. Just as ambitious as a side-long ELP medley, the song fits as much thrill and dazzle in its few minutes as most LPs, and it ends as it begins: with a massive swell of strings.

And it’s another swell of strings that begins the Walker Brothers‘ ‘Nite Flights,’ one of the weird dark (not quite death) disco numbers from their album of the same name. It’s funny how that top-heavy record has songs that inspired Brian Eno and David Byrne (and some neuromantics), and then there are songs that seem to have paved the way for Glenn Frey’s ‘You Belong to the City’ and Foreigner’s ‘Waiting for a Girl Like You.’ (Gary Walker, the finger is pointed at you.) What business these stage siblings had making this type of music is beyond me. How this particular song fits into the pseudo-scheme of things of this CDR is also beyond me. It just sounds right
- the mood, the velocity, those strings – even if I have no clue what Scott means when he sings of glass traps, broken necks, feather weights, and blood lights (sp?).

Like Arab Strap and ELO, you either love or hate Steely Dan, and I tend to love ’em despite the fact that they’re a couple of know-all jazzbo snots. They remind me of a couple of my uncles, and in fact it was a couple of my uncles and my dad who exposed me to these crotchety muso bastards. I wish Becker and Fagen would have made more songs like ‘Show Biz Kids.’ It’s a simple pop song without a great deal of flash and showmanship. No matter how low the volume is on the stereo you’re playing it on, it’s all but impossible to ignore it. Oh yeah, I forgot about the handclaps. Pretty much any song with handclaps is a good song. When I was little, I used to get them confused with Jimmy Buffett. Are Steely Dan fans dildo heads?

During the scene in which a scuffle of some sort takes place, the Tony Williams Lifetime‘s ‘Some Hip Drum Shit’ would play rather loudly. It’s a violent 90-second percussion cluster wankfest for Williams, Don Alias, and Warren Smith. All I can see when I try to put an image to the song is a bunch of flailing limbs – they’re either playing all sorts of percussion devices or rib cages and abdomens. Attempting to pick this mess apart would be like hopping into a tornado to retrieve some post-it notes.

Immediately trailing ‘Shit” is the less frantic ‘Covert Action’ by Urban Tribe, the ridiculously overlooked Sherard Ingram project that released a spectacular full-length on Mo’ Wax. This one, however, dates from a 1990 Retroactive release that also featured Underground Resistance and Carl Craig, who mixed this track. Out of the all the compilations I’ve put together, I’ve probably used this track the most. I’m convinced that in 20 years it will still sound like something lunar, something from the future.

Ending the disc is the aforementioned ‘Street Life’ by the Crusaders, featuring vocals by Randy Crawford. It sounds rather displaced after ‘Covert Action.’ Indeed, the Urban Tribe track would have been a fine way for Qt of Blood to end, but I had to follow through on the concept of opening with a
‘Street Life’ and closing with a ‘Street Life.’ (Plus I have this thing for making mixes with an even number of tracks that last just a shade over 60 minutes.) The somewhat tacked on nature of ‘Street Life’ can actually be justified by the fact that a lot of non-imaginary soundtracks end with a song that sounds little like anything else on the record. At any rate, the Crusaders bring the disc full circle in a way that neither Neil Diamond nor the Geto Boys could have. For me, this is an indivisible jukebox.

Andy Kellman, February 2002

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