THE SHAMEN – "Ebeneezer Goode"

“…now, every second record in the charts boasts exaggerated London rapping.”

I am now trying to hear this record as the secret origin of Tinie Tempah.

A few weeks into its reign, on TOTP they started playing this moodier stripped down mix of the track that sounded more like ‘Pro-Gen’ follow-up ‘Possible Worlds’. A trackback to their ravier side, as is the extended mix with its warped moody choir voices threatening to turn it into the title theme to Gamesmaster.

Considering the tempo Mr C does really well, affording a coherent and reasonable level of sophistication to the verses against the ‘idiocy’ of the chorus. Y’know, like Russell Brand.

I have nothing to hand, but I’m sure I remember the reviews for this one on its release being surprisingly positive, focussing on the subversive nature of the track and the “surrealism” of the rap. Had the single peaked at number 8 and sodded off forever, I can’t help but think that it might be regarded in a bit of a different way, whereas the word “novelty” is used to describe it a lot now.

As somebody who liked it way before it went to number one, I have to say this has aged surprisingly well for a record which is unquestionably stuffed with catchphrases and gimmicks. What should have become irritating after the third week of release actually does still stand up cheerily well now, and I think Tom hits the nail on the head when he talks about the sheer volume of ideas in the record. It’s not wholly dependant on the central catchphrase of the chorus, and it’s the little tweaks and touches in the background which kept me coming back for more – it sounds as if they had a whale of a time in the studio with this one digging up samples, riffs and effects.

I’ll take matters further and say that this single was actually closer to the spirit of the KLF (and Bill Drummond acknowledged the Shamen were encroaching on his territory) than its predecessor at the top spot. True, EB is more “Doctorin’ The Tardis” (with Ford Timelord being given a proper vocal role) than “Last Train To Trancentral”, but in my head it felt as if The Shamen were operating from a similar space by this point. Less successfully and intelligently, admittedly, but certainly sneaking bizarre samples, references and coded phrases into the charts then laughing up their sleeves at the rest of us.

It’s a single I’m still known to put on when in need of a lift, and still hugely enjoy despite it commonly being slapped down as lowest common denominator stuff, and I’m going to give this an 8. I’m also not sure I fully buy the Britpop analogy – to me it feels more like the call-and-response devices of seventies glam rock are present, with only the mockneyisms really making it seem like the Geezerishness to come. Mr C’s accent feels like a bit of a red herring here to me – when he’s asking us to follow Ebeneezer Goode, in my mind’s eye it’s always some peculiar Gary Glitter-esque eccentric character rather than a winking, skipping Damon Albarn figure.

EDIT: Though I’ve realised I’ve given the track a sinister edge by saying that which it probably doesn’t warrant….

Another one too personal for me to write about here, but I’ve given it a 9.

Fabulous record, I might also stretch to a 9.

I’ve changed my mind – this is a 10. It’s so busy, so much fun, and such a great wind-up that it deserves nothing less.

Boy this sounds good now! The rap/narration is skilfully delivered, there’s passion in the delivery and lots to interest in the music, and Mr C looks like the annoying bloke in the pub or on the tube platform who knows he’s unnerving you and just takes it a bit further for his own enjoyment. As a package he’s a kind of missing link between Ian Dury and Keith Flint. Anyway, it was good to hear again. Hadn’t realised it was Jerry Sadowitz in the video.

The song was of course adapted for the football terraces as “E’s a c–t, ‘e’s a c–t, the referee’s a c–t”.

By the time Ebeneezer Goode gets into the charts, my wayward days are mostly behind me. However, the references to “veras” and “salmon” didn’t strike me as surrealism but actual realism. The streetwise Mr C delivering Artful Dodgerisms with a Sid James cackle. The perfect balance between club-culture Pied Piper and “leader of the gang” as referenced above. Coded messages to the club kids? That horse bolted already. Joey Beltram’s “Energy Flash”, Andy C’s “Sour Mash” EP and a host of others referencing ecstasy, permeating the consciousness of an army of weekend ravers. EG only reflected what was already out there. Those who knew, knew. Those who didn’t were never going to. Ah, but that was just bullshit wasn’t it? Nobody really bought into Boss Drum’s cod-mysticism did they? That McKenna claptrap? Maybe the Tories did.

As a piece of pop though, EG’s mockneyisms are only a facet. Malcolm McDowell’s Great Philosopher line interruped by “NAUGHTY NAUGHTY VERY NAUGHTY YAHAHAHA!” demands our attention. Then follows Mr C’s scattergun oblique references and street-savvy memes. For the most part, their approach is pretty much those of cheeky scamps. When Mr C appeared on TOTP, he was asked to tone down the rap, hence; “Has anyone got any UNDERLAY?” (“…gratuitous RUG reference”). Well, I thought it was funny.

EDIT: I see I unintentionally have finished on a similar note to Kat’s post on Blog 92. My bad.

“If the truth can be told so as to be understood it will be believed”

Human history represents such a radical break with the natural systems of biological organisation that preceded it that it must be the response to a kind of attractor or dwell point that lies ahead in the temporal dimension. Persistently western religions have integrated into their theologies the notion of a kind of end of the world. And I think that a lot of psychedelic experimentation sort of confirms this intuition. I mean it isn’t going to happen according to any of the scenarios of orthodox religion, but the basic intuition that the universe seeks closure in a kind of Omega point of transcendence is confirmed. It’s almost as though this object in hyperspace, glittering in hyperspace, throws off reflections of itself, which actually ricochet into the past, illuminating this mystic, inspiring that saint or visionary, and that out of these fragmentary glimpses of Eternity we can build a kind of a map of not only the past universe and the evolutionary ingression into novelty, but a kind of map of the future.

This is what Shamanism has always been about. A Shaman is someone who has been to the end. It is someone who knows how the world really works, and knowing how the world really works, means to have risen outside, above, beyond the dimensions of ordinary spacetime and cozooistry (?) and actually seen the wiring under the board: stepped outside the confines of learned culture and learned and embedded language into the domain of Wittgenstein called the unspeakable, the Transcendental presence of the Other, which can be sectioned in various ways to yield Systems of Knowledge which can be brought back into ordinary social space for the good of the Community. So in the context of 90% of human culture, the Shaman has been the Agent of Evolution, because the Shaman learns techniques to go between ordinary reality and the domain of the ideas: this higher dimensional continuum that is somehow parallel to us, available to us and yet ordinarily occluded to us by cultural convention out of the fear of the Mystery, I believe, and what the Shamans are, are people who have been able to de-condition themselves from the community’s instinctual distrust of the Mystery, and go into this bewildering Higher Dimension, and gain Knowledge, recover the jewel lost at the Beginning of Time, save souls, cure, commune with the Ancestors and so forth and so on.

Shamanism is not a religion – its a set of techniques, and the principal Technique is the use of psychedelic plants. What psychedelics do is they dissolve boundaries; and in the presence of dissolved boundaries One cannot continue to close One’s eyes to the ruination of the Earth, the poisoning of the Seas and the consequences of two thousand years of unchallenged Dominator culture, based on Monotheism, hatred of Nature, suppression of the Female and so forth and so on.

So, what Shamans have to do is act as exemplars by making this cosmic journey to the domain of the Gaian Ideas, and then bringing them back in the form of Art, to the struggle to Save the World. The Planet has a kind of intelligence, that it can actually Open a Channel of communication with an individual human being. The message that Nature sends is transform your language through a synergy between Electronic culture and the Psychedelic Imagination; a synergy between Dance and Idea; a synergy between Understanding and Intuition, and dissolve the boundaries which your culture has sanctioned between you. Become part of this Gaian Supermind.

I mean I think it’s fairly profound, it’s fairly Apocalyptic. History is ending, I mean we are to be the generation that witnesses the Revelation of the purpose of the Cosmos. History is the shock wave of the Eschaton. History is the shock wave of Eschatology. And what this means for those of us who will live through this transition into Hyperspace is that we will be privileged to see the greatest release of Conpressed Change probably since the birth of the Universe. The Twentieth Century is the shudder that announces the approaching cataracts of Time over which our Species and the destiny of this Planet is about to be swept.

“If the truth can be told so as to be understood it will be believed” The emphasis in House music and rave culture on physiologically compatible rhythms, and this sort of thing, is really the re-discovery of the art of Natural Magic with sound. That sound, properly understood, especially percussive sound, can actually change neurological states, and large groups of people getting together in the presence of this kind of music are creating a telepathic community, a bonding, that hopefully will be strong enough to carry the Vision out into the main stream of Society. I think the Youth culture that is emerging in the nineties is an End of the Millennium culture that is actually summing up Western Civilisation, and pointing us in an entirely different direction; that we are going to arrive in the Third Millennium in the middle of an Archaic revival which will mean a revival of these physiologically empowering rhythm signatures, a new Art, a new Social Vision, a new relationship to Nature, to Feminism, to Ego – all of these things are taking hold, and not a Moment too Soon.

Anyway as a student I found the sci-fi elements of all that stuff pretty exciting, though probably more entertaining a few years later when I met them all again reading The Invisibles.

#18: “Eezers to be cheerful, one, two, three…”

This has got KLF all over it hasn’t it? They’re the hidden/unacknowledged legislators of the UK Pop world at this point. (I’ve been listening to and reading about Ace of Base a bit recently, and, amazingly, KLF were a big influence on them too!) Anyhow, EG’s beery cross-over to clubs definitely seems to anticipate (got to #2 only, so unbunnyable) Born Slippy(nuxx)’s slightly troubling appeal/profile. Together with the MC/singer’s visual anticipation of Keith Flint, that makes EG seem prescient. But I don’t think it makes the song/record much good, and I’d score it a couple of ticks below either BS(nuxx) or Prodigy’s bunnies easy. So this is a 5 or 6 at best for me.

Long story shortened: I did this at Karaoke once. Tip: Breathe.

# 29
Yeah they did disappear surprisingly soon after this.

I recall Colin Angus (the guy with the glasses) getting hot under the collar about some long-term fans who’d complained that Mr C was cheapening the band ( as a replacement for the guy who drowned on the video shoot for “Move Any Mountain”). You could make a comparison with The Thompson Twins or Rod Stewart’s “Atlantic Crossing” here.

Like “Lazy Sunday” the Small faces, this was their “light relief” track that sits in fine alongside their more ‘serious’ stuff, but then became what they were known for.

An afterthought – as somebody who had been aware of (and liked a lot of) The Shamen’s work from 1987 onwards, the leaps they made stylistically over the course of a mere five years seem staggering now. From the dense, hammering interstellar psychedelia of “Christopher Mayhew Says” to “Ebeneezer Goode” – use of drum machines aside, they’re barely recognisable as the same band. I may be wrong, but I can’t imagine another act veering off their course so radically now for fear of alienating whatever fanbase they had. With The Shamen, it also didn’t feel that contrived, it was just that their drug of choice moved from LSD to E.

Mr C was the first pop star I ever interviewed by phone. Nothing interesting to add to this at all, sorry.

Yep, I didn’t understand/ appreciate how much “In Gorbachev We Trust” was a bridge album for them at the time. I think the remix Bam Bam did of “Transcendental” from that album was the birth of the more commercial, rave-orientated Shamen. I remember the copy of “Indie Top 20” I had with that remix on came with a sleevenote saying “You may never hear the like again!” Of course, we were to hear many more such things, from The Shamen and others.

#36 My Chemical Romance? Emo to Bubblegum (albeit punky bubblegum) in 4 albums.

TOTPWatch: The Shamen twice performed ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ on Top of the Pops;

3 September 1992. Also in the studio that week were; Bananarama, Sonia, Dr Albarn, Lionel Ritchie and U96, plus a live performance by satellite from Sinead O’Connor in New York. Femi Oke & Mark Franklin were the hosts.

17 September 1992. Also in the studio that week were; EMF, Manic Street Preachers, Inspiral Carpets, Happy Mondays, Daniel O’Donnell and Soul II Soul. Femi Oke & Adrian Rose were the hosts.

“Dr Albarn”

Billy don’t scare us like that…

Worth pointing out of course that the undisputed king of Geezer-hop recorded Blinded By the Lights!