punk rock warlord

image by gilesdraws Today is the thirty-first birthday of the...

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:19:00 -0400

image by gilesdraws

Today is the thirty-first birthday of the Haçienda.

You probably already know the story of the Hac. It’s the club that Tony Wilson once described as “a great place for Morrissey to come and throw gladioli around.” It’s the club that Factory Records opened, depending on whom you asked, on a whim, to ogle girls, to create a scene where there wasn’t one, to give Manchester a place to go without having to dress up, or to find some way of spending New Order’s money. There are probably as many reasons I haven’t listed as ones I have, but I like to think of it as praxis – they opened the club, and then later on, they found out why.

First, it was a gig venue for Factory Records bands and anyone else the core group of founders liked enough to play there. Then it became something more, a nightlife of its own; it attracted people who weren’t into what was happening at the other bars and venues. It generated DJ culture, rave culture, the acid house scene; it introduced ecstasy to the streets of Manchester; it exploded in popularity and became a legend, and all the while, it chucked unimaginable sums of money down the drain. (Unfortunately, people like Rob Gretton had to imagine those sums quite regularly.)

There are all sorts of stories about the Hac. For instance, Stephen Morris, New Order drummer and Haçienda founding member, famously had to pay to get into his own club on opening night. DJ Sasha was a fan who simply asked to get up and do a set, queued people up twice-deep around the block, and never left. At the height of the acid groove, people like Gerald Simpson and Graham Massey would record twenty-minute long instrumental tapes, run them down to the club, bang on the door to the DJ booth, and the tapes would be instantly accepted and played in full. There was a portable pool. There was a stage perfectly placed for girl-watching (from Rob Gretton’s favourite spot in the upstairs lighting booth), if not for acoustics.

Pete Hook said of the Haçienda, “It’s got to stay. It’s the only place in Manchester that will let me in with my jackboots on.”

Bernard Sumner said of the Haçienda, when Tony Wilson told him that if there were a button to press that would make it so that the whole thing had never happened, he couldn’t push it, “Where’s the fucking button?”

Greg Wilson, legendary Hac DJ, said of the Haçienda, “To have truly ‘been to’ a club like The Haçienda… you would have had to have been there at a certain point in time, when they were pushing back the musical boundaries and providing a unique experience for those who attended. Only a rare breed of clubs fall into this category, and only at a time of change, for it’s the changes that deepen the experience, the knowing that you’re part of something that is only happening in this building, now. Real changes only come along once in a while and many people never get the chance to be there at the cusp of a youth revolution.”

The Haçienda is legendary. It’s surrounded by myth and hearsay, people who swear they were there and people who actually were, people who had to deal with every behind-the-scenes aspect of the club, people who remember nothing but the rhythm. So much has been written about the Hac that there’s no reason to write another post, but more than that – in the end, it’s better not to know everything. Tony Wilson always said that, given the choice between the truth and the legend, print the legend, so maybe it’s better to wonder and investigate and invent. Keeps the mystery alive. Keeps the spirit of it all alive.

I did make you a mixtape, though.

Hey Jey, you need to tell me what you think about Common People cause I have so many Emotions about that song but I bet you have loads of cool thoughts that never even would have crossed my mind.

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:17:00 -0400

This is Pulp’s “Common People.”

Pulp are a (mostly) Britpop band from Sheffield and “Common People” was one of their biggest hits. It’s considered to be a defining moment of the Britpop era, much to the band’s chagrin.

Basically, the song is about a rich girl Jarvis Cocker met at St. Martin’s College, who told him that she wanted to live the way he did, move to Hackney and live as though she were poor. And he’s going, no, you’ll never be able to do that, because you can leave. You didn’t grow up this way, you don’t have to live this way, and even if you choose to, you know you can always blink and it’ll vanish. It’ll never be your prison, he’s saying, at best it’ll be your plaything.

You’ll never live like common people
You’ll never do what common people do
You’ll never fail like common people
You’ll never watch your life slide out of view

Here, have a listen to Jarvis’ own interpretation.

The thing about it, though, is that it plays across so many different barriers. It’s absolutely true about class division; a lot of people who are very well-off seem to think it’s somehow ‘cool’ not to be. It’s why there’s such a market for things like torn designer jeans and styles imitating ‘punk’ or ‘ghetto’ clothing. It’s more than just that, though; it extends to any kind of privilege. People seem to think that it’s ‘hip’ to be part of a disadvantaged group, and it’s a dangerous line of thought. It’s also a line of thought that brings people into struggles that aren’t theirs and has them tread on the toes of those who really are struggling.

You will never understand
How it feels to live your life
With no meaning or control
And with nowhere left to go
…
‘cause when you’re laid in bed at night
And watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all

Joe Strummer, I think, had a wonderful thing to say about it when he was describing how he came to write The Clash’s “White Riot.” He and Paul Simonon ended up embroiled in the riots at Notting Hill Carnival in 1976, which were a rebellion of black, primarily Caribbean, youth against the police and the establishment. Joe was very clear about saying that he and Paul pitched in (shouted, threw bricks, tried to set a car on fire but they couldn’t get the matches to stay lit), but that it wasn’t their battle. That is, they could help, but they could never really be a part of it. I’ve always thought that was a classy statement to make, that they could pitch in and help with someone else’s struggle without ever claiming that it was theirs to fight.

I don’t know – bear in mind, of course, this is all just my nonsense rambling – but I reckon Jarvis is trying to say that you can never truly know what it’s like to be something you’re not, and furthermore, it’s insulting to claim that you can. If you can afford to treat a disadvantage like a novelty, then you can never know what it’s really like to live it.

Laugh along with the common people
Laugh along even though they’re laughing at you
And the stupid things that you do
Because you think that poor is cool

And if you listen to the extended lyrics, he says even more than that.

’cause everybody hates a tourist
Especially one who thinks it’s all a laugh

It’d be difficult, at this point, to argue that Jarvis Cocker is exactly one of the ‘common people,’ but he didn’t start out where he is now, and most people who start out where he did never end up any higher. He isn’t singing about being a British pop star here; he’s singing about being a struggling lower-class kid from a single-parent family who worked at a fish market and didn’t know what he wanted to do with his music or his life. And he’s telling the truth. You can play at something that’s never been part of your life, you can join in, you can act out the part, but it’ll never be yours, not in the same way as someone whose life has been shaped by it.

I really love your Mod 101 mixtape, especially Sh-Boom by the Chords. What specific genre would you call that song? And do you have more in that same vein you could recommend?

Sat, 18 May 2013 22:14:00 -0400

Thank you! This is a great question, because I, er, well. Might have put that song on there by accident, actually. Ahem.

“Sh-Boom” is by an American rhythm and blues band from the fifties called The Chords. Their music is a very early form of a subgenre of R&B called doo-wop that fuses traditional stylings with vocal pop, and it’s pretty cool – sort of right at the very genesis of rock’n’roll. If you like it, you might want to check out some of these songs and see if they appeal to you:

- The Orioles, “Crying In the Chapel”
- The Cadillacs, “Gloria”
- The Platters, “Only You”
- The Flamingos, “I Only Have Eyes For You”
- The Hilltoppers, “Trying”
- The El Dorados, “Bim Bam Boom”
- The Spaniels, “Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight”
- The Ravens, “Count Every Star”
- The Crows, “Gee”
- The Drifters, “Honey Love”
- The Five Keys, “The Glory of Love”
- The Harptones, “A Sunday Kind of Love”
- The Dominoes, “Harbor Lights”
- The Chips, “Rubber Biscuit”
- The Penguins, “Earth Angel”
- The Chantels, “Maybe”
- The Del Vikings, “Come Go With Me”
- The Moonglows, “Sincerely”
- The Skyliners, “Since I Don’t Have You”
- The Crew Cuts, “Sh-Boom”

For what it’s worth, the band that ought to have been on that mixtape are also called The Chords, but they are from the United Kingdom and do a more mod-styled power-pop along the lines of “Maybe Tomorrow.”

It’s been a busy, stressful week, so I sincerely apologize...

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:49:00 -0400

It’s been a busy, stressful week, so I sincerely apologize if you’ve asked me a question in the last couple of days and I haven’t responded yet. I promise you’ll have an answer very soon, and to make up for having had to wait, it’ll be a damned good one.

In the meantime, here’s this, one of my favourite songs to relax to and what I’ve been spinning for most of the day. It was recorded by The Pogues during the Hell’s Ditch sessions, with Joe Strummer on vocals (he was producing Hell’s Ditch at the time and standing in for Shane MacGowan at live gigs), and it was eventually released under the name of “Joe Strummer and the Astro-Physicians.”

It’s worth noting, too, that Joe was complete class all the while he was working with The Pogues. He never let anyone forget Shane MacGowan (used to say he was “just keeping the seat warm”), never let the band think he was joining them permanently, never got anyone else tangled up in his contract problems, and handled Shane and his issues like no one else could have. Classic example of how very top-shelf Joe always was.

fac-abc: We’re trying something a bit different here! In a...

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:30:11 -0400

fac-abc:

We’re trying something a bit different here!

In a little under a month’s time, Crispy Ambulance singer Alan Hempsall intends to (safely) fling himself off the side of a building to raise money for Forever Manchester. It’s worth noting that: a) he is appreciably terrified of heights, and b) he’s got a fundraising campaign right here.

If you’ve got a bit of loose change to spare, it’s a worthy charity, but here’s our hook: donate five pounds and come tell us about it and we’ll send a FAC:ABC book your way. Ten pounds and we’ll include a personalized sketchcard – no other way to get hold of one of those! Plus, you’ll have the added benefit of getting to say you donated to Forever Manchester and contributed to a death-defying feat of bravery.

We haven’t much in terms of money ourselves, but Forever Manchester is a rather brilliant charity and well worth it. Also, facing a fear to simultaneously set an example and raise money for charity is a pretty damned laudable thing to do.

Mick Jones is my hero. Not in a glamorous way; not in the sense he might have liked when he was in...

Sun, 12 May 2013 20:36:00 -0400

Mick Jones is my hero.

Not in a glamorous way; not in the sense he might have liked when he was in his twenties, rock-star sensibilities and slicked-back hair. Not because he’s one of the world’s greatest guitarists, which he is, or one of my favourite singers, which he is. I love Mick Jones because for seven years, he worked with Joe Strummer, put music to Joe’s words, made something great with him, and he still loves and honours that to this day. I love Mick Jones because he stood by Joe onstage and off, even when Joe was constantly surrounded by admirers and Mick was off in the corner with one awkward kid who wanted to ask him questions about music. I love Mick Jones because he never minded being that person; he never minded being the rhythm to Joe’s lead. I love Mick Jones because regardless of anything that happens, anything in his life, he’s kind and sincere and in love with the world and he’s just a source of so much happiness.

Mick Jones is my hero. I’ve said before that if I could be like Joe Strummer, I’d be proud, but I think I might be even prouder to be like Mick.

Mick Jones is my hero.

Here’s a mixtape.

Here’s some secret, behind-the-cut rambling about a few of the songs on the mixtape!

The Clash, “Protex Blue” (The Clash)
Yes, Mick Jones did actually play Joe Strummer a song he’d written about a condom machine in order to convince him to join The Clash. And yes, it worked.

The Clash, “Stay Free” (Give ‘Em Enough Rope)
This one’s about Mick’s own youth and that of one of his school friends, who spent some time hanging about with The Clash after getting out of prison. Mick actually came to him while he was still in jail and played him this song. He didn’t end up staying free, though, in the end; was sent back a second time for a similar infraction.

The Clash, “Lost In the Supermarket” (London Calling)
This song is about Mick as well, about being young and living far away from his parents and not understanding the grown-up world around him and not understanding why he didn’t fit into it the same way as all of the people around him did.

The Clash, “Rudie Can’t Fail” (London Calling)
Joe wrote a ska duet to sing with Mick and gave him the lead on it. After The Clash split up, Joe went on singing it with his subsequent bands. It never sounded the same. When Mick Jones’ daughter was born, twenty years after the last time he and Joe ever played together onstage, Joe played this song and dedicated it to her. At the end of that show, Mick climbed up onto the stage unprompted and played live with Joe for the first time in twenty years. It was one of Joe’s last-ever live gigs.

The Clash, “Train In Vain” (London Calling)
Mick wrote this song in one night and recorded it the next day, and it was shoved onto the album at the last minute, so late there wasn’t even time to add it to the track listing on the album sleeve. It’s about going to see his girlfriend, which never ended particularly well, nor lasted all that long.

The Clash, “Up In Heaven (Not Only Here)” (Sandinista!)
When Mick was young, the neighbourhood he lived in was knocked down and towers of featureless council flats built in its place. Mick, along with everyone else who’d lived there, was moved to the council housing. He always said he reckoned that was unfair, and he’s said that the experience affected him deeply.

The Clash, “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” (Combat Rock)
There’s a section in the middle where Mick shouts, “Split!” for no apparent reason. What actually happened was that Joe Strummer and Joe Ely, who were doing backing vocals, decided to play a prank on Mick and came down on him like howling dervishes while he was trying to concentrate. He told them to shove off and it made it to the final recording.

Big Audio Dynamite, “V. Thirteen” (No. 10, Upping St.)
This is Big Audio Dynamite’s second album. Joe heard the first album, came to Mick, and said, “You need me; let me work with you.” Of course Mick did, past grievances forgotten, and so this song was written and produced by the team of Strummer and Jones, just like old times.

Big Audio Dynamite, “James Brown” (Megatop Phoenix)
In between recording Big Audio Dynamite’s third album and this one, Mick Jones was very ill and ended up in the hospital for a long time; nearly died, but eventually, after much difficulty, recovered. The ‘phoenix’ in the album title is referring to that experience.

Gorillaz, “Plastic Beach” (Plastic Beach)
Gorillaz are an animated band, brainchild of Blur’s Damon Albarn and Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett. They’ve had various guest stars perform as part of the Gorillaz live band, but for this album, they had, among others, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, reunited.

Carbon/Silicon, “The News” (A.T.O.M.)
Mick’s newest project is a collaboration with his friend Tony James, formerly of Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. It’s the most glorious collaboration ever, because not only do they clearly admire one another as much as it’s possible for two people to do, but they’re making all of their music just to play with new sounds and new technology, and they release it online for free. Also, this is one of the most cheerful songs I’ve ever heard and really typifies Mick Jones for me.

Carbon/Silicon, “Big Surprise” (Big Surprise)
This is their newest single, only very recently released. If the lyrics on their own aren’t the most hopeful and optimistic thing you’ve ever heard, why not try watching the amazing music video, which adds a whole new dimension to it. Also, in case you needed any further convincing, Tony James has said of this song, “I love this song and I believe it is a magical vocal of such empathy from Mr Jones, one of his best ever recorded.” (Having read that, please check out the last scene in the music video.)

This is what I look like.

Fri, 10 May 2013 22:25:49 -0400

This is what I look like.

The Manchester Library Theatre are doing a play over the next month called Manchester Sound: The...

Thu, 09 May 2013 20:48:00 -0400

The Manchester Library Theatre are doing a play over the next month called Manchester Sound: The Massacre. It’s about the Peterloo Massacre and the acid house scene and it’s all tangled up in music and madness and if you are local, you should consider giving it a try; it looks like it’s going to be a great production!

Anyway, long story short, they were looking for music recommendations, late 1980s Manchester classics, from various sources and somehow I ended up compiling a playlist for them. You know. As so often seems to happen.

And, well. Here it is.

(Why are some of the bands in boldface? They’re the ones I reckoned ought to be considered key to the post-punk or Madchester movements and some of them were liable to be overlooked otherwise, so I marked them.)

808 State, “Let Yourself Go” (1988), “Pacific State” (1989)
Abecedarians, “Smiling Monarchs” (1985)
A Certain Ratio, “Naked and White”/”And Then She Smiles”/”Si Firmi o Grido” (1986), ”The Big E”/”Repercussions” (1989)
Buzzcocks, “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)” (1978)
The Charlatans, “The Only One I Know” (1990)
Crispy Ambulance, “We Move Through the Plateau Phase” (1982), “Sexus” (1984)
The Distractions, “Time Goes By So Slow” (1979), “Twenty Four Hours” (1981)
The Durutti Column, anything from the albums Say What You Mean (1985), Circuses and Bread (1986), Domo Arigato or Vini Reilly (1989)
Electronic, “Getting Away With It” (1989)
The Fall, “There’s a Ghost In My House” (1987), “Victoria” (1988)
A Guy Called Gerald, “Voodoo Ray” (1988)
Happy Mondays, “24 Hour Party People”/”Kuff Dam” (1987), “Wrote For Luck”/”Lazyitis” (1988), “Kinky Afro”/”Loose Fit” (1990)
The High, anything from the album Somewhere Soon (1990)
Inspiral Carpets, “This Is How It Feels” (1990)
Intastella, “Time to Lose It” (1988)
James, “Sit Down”/”Come Home” (1989)
Joy Division, “Disorder”/”She’s Lost Control” (1979), “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (1980)
The Mock Turtles, “Can You Dig It?” (1991)
Morrissey, anything from the album Viva Hate (1988)
New Fast Automatic Daffodils, anything from the album Pigeonhole (1990)
New Order, “Temptation” (1982), “Blue Monday” (1983), “Sub-culture” (1985), “Bizarre Love Triangle” (1986), “Blue Monday ‘88” (1988 remix)
Northside, “Shall We Take a Trip” (1990)
The Other Two, “Tasty Fish” (1991)
Paris Angels, “Perfume (All On You)” (1990)
Quando Quango, “Love Tempo” (1983), “Atom Rock” (1984), “Genius” (1985)
The Royal Family and the Poor, “We Love the Moon” (1986)
Section 25, “Girls Don’t Count” (1980), “Looking From a Hilltop” (1984)
The Smiths, “Hand In Glove”/”This Charming Man” (1983), “Suffer Little Children” (1984), or anything from the album The Queen Is Dead (1986)
Stockholm Monsters, “Fairy Tales” (1981), “How Corrupt is Rough Trade?” (1984)
The Stone Roses, “Sally Cinnamon” (1987), “Elephant Stone” (1988), “Made of Stone”/”She Bangs the Drums”/”Fool’s Gold” (1989), “One Love” (1990), “I Wanna Be Adored” (1991)

While everyone in England has various conniptions over...

Wed, 08 May 2013 09:59:21 -0400

While everyone in England has various conniptions over today’s football news, let’s just take a second to remember Steve Martland here. He was a composer, a classical musician who never worked with classical musicians – he preferred freelancers, festivals, his own band, anything where he could develop or train or build up new or overlooked musicians. His music is intense, deep rhythms and forceful imagination, perfect for dance and used that way many times, and it’s beautiful, but the most important thing to remember about Steve Martland is his devotion to fostering creativity and sharing it with as many people as he possibly could. Check out his work, see if it inspires you, see if you can inspire anyone else with it, see what you can give to someone else because of it. He’d have liked that.

“Creativity is everything that is against what’s going on in the world right now. It’s to do with tolerance and understanding other people.”
— Steve Martland

Just to ask, are you able to explain the difference between the punk wave and the post-punk wave?

Tue, 07 May 2013 22:06:00 -0400

“Punk enabled you to say, ‘fuck you,’ but somehow it couldn’t go any further. It was just a single, venomous, one-syllable, two-syllable phrase of anger, which was necessary… But sooner or later, someone was going to want to say more than ‘fuck you.’ Someone was going to want to say, ‘I’m fucked.’”
— Tony Wilson

Though I’m afraid I can’t put it as neatly or as succinctly as Tony Wilson, I can take a shot at explaining those terms for you! Caveat lector, though, it’s a nebulous division at best and neither genre has a sharply-defined edge.

Punk is basically a subculture that arose from the musical influence of rock (along with other things, mod and ska and early industrial sounds) and the cultural backlash of a generation that had had more than enough of oppression and disadvantage and societal stratification. A few angry people came along, found the right sort of guidance in the forms of people like Malcolm McLaren and Bernie Rhodes, and began making their mark. They couldn’t necessarily actually play (please see: everyone’s bassists), but the point was that they wanted to say something. That’s where you got people like Joe Strummer, who picked up a guitar because he wanted to be a musician, and two years later he was the frontman for The Clash. That’s where you got people like Johnny Rotten, who, let’s face it, was many things, but not exactly melodic. Paul Simonon, who wanted to be punk, but who didn’t necessarily want to be a punk rocker (and yet). Sid Vicious, who wanted nothing more than to be a punk rocker, but whose method of learning bass was, shall we say, unorthodox at best. Punk rock broke down the barriers between the musical elite and the world at large; it made music, it made being a musician, belong to everyone. It made everything belong to everyone. The point of all of this is that punk was more about the message than about the music*, and the message of “we’re not going to take it,” “we can see what’s wrong with the world,” “it isn’t our fault, but we know it’s yours,” “we’re going to tear down what you built and put it up again our way,” that’s punk.

* Undeniably, there was a musical style to punk as well, of course – hard and fast, high volumes and tempos, bare-bones bands and basic instrumentals, shouted vocals and short songs with rudimentary musical forms, but that wasn’t what was most important, and later progressions of punk rock often did away with that style.

Post-punk, on the other hand, was what happened when punk rock started to influence the world around it and a slightly different type of person, someone with a different background and a different approach to life, decided, “hey, we can do that, too.” Post-punk was what happened when the world got the message that punk rock was sending, that all of this belonged to everyone and it was everyone’s job to seize it and do something with it, tear it down, build it up, change it – even punk itself. Post-punk was what happened when punk rock diverged so far from its origins that it was no longer the same genre; when the sound was different, harsh and atonal, or lighter and gentler, or hollow and spacious, but no longer typical of the greater ‘punk’ movement. Post-punk was complex, was introspective, was more about people than politics. It was experimental, synthesizers and machines and new playing techniques and new production techniques. It was avant-garde, borrowing liberally from other musical genres (not in the same way as punk rock; post-punk adopted elements of everything from gothic and German rock to funk and disco, electronic and dub). It was made by people who had no idea what they were doing, only what they wanted to do (and from there, you had the genesis of bands like Joy Division, who wanted to be punk and never made it, or A Certain Ratio, who wanted to be funk and almost sort of pulled it off). Post-punk was what happened when people saw punk rockers baring their souls about the world around them and turned that gaze inward; tore down the walls and bared their own souls about the worlds inside them as well as the outside.

… my apologies for the slightly romanticized rambling about punk and post-punk. If you wanted me to talk more about musical stylings, please do ask, though that’s practically impossible to define with regard to post-punk. Otherwise, I hope that’s at least the beginning of an explanation, but if not please feel free to make me clarify!

Smother me with britpop please.

Mon, 06 May 2013 19:38:00 -0400

I hope when you said “smother,” you meant it, because I appear to have made you a triple album, which you can download here (tracklist here). Seventy-two tracks. I daren’t even check the total playing time, lest it turn out to be something like nineteen actual discs.

(Random fact: did you know that a standard 12” LP plays for exactly twenty-two minutes on each side? CDs fit eighty minutes, which is probably a good thing given the way I put together mixtapes, but on the other hand, there’s something beautiful about the succinct elegance of having exactly forty-four minutes and no longer to construct your message. I think I’m going to try putting together forty-four-minute mixtapes sometimes.)

Anyway, back to Britpop. I went with seventy-two tracks (all different artists) here because there is just so much of it and I am not very good at prioritizing. Many of them you’ll have heard before; some of them I very much hope you won’t have. I hope you like it.

Singers who blow their lyrics in the middle of a song, or crack...

Sat, 04 May 2013 10:28:47 -0400

Singers who blow their lyrics in the middle of a song, or crack up, or just otherwise mess up their recording, are fantastic. I’m not sure why; it just sort of breaks the fourth wall in a way, makes it real. It’s why I love live music so much, and it’s why so many of my favourite versions of songs are live recordings or things like this.

Also, Bernard Sumner has gone on record as to how much he hates the lyrics to this song, which is why he can’t make it past the second (ridiculous) line.

“This song is for anyone who thinks they think too much. ...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 07:42:00 -0400

“This song is for anyone who thinks they think too much. And that’s all right.”

Giles and I saw Johnny Marr yesterday. He was brilliant. He’s got dynamism and charisma and stage presence like I’ve never seen in bands half his age; he’s got a talent for playing to an audience without playing for them. He engages through the way he moves, through his sound, doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to. And his technique has only gotten sharper and finer and more uniquely his own over the years. Goddamn, but that was a good show.

This is “Bye Bye Badman,” by the Stone Roses. ...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:27:24 -0400

This is “Bye Bye Badman,” by the Stone Roses. It’s part of the definition of Madchester, perfectly poised between post-punk and Britpop, and it’s a song that never gets the accolades that it deserves. Everyone knows that it’s about the student riots in Paris in May of 1968, sure, and most people know that the “citrus-sucking sunshine” lyric refers to the students’ using lemons as an antidote to the tear gas used by the police (“choke me, smoke the air”), see also the album cover by John Squire, but that’s about as far as most people care to look, because this isn’t a particularly popular song. Only I’m going to ramble about it here for a minute or two, so please forgive me, or feel free to scroll on by.

It’s just as personal as any of their regular fare, despite the unusual topic; it comes from Ian’s having met a French student while hitch-hiking around Europe and having been told stories of the riots, and then from Ian and John’s having watched a documentary about it together and seen footage of the students’ throwing stones at the police. The song’s got plenty of references to revolution (“submission ends and I begin,” “every backbone and heart you break will still come back for more”) and the violence of the riots (the chorus and the bridge), but it’s also musically and lyrically fascinating. The way the overall sound contrasts with the lyrics is the sort of choice only the Stone Roses could make, mellow bass and upbeat tempo and subversions like the use of “French kisses” to imply blows and “you’ve been bought and paid/you’re a whore and a slave” to refer to people who remained complacent. The guitar, especially, is intriguing here because it’s a clear nod to Johnny Marr’s style in The Smiths and his later solo work. Check it out; it’s different to any of the other tracks the Stone Roses ever produced.

For interest’s sake, too, the Parisian student (and worker) riots were all tangled up in anti-conservatism, with students initially protesting for the right to sleep with one another and then expanding to freedom and equality for all; the workers went on a general strike against the government and the capitalist system in which they were trapped. The workers had reasons, justifications, demands for their own rights. The students seized inspiration from the Situationist movement (were you wondering when that would show up?) and wanted everything, without borders – political, creative, hedonistic freedom. They were poorly organized and their demands were loose and unfocused, but they knew the ideal they were aiming for – their situation; their better world.

For the record, the student riots were not well-thought-out. They didn’t succeed, and it’s probably a good thing that they didn’t, because their leaders were utopianist to the point of inability to realistically create the new society they desired. The point of this song isn’t to celebrate that. The point is the people that were there, the ideals that were upheld, the strength of belief in a cause despite the world’s coming down around you. Ian and John were young when they wrote this, young and intense and the product of Manchester working-class upbringings, they were at the turning point of punk and post-punk and Madchester at exactly the right time, and they meant every word of this song, not just for French revolutionaries, but for themselves as well.

One day, I will make a proper post about the Stone Roses, and I promise that when I do, it will be behind a read-more cut.

I really, really like your posts about the links between the Situationist movement and punk and post-punk. I've been thinking a lot about this stuff (is there a word for the whole Situationist-Spanish Civil War-punk-post-punk thing?) and I was wondering, how did you learn about all these things and tie it all together? Can you recommend any important music or books? This is really fascinating, exciting stuff, but I don't know where to start with it all!

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:43:18 -0400

Oh, wow, thank you so much! I didn’t know anyone but me even cared about those posts, so it’s fantastic to know that someone else out there is interested.

Really, there isn’t a lot of text on this sort of thing. I’ve got to be honest, I’ve picked up most of what I know through extensive random Googling, picking through books and articles and interviews and whatever obscure paperwork is publicly available, scattered remnants of things I learnt in philosophy classes, and spending far too much time thinking about this sort of nonsense.

If you Google for it, you’ll find plenty of information, but it tends to be the same information over and over, and some of it is questionable or mis-interpreted. It’s still a good way to start, though, and although I ought to be roundly told off for this from an academic perspective, I’d honestly recommend reading the related Wikipedia articles as a good jumping-off point.

If you want to read more about the Situationist movement, that’s easy; the Internet has all sorts of great resources for it. And if, once you’ve had a look around, you want something more in-depth, I recommend The Society of the Spectacle, which is the book wherein Guy Debord sets out the basic tenets of his idea of what it means to be Situationist (though he’s admittedly one of the stricter Situationists). It’s not too difficult a read because it’s divided into loads of really short sections, and it is the original text. Also good is the “Formulary for a New Urbanism,” by Ivan Chtcheglov, which is where Tony Wilson’s the hacienda must be built quote comes from. (And here is an archive of short Situationist texts, in case you want to just click around and read things.)

There is a really cool book by Stewart Home called Cranked Up Really High: genre theory and punk rock, which is available for free online here (you can buy a hard copy, too, but it’s out of print). Since writing it, Stewart Home has rather turned his back on punk rock and the whole thing makes him quite snarky now, but the book is good; I’ve used it many times.

Also good to look into: some of Malcolm McLaren’s philosophy (he was the original punk rock Situationist, manager of the Sex Pistols and general artist of the moment), some of Joe Strummer’s and Bernie Rhodes’ philosophies (particularly later in life), everything Tony Wilson ever had to say about the Situationist movement (although he mis-interpreted some things, he embodied the spirit of it better than anyone), and, actually, Vini Reilly of The Durutti Column, who’s fascinated by it and knows a hell of a lot.

There’s a book out there called Let Fury Have the Hour: Joe Strummer, Punk, and the Movement That Shook the World, and it’s got some really great essays in it (though beware; there are a number of factual inaccuracies). Most of the essays aren’t specifically Situationist, but if you sort of know your way around the general ideas, you can pick it out in a lot of the content. And at any rate, it’s just a really cool read. There’s also a biography of Tony Wilson called You’re Entitled To an Opinion… that’s pretty decent, though I haven’t managed to get a copy of my own yet, so I’ve only read it about halfway through. England’s Dreaming and The England’s Dreaming Tapes have some great stuff about Malcolm McLaren (classically Situationist, probably moreso than anyone else on the punk, as opposed to post-punk, scene) and the early punk movement; Jon Savage is really sharp and knows his stuff backwards and forwards. I love books a lot and there are some great ones about this stuff, so feel free to ask for more recommendations!

Unfortunately, the bulk of what I know about Situationist ideals in relation to the post-punk era is accumulated from years of random articles and interviews here and there; anything by or about Tony Wilson will have something to be gleaned. He throws little bits in most of the time (there’s a bit about praxis in the New Order “Play at Home” video and a bunch of little things in the 24 Hour Party People: What the Sleeve Notes Never Tell You book, the one Tony Wilson annotated, but it’s not in large, easily-referenced chunks anywhere), and a lot of this is just piecing together little things and having bits of information in your head (which happens, the more you read). I just happen to have a truly tragic amount of this information kicking about.

Thanks so much for asking about this; it’s so cool that you’re interested! Also, you (or anyone else who’d like) can always message me about it; I’m always game to talk about this stuff. It isn’t often I get the chance!

Our friend Matt Reilly wrote a short story called...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 08:56:49 -0400

Our friend Matt Reilly wrote a short story called “Life’s Too Short” (you can see it here on his flash-fiction website). We (Giles and Mick) adapted it into a comic (click through to see the full story). Now it’s on hitRECord, an open collaboration website for creators of all kinds. Check it out, see what’s up, and if you feel like adapting, remixing, developing… well, that’s what it’s for! Feel free, and if you do, please let us know what you create!

Would you make a mixtape that highlights the variations in the ska genre?

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:43:53 -0400

Sure, I can do that! Although I’m not sure “I was a teenage rudeboy” really qualifies me to make educated commentary on the evolution of ska. Still, though, it would be great if more people were familiar with what’s out there and where it came from and what it generated.

Here’s the mixtape; feel free to skip the commentary if you’d like.

Let’s talk ska, as a concept in its entirety, for a second. It came from a fusion of Jamaican traditional music with American dance, rhythm and blues, and jazz of the 1950s. It evolved as rock’n’roll began to take over the American market, because the heart of the Jamaican music scene was dance, and the new American music was aimed at middle-class white people and didn’t much lend itself to dancing. As a result, the “sound system,” a stack of turntables and speakers generally hosted in the bed of someone’s truck and travelling around to create mobile street parties, became popular in Jamaica as DJs tried to keep the waning rhythm and blues scene alive.

Eventually, there weren’t enough new records coming in from America to satisfy the locals, so sound system operators began producing their own limited-edition cuts (usually just enough for them to play on their own machines), and eventually the American sound gave way to local fusion music. Traditionally Caribbean sounds like offbeat guitar, notes on the upstroke and walking bass merged with attempts at copying the rhythm and blues shuffle, and what came out of that was the first wave of ska.

That lasted for about a decade, but as American music evolved past rock’n’roll, so did ska – into rocksteady, a slower, more rhythmic sound with more ornamentation, and reggae, even slower and with more syncopation. It’s practically impossible to disentangle ska from rocksteady from reggae, and so you’ll often (unfortunately) find it all grouped under the reggae label. It’s worth exploring the differences!

2-tone, the next wave of ska and decisively the one that first got me hooked, didn’t arise until the late 1970s and started in England (chiefly Coventry) at about the same time as the punk scene was getting underway. The music was a fusion of everything from ska to punk to mod to pop, and the subculture had its own mode of dress (tonic suits, ties, loafers, pork-pie hats). 2-tone bands were crazy prolific during the time they reigned supreme and are still some of the most popular and best-known ska out there.

In the 1980s, ska took off in the rest of the world, notably continental Europe and Asia, and kicked off the third wave, a more punk sound than anything had ever been before it; that spread to Australia, South America and, eventually, the United States. At that point, “ska-with-punk-leanings” gave way to actual ska punk, and paved the way for other punk fusion bands in the 1990s. The underground ska and punk scene exploded; several hotbeds of ska-core arose in America (most notably in New York and California), Canada became a notable producer of third-wave ska (particularly out of Montreal), and the revitalized genre enjoyed nearly a decade’s popularity before being beaten out by other styles of music (some of which, like punk and pop punk, it had helped to launch).

The underground scene is still pretty big if you know where to look. Better yet, a lot of the bands that created and changed the face of ska, including plenty of the ones on this mixtape, are still together and touring. Ska is some of the best live music out there; it’s always worth going if you have the chance to attend. (If you do go, be aware of skanking – it’s a particular style of dance that arose along with the genesis of ska itself in Jamaica in the 1960s, and it can get pretty hardcore, especially at more punk-oriented shows. Know the dance, know pit etiquette, and stay safe!)

I think everyone needs to remember occasionally that Mick Jones...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:27:00 -0400

I think everyone needs to remember occasionally that Mick Jones actually wrote this song. And that it was the first song he ever played with Joe Strummer. And that then The Clash performed it, with Joe on vocals, for a year.

Also, while we’re at it, I’d like to remind you all that Mick convinced Joe to join The Clash by playing “Protex Blue” for him.

Lettering “The Island” (written by Kyle J....

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:45:36 -0400

Lettering “The Island” (written by Kyle J. Kaczmarczyk, art by Shane Heron) for the Monstrosity anthology.

420 grooves per inch

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 18:25:17 -0400

420 grooves per inch:

The 16 2/3 RPM background record was a weird one; it was never meant to fit in with an ordinary library of LPs. Most people never even knew it existed; even fewer ever had the capability to play them. You won’t find any rare treasures in 16 2/3 format. You’ll probably never even see one. The machines that can play them are still around, fully loaded with stacks of these things. The weird ones are built to last.