Luke Haines’ new album Luke Haines In ...Setting The Dogs On The Post-Punk Postman was supposed to be coming out tomorrow, but the COVID-19 thing threw a bit of a spanner in the works of the worldwide vinyl pressing supply chain, so it won’t be in stores before some time in April. The follow-up to Beat Poetry for Survivalists, last year’s collaboration with REM’s Peter Buck, this new album see Haines holding forth on topics such as the eccentric Scottish musician and humorist Ivor Cutler, Japanese underground director Shuji Terayama, why he’ll never return to the city of Liverpool, Andrea Dworkin, and suicidal pumpkins.
I asked Luke Haines some questions via email about the album’s first video.
What inspires a song about a former Stasi spy?
So, the original idea for the song came from the 2018 Salisbury poisonings of former Soviet spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, carried out by alleged KGB operatives. That was the inspiration but it’s not about that. It’s kind of about this very male obsession with surveillance and freedom of speech. There’s another song on the album about a middle-aged guy who is obsessed with U Boats and ‘numbers’ stations. Middle-aged male paranoia. The song was kind of a late entry from me on the Peter Buck album, so I held it back, ‘cos I thought it sounded groovy.
What sort of fucked-up Communist bloc guitar are you strumming in the video?
The guitar is an early ‘70s Tonika. It came from Minsk, in pieces. Every Tonika was handbuilt to vague specifications. The Russians had very little to go on when it came to guitar design with no access to Fenders and Gibsons or much western rock music. It has a reputation, on the internet at least, as being the worst built guitar in the world. Not true, it’s an absolute motherfucker of an instrument. I reckon you could run it over with a Soviet tank and it would still play.
When you’re wearing the toupee, the fake moustache and glasses, you look exactly like an ex-girlfriend of mine’s dad. He was in fact from a Soviet bloc country and he did have a toupee, and a moustache although I think his was real. He was always dressed like he bought his clothes by weight. Clearly you are a master of subtle disguise. Do you reckon you’d have made a good spy?
The video was based on these pictures. All shot in my flat which hasn’t been decorated since 1983 and looks like a Stasi interrogation centre anyway.
As to whether I could cut the mustard as a spook, it depends on whether the ultimate aim is towards chaos or order. The jury is out, but any welterweight songwriter would probably make a pretty good spy.
Here’s how Third Man Records’ Dave Buick describes his reaction to first hearing the music of Magic Roundabout:
“I walk in to the studio, Warren [Defever] is working away. Feedback, hypnotizing bass line, perfect female vocal harmonies and a drummer so minimal you just know they are standing coming out of the speakers. All I could see was stripes and paisleys. I became instantly obsessed with tracking down this mystery band’s complete discography. ‘They don’t have a discography you say?’ Just like that my obsession had become dangerous and unhealthy.”
The footprint left behind by Manchester’s Magic Roundabout was a small one. During the band’s incarnation in the later part of the 1980s, they released just one song. “She’s a Waterfall (Parts 1 and 2)” was included on a 1987 fanzine cassette compilation titled Oozing Through The Ozone Layer that was put together by Mark Webber of Pulp, which also included two Pulp numbers as well as songs by Spacemen 3 and the Television Personalities. They were in good company, clearly. The Magic Roundabout was supposed to put out a flexi-disc, but that never happened and the band—who opened for the likes of The Pastels, Blue Aeroplanes, Spacemen 3, Loop, My Bloody Valentine, and Inspiral Carpets—broke up.
The tapes of several songs they’d recorded were thought to be lost, but were recently unearthed by former Pale Saint Ian Masters and restored by Warren Defever (His Name Is Alive) for a full-length Magic Roundabout archival compilation that will come out later in the year.
For now, feast your eyes and ears on “Sneaky Feelin” which is now available—backed with “Song For Gerard Langley” (he of Blue Airplanes fame)—on a 7” vinyl single from Third Man Records.
Ian Masters wondered “How did the music industry miss these talented teenagers? They were fucking idiots, that’s how.” He’s not wrong.
Pulsallama were an all-girl bass and percussion band in New York City circa 1980 to 1983 who put out two singles and played at nightclubs like Danceteria and Club 57. Their distinctive sound—think a more chaotic, shambolic, New Yorkier version of Rip, Rig and Panic, Bow Wow Wow or Bananarama (especially “Aie a Mwana”)—can work wonders on an unsuspecting dancefloor. They played jungle rhythms on kitchen utensils and wore 50s cocktail dresses. Their songs were often about themselves—“Pulsallama’s On the Rag” for instance, or the Pig Latin-ized “Ulsapay Amallay.” Described as “thirteen girls fighting over a cowbell,” the band’s membership actually topped out at twelve early on, but quickly dropped down to seven, including, at one point or another Andé Whyland, Ann Magnuson, April Palmeri, Dany Johnson, Jean Caffeine, Kimberly Davis, Lori Montana (who was married to PiL’s Keith Levene at the time), Katy K, Diana Lillig, Charlotte Slivka, Min Thometz, Stace Elkin, Wendy Wild, and bassist Judy Streng. Ann Magnuson—who left the band shortly after it was formed to get killed by David Bowie in The Hunger—came up with the name, a portmanteau of her Pulse-Matic blender and a llama.
Here’s a brief description of Pulsallama from Jean Caffeine’s old website:
In 1980, this damsel moved to New York to become a fabulous nightclub D.J. and stumbled upon Club 57, church basement which was a clubhouse to Downtown celebrities such as the late John Sex, Keith Haring and Wendy Wild where the Ladies Auxiliary of the Lower East Side (founded by Ann Magnuson - star of stage, screen and Bongwater) were banging on percussion instruments and hanging up meat bones in preparation for their “Rites of Spring Bacchanal.” Jean joined on drums and Pulsallama was born.
Pulsallama toured the East Coast as well as England and opened several shows for the Clash. They released a controversial, yet comical ditty, “The Devil Lives in my Husband’s Body,” for London’s Y Records which was a hit on alternative and college stations. Pulsallama was beloved for their rhythmic cacophony, theatrical stage antics, props and costumes, and their primal, yet glamourous absurdity. They had lots of fun, got their picture in Interview magazine and had 15 minutes of fame.
[Fun fact: Jean Caffeine was also seen briefly as the “roadkill” at the beginning of Richard Linklater’s classic cult film, Slacker.]
The group’s music was released by Slits manager Dick O’Dell on his Y Records imprint, making Pulsallama labelmates with Pigbag, Shriekback, Sun Ra, Glaxo Babies and the Pop Group, but they weren’t much of a real group, more of a “why not?” proposition when they found their first gig enthusiastically reviewed in the NY Rocker. After that they decided to start rehearsing and learning to play their instruments. They opened for the Clash on a handful of East coast dates on the “Combat Rock” tour and in fact recorded an entire album with producer Butch Jones that was lost in limbo when Y Records folded and no one had $15,000 to get the tapes back from the studio. That loss of momentum, and the difficulty of keeping everybody in a seven member group happy, caused Pulsallama to dissolve in 1983.
Modern Harmonic have released a recently rediscovered “live in the studio” session recorded for a French radio station as Pulsallama on CD and vinyl. It’s not exactly the album they recorded, no, and it’s also more of an EP than an LP (spinning at 45rpm), but it’s still more Pulsallama than anyone’s ever heard before, and therefore of interest.
Vince Locke’s artwork for the 2017 Cannibal Corpse album ‘Red Before Black.’ The concept for the image was to capture the victim’s perspective as they are about to die.
If you’re a fan of Buffalo, New York death metal band Cannibal Corpse, then you know the artwork of Vince Locke. Kerrang! magazine has called Locke “a man who reinvented the meaning of the word “disgusting.” If the title of this post rings a bell, it should, as one of the many comic book ventures Locke has worked on—including Neil Gaiman’s epic The Sandman—the graphic novel A History of Violence (1997) written by John Wagner. The novel would later be adapted into David Cronenberg’s 2005 film of the same name. Locke’s work in A History of Violence earned him a Haxtur Award (Spain) for Best Long Comic Strip.
Locke’s masterful work with both Cannibal Corpse and with the ultra-violent zombie comic Deadworld is pretty legendary within the interwoven worlds of heavy metal and comic books. The impact of Deadworld was so seismic at the time that, according to Locke, it was in the early stages of development before The Walking Dead turned the world of zombies on its necrotizing ear. A huge fan of the classic horror filmography he cites his favorite Hammer film as the ultra-creepy Masque of Red Death starring Vincent Price. This checks out, as Locke liberally uses the color red in his paintings because there is so much BLOOD. His long collaboration with Cannibal Corpse was initiated by Cannibal Corpse vocalist Chris Barnes, who called Locke up telling him he had a job he “might be interested in.” In 1990, Locke would create the artwork for CC’s record Eaten Back to Life and thus began a goretasticly beautiful relationship which would go on to inspire other artwork within the death metal arena. However, trying to out-gross Locke (long considered an “honorary” member of CC) and his artfully repulsive work is next to impossible. Trust me. In his teens, Locke had some formal art instruction, later studying art for two years in college before he dropped out to pursue comic book illustration. His work with Cannibal Corpse, as noted by Kerrang!, has been censored and even banned around the world.
In 2009 Locke combined Cannibal Corpse and his love of illustration into the graphic novel. Evisceration Plague named after CC’s eleventh record from 2009. The individual stories in the book are based on the songs on Evisceration Plague like “Evidence in the Furnace,” “Shatter their Bones,” something I hope never becomes a thing, “Scalding Hail.” Here’s more from CC’s bassist Alex Webster on how Locke was able to bring the band’s lyrics to “life”:
“Vince Locke has done an incredible job turning our lyrics into blood-soaked and vicious illustrations for the Evisceration Plague comic book. He really has captured visually what we were trying to convey lyrically. His artwork has brought our macabre songs to life in truly explicit fashion…fans of graphic horror will not be disappointed.”
While this kind of artwork might not be for everyone, it is important to bring up the fact that Locke’s work with Cannibal Corpse changed the trajectory of the genre as it relates to how bands use imagery to further connect to their audience. And without a doubt, Locke’s work connected with fans across the world and then some. And though I shouldn’t need to say so, the images you’re about to see are like watching a Lucio Fulci film on PCP. Speaking of the great Italian master of gore, in 2018, Locke was enlisted by the incredible Eibion Press to illustrate a graphic novel adaptation of Fulci’s 1981 film House by the Cemetery. Like the other Fulci titles in Eibon’s catalog, it’s bloody fantastic. Lastly, in April of 2021 Cannibal Corpse will release their fifteenth album, Violence Unimagined with Locke’s artwork gracing the cover. If you haven’t eaten recently, are not easily offended, and feel as though “you’ve seen it all,” click here to see Locke’s latest cannibalistic conjuring for Cannibal Corpse.
If you’re in the Long Beach, California area, you may make an appointment with The Dark Art Emporium to see an exhibit featuring work by Vince Locke, Ryan Bartlett, and Brian Mercer which opens on March 13th.
Artwork by Locke for the cover of Deadworld #1 (1986).
The original artwork for the cover of Deadworld #7 (1988).
National Lampoon editor Tony Hendra—probably best-known as Ian Faith, the irritable, incompetent manager of Spinal Tap—died yesterday. He’d been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2019 and was 79. Hendra was an author, one of the creators of Spitting Image and he even opened for Lenny Bruce at the Cafe Au Go Go.
He also did the fucking funniest John Lennon parody of all time.
Technically “Magical Misery Tour (Bootleg Record)” isn’t a parody so much as it’s a pointedly vicious satire. Hendra used direct quotes from John Lennon’s infamous 1970 Rolling Stone magazine interview with Jann Wenner (later published in book form as Lennon Remembers) for this hysterical bit.
At the time of Lennon’s Rolling Stone sitting he was undergoing Primal Scream therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov and he really let it rip, shitting on his own fans, Mick Jagger, Paul and Linda McCartney and several others. All Hendra and Michael O’Donoghue did was handpick the best parts and arrange them into lyrics. Still as funny today as when it was released on the classic National Lampoon Radio Dinner LP in 1972.
Hendra does an absolutely boffo Lennon impersonation here, razzing the former Beatle’s very public bitching and moaning. The music’s by Christopher Cerf, it was arranged by Christopher Guest and that’s Melissa Manchester making a cameo appearance as Yoko Ono at the very end.
In his 1987 memoir Going Too Far, Hendra tells the tale of an FM radio disc jockey playing “Magical Misery Tour” for a visiting John and Yoko. Allegedly the color drained from Lennon’s face and he just got up and left.
Although its, uh, cultural cachet, I suppose, has fallen in recent decades, a doofy poem called “The Desiderata of Happiness” used to be something that you’d see on the walls of doctors’ and dentists’ offices, at your grandmother’s, a great aunt’s house, or maybe in the very home that you yourself grew up in, during the 1960s and 70s. (At one point the hippies even adopted it.)
You don’t see it so often today, but it’s still around. Now that you’ve had your attention called to it, the next time you see it (normally as a varnished wooden wall plaque in a junk shop) you’ll remember this post (and wince).
Here’s an example of the proto-New Age almost meaningless wisdom you will find in “The Desiderata of Happiness”:
You are a child of the universe,
No less than the trees and the stars;
You have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
“The Desiderata of Happiness” was written in 1906 by a lawyer named Max Ehrmann, but it was unknown during his lifetime. Its slow burn to popularity began in the 1950s when a Baltimore pastor printed it up in some church materials. The poem’s advice to be humble, live a clean and moral life and to even have respect for dipshits (it doesn’t use that exact term, of course) seems simplistic even by Forrest Gump standards, but for whatever reason this thing struck a chord with the public. (You can read more about its history at Wikipedia).
In 1971, a “groovy” American radio talkshow host by the name of Les Crane (once married to Gilligan’s Island‘s Tina Louise and considered by some to be the original “shock jock”) narrated a spoken word/musical version of the poem (avec gospel choir), that reached #8 in the Billboard charts and won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Performance of the Year. It was on the British pop charts for 14 months.
The following year, a parody version titled “Deteriorata” was created by the National Lampoon’s Michael O’Donoghue, Tony Hendra and Christopher Guest (The words were Hendra’s, the music is Guest’s) released as a single and on the classic Radio Dinner album. Melissa Manchester sings on the record. The humorously ponderous reading was handled by Norman Rose, who was THE voice over announcer of the era. You’ve also heard his voice in Woody Allen’s Love & Death and The Telephone Book.
There are a few then current references in the song that might need some context for listeners almost fifty years later: The line about your dog’s diet refers to a TV dog food ad which wondered, “Is your dog getting enough cheese in his diet?” The “Remember the Pueblo” bit refers to a rightwing bumper sticker rallying cry about the capture in 1968 of the USS Pueblo by North Korea. “Do not bend, fold, spindle or mutilate” was a phrase employed on government checks. And again, bear in mind that narrator Norman Rose would be the equivalent to say, Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones reading it today.
Years later, Les Crane was asked about “Desiderata” and said “I can’t listen to it now without gagging,” adding that he preferred the Lampoon’s piss-take. Eventually the parody became better known than the original hit record due to frequent spins on the Dr. Demento radio show. Below is the original version, Les Crane version:
After a decade of relative silence, Cathal Coughlan returns later this month with a terrific new album, Song of Co-Aklan on Damian O’Neill’s Dimple Discs label (O’Neill was the lead guitarist for the Undertones, and played bass in That Petrol Emotion.) It feels like there’s a deserving buzz around the upcoming release—and Coughlan’s return—as no doubt inspired, in part, by the well-received Microdisney reunion shows of a few years back. It’s about time. He’s earned it.
The loosely conceptual album is, to an extent, based around the cut-up, quaquaversal persona of “Co-Aklan” who is more than happy to explain to you why everything feels so fucking crazy these days. It’s an extremely high quality piece of work that should appeal to intelligent people with sophisticated taste in song. (That might even include you, dear reader.) The record features his longtime backing band the Necropolitan String Quartet, augmented by Luke Haines (Auteurs/Black Box Recorder), Sean O’Hagan (Microdisney/High Llamas), Rhodri Marsden (Scritti Politti), Aindrías Ó Gruama (Fatima Mansions), Cory Gray (The Delines) and Dublin-based singer-songwriter Eileen Gogan.
I asked Cathal some questions via email.
The obvious question, why ten years between albums?
Well, it certainly wasn’t a plan, at least not in the way it’s turned out now. After the Rancho Tetrahedron album, for which I’d really knocked myself out and from which I received little/no response, I thought the actual format had perhaps had its day. I really enjoyed doing The North Sea Scrolls, but that was more in the nature of a documented live show, which had the added attraction that, on stage, I could just be a sideman on Luke Haines’ songs, for a good part of it.
I was lucky that people in Ireland and France, mainly, offered me the chance to perform in various live shows after that, where my contribution was mainly that of vocalist. That’s what I most enjoy doing, especially when the musicians are really good, and there isn’t any stress for me outside my own contribution. Also, a couple of those productions, one in tribute to WB Yeats and the other to Bertolt Brecht, got me immersed in high-quality and radical work made by others, which I also really enjoy, when kicked into having to do it. It carried no baggage of concern about Silicon Valley, or the post-2010 young-versus-old columnist ‘wars’, etc..
Around 2016, I realised I was amassing quite a bit of material (including some unused songs I’d written for the Yeats show), and felt that it was time to really give the writing some energy, to perhaps make some digital EP’s. But the material came quite easily, and I resolved to play it live, first. Things developed from there.
Does this feel like a comeback for you? There seems to be a lot of buzz around this album, and I’ve noticed that you’re doing a lot of promotion and interviews.
It’s a strange thing, I’m doing more promotion than at any time in decades. But we’re all existing in this bizarre flux, which even predates the pandemic. So there’s no clear quid-pro-quo in this, for me. I’m glad that a lot of people will have heard about the record, because I thought I was making a record which might deserve a hearing but probably wouldn’t get one. But who knows where this will lead? The old rules do not apply.
The barriers, if you will, between your last album, in the form of a CD that had to be manufactured and wrapped in cellophane and shipped someplace, and the intended audience actually finding it don’t exist anymore. It was The North Sea Scrolls that got me interested to find out what you’d been up to, and I could just dial up Black River Falls on TIDAL without even having to walk across the room. It’s piped into people’s homes now—your music, I mean—so now it’s a matter of convincing people to click play, which is still a hard enough task in an attention economy isn’t it?
It’s in another dimension entirely, to be honest. Things were well on their way to the present dispensation in 2009/10, but for one reason or other, it wasn’t possible to achieve any purchase on social media, etc. I’m looking on the streaming services as a set of social networks, whose contribution is purely promotional, and can potentially get the music heard in ways that other avenues can’t, especially without playing live. You’re of course right that the ease of global access is there as never before, as long as listeners know they might like to hear the music.
I may be kidding myself about that mental model, but there’s no other way of remaining motivated, that I know of, when the future need to survive inevitably heaves into view. I’m glad some people still buy physical media, is all I’ll say! I’ll still purchase anything I’ve come across on streaming services, that I like, even if as just a download, which I know is a dying format…
Was Song of Co-Aklan recorded before the pandemic, or in the midst of it?
Before and in the midst. A bunch of the songs were performed live in 2019, and I had intended that to be stage 1 in the rollout of Co-Aklan, hideous golem of post-globalisation retrenchment.
But various personal stuff intervened, and more live work was off the agenda, so I began recording (at a very convivial studio also used by people I admire, like Charles Hayward and Daniel O’Sullivan—run by Frank Byng, himself a very fine drummer who has played with the above, as well as with Kev Hopper’s group Prescott, and many others).
Through some freak of luck, despite my stop-go work pattern, Nick Allum got all his drum tracks down, some guitar, some bass and cello were done, and a few mixes had been completed, before the pandemic really kicked in. I also got Sean O’Hagan’s parts on a couple of the songs done.
Things got weirder after that, but it was clear that an old-school ‘album’ was at hand…
Did you do it (or any of it) remotely over the Internet, or were you always in a studio?
Well, it then became a mixture, in effect. James and Audrey (guitar/cello) recorded a number of their parts remotely. Rhodri Marsden recorded a lot of his signature Zeuhl bass guitar remotely, and some bassoon (me to RM: “I want this to sound like Henry Cow playing ‘The Laughing Gnome,’ can we do that?”). And then there was Cory Gray in Portland, and Eileen Gogan in Dublin.
I wasn’t sure whether I could produce actual mixes for myself, outside of a studio, with no pro engineer, so that’s where a lot of time went, but I’m glad I persevered with that. I can actually be quite methodical with sound, I was astonished to find! The ceaseless skittishness of yore has…altered a bit, if not departed. One song does have an atonal trap coda, with a robot singing aspirational multi-level marketing gibberish.
I’m someone for whom how music “sounds” is a big part of the enjoyment, and I appreciated the title track’s staticky white noises that come in about a minute into the song, and that killer lead bass line played by Luke Haines. There’s a lot of air around each instrument, and your voice. Now that you have the home recording skills under your belt, do you intend to be more prolific moving forward? Another barrier removed, right? You just need a laptop.
I’m hopeful that it will, but as always, it can break out into some fairly basic deciders, such as (big one): do I need live drums on this, and what does the drummer need to hear in order to give a good performance? Since the album was finished, I’ve been getting a bit synthy with some new solo stuff, but it’s important to retain the ‘pro-noise’ disposition there, the way I hear it in current work by Gazelle Twin or older work by This Heat or Suicide, all of which still inspires me. It’s a bit of a cliché to say it, but electronics can sound antiseptic, and unless that’s your actual schtick and intention, today’s technology does mean you have no excuse for ending up there unintentionally.
The “Song of Co-Aklan” chorus is a pretty ideal combo for me - the guitars jangle like The Byrds, while alongside that the synths crackle like a post-air raid fire. You can’t really plan for these things.
I’ve read that Co-Aklan is meant to be an alter ego, how so?
Well, when contemplating releasing recorded music again, I was once more reminded that tagging records with my limited-feasibility birth name has always (since 2000) felt a bit sappy and by-rote, though I’m far from being ashamed of my family or where we originate. So I decided to start a process. Then, a friend of mine did this chaotic cut-up on one of my old song lyrics, using online translation and re-translation, and out popped Co-Aklan.
I thought - perfect! It’s phonetic from the off, it isn’t pretending to be a Latin word for ‘trustworthy money’ or some neoliberal liturgical shit like that, and could readily be transliterated into other alphabets in order to secure new markets. Had one the slightest interest in that kind of thing.
A lot of the songs relate to shaky, misremembered and contested identities, and the fear and rage which can result from them, so Co-Aklan and his advent provide that resonance, on a semi-conscious level, though semantically, it’s just another trading name.
Will you keep using the Co-Aklan moniker?
Yes, I will gradually ramp up its usage in the coming couple of years. I think Cristabel Christo’s and Greg Dunn’s totemic cover image for this album give me the ideal platform for saying, “Look, here he is, and he’s staying for a while.” Like the ‘pagan idol’ on a Martin Denny sleeve, only he sings! Wish I’d done this sooner, but it’s taken years of limbo to get this confident, weirdly.
Front cover painting by Cristabel Christo, based in part on photos by Gregory Dunn/Stoneybutter.
What else have you been up to during the COVID-19 lockdown?
Hiberno-theocratic synth-pop is a genre all but shunned by the modern world of arts and culture, and hence it’s in this zone that Grammy-winning producer/musician Jacknife Lee and I have chosen to celebrate our being back in regular contact. We first became acquainted under the generous umbrella of Dublin punk/arts magazine Vox in the early 1980s. The monochrome consciousness and ethics of the Ireland we both grew up in has been hitched to a stark and sometimes intentionally degraded electronic palette to produce an effect which is often poignant but sometimes brutal. Forward to the hit parade! in short. The collaboration was masses of fun. Never in recent memory have I dared reference Thomas Leer’s 1978 single “Private Plane,” only to have the respondent say, “That’s the first single I owned”
Other than the Telefís album and the various monochrome pagain things we’re hatching for that, I’ve been working as part of a collective effort on a project called Bring Your Own Hammer, wherein musicians with Irish links have teamed up with a group of historians to create musical work based on the historical record of crimes and other lowlights which occurred in the Irish diaspora, mainly in Britain and the US, mainly in the 19th century. It’s going really well, and one thing I’m working on is a collaborative track with Sean O’Hagan. Probably a vinyl release next year, and some online work around that.
Also, there’s been the recurrent episodic search for new spaces in and around our small house in which to “film” myself for each next video extravaganza - sometimes in a robe, wearing one boxing glove, sometimes bouncing lamely around outside the shed. Looks like the SoCA album will have given rise to FIVE videos, before we call a halt. they vary from the sketchy to the conceptual to the beautiful. We’re of course not talking glossy 80s epics here, but it’s a strange realisation for me!
Preparatory work for the next Co-Aklan instalment and the second Telefís album are also in hand.
Most people would probably be surprised to find that Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons recorded a musically ambitious concept album in 1969 that was inspired by Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper’s. The Jersey boys were all about a doo-wop meets big band Motown sound and songs about girls, so no one expected an album of bold social commentary, complex vocal arrangements, long songs and quirky Van Dyke Parks-esque musical arrangements, but this is exactly what they got when the group released The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette.
The opening fanfare is the provocatively titled “American Crucifixion Resurrection”:
Unbound slaves stand outside the gate
With lengths of broken chain they wait
Empty stomachs filled with hate
No-one told the heads of state, the Prince of peace is sleeping late
Who will wait on the lords and ladies, who will cry when they lose their crowns?
Sleeping through the years of error, waking in a reign of terror
Yes, folks, that’s from the same fellas who sang “Sherry” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry”!
The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette was released in a fold-out cover with an extra inner page, containing an eight page ‘‘newspaper’’ insert. Bob Gaudio co-wrote the album’s songs with Jake Holmes (who actually composed “Dazed and Confused” not Jimmy Page, and the “Be A Pepper” jingle for the Dr. Pepper soft drink with Randy Newman). In the mid-70s, Gaudio was told by none other than John Lennon that The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette was one of this favorite albums, a claim bolstered by the fact that John and Yoko (not to mention Jethro Tull) stole the newspaper cover idea for their 1972 Sometime in New York City record.
Bob Gaudio later said of the album:
“One of the disappointments of our career for me on a creative level was The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette album. It was just something that I had to do at that time. It got wonderful reviews, but obviously it was not an acceptable piece from us. Everybody was expecting Top 40.”
The album did well with critics, it was really the group’s fans who rejected it. The lavish, over the top approach used on the album was abandoned for the group’s next records, the straight ahead Half & Half and Chameleon, their Motown album. Still, it wasn’t a total flop, selling over 150,000 albums, but by Four Seasons standards it was a disaster, making it to just #85 in the charts.
Even if The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette isn’t quite as legendary as Pet Sounds, it is in the same “big league,” literally, as both groups, the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys are among the top selling vocal harmony pop acts that America has ever produced, each selling in excess of 100 million records. It certainly deserves to stand alongside of something like The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle as a somewhat lesser-known example of this brand of lush, elaborately orchestrated vocal psych pop. Brian Wilson wasn’t the only one capable of making music in this style.
Below, some more examples of what the insert newspaper looked like. Some label needs to do a full-on re-issue of this puppy, pronto. It’s even long out of print on CD, with Amazon dealers charging exorbitant prices for what can still sometimes be found for a dollar in used vinyl shops. Crate diggers, hear me: If you see an original copy of The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette album with the insert, grab it.
After this record, the creative partnership of Bob Gaudio and Jake Holmes went on to another brilliant—and similarly ill-fated—project, Frank Sinatra’s haunting 1970 Watertown. Note “Watertown” reference in the above detail from the insert newspaper.
“American Crucifixion Resurrection”
“Mr. Stately’s Garden” (in which The Four Seasons do their best American Kinks approximation)
A nineteen-year-old Phil Lynott photographed for Irish magazine Women’s Way in 1969.
In 1969, Thin Lizzy vocalist Phil Lynott was already singing with his fourth band, Orphanage, following his dismissal from the band Skid Row (featuring guitarist Gary Moore). Lynott was pretty laser-focused on making rock and roll his primary profession from a very young age after forming his first group, Black Eagles—a cover band, and his second, Kama Sutra, when he was fifteen. In 1969, during his short time with Orphanage, from which Thin Lizzy would soon spring, he was interviewed by one of the most popular women’s magazines in Ireland at the time, Women’s Way, for a column called “Beat Up” by journalist Heather Parsons. During his youth, Lynott had gone through more than his fair share of difficulties. His father was absent, and the young Lynott was subjected to relentless racially-motivated verbal attacks because of his mixed heritage. The racism was so bad in Manchester that Lynott’s mother Sarah sent him off to live with his grandparents in Dublin. All of these experiences, as well as others, made a deep impression on Phil, which he articulated in the interview in a rather profound way. Here are a few of the insights he shared with Women’s Way when he was just nineteen and about to become the biggest rock star in Ireland, and later known worldwide as the charismatic, cock-sure vocalist for Thin Lizzy. Let’s start with my favorite moment from the interview, when Phil was asked what he disliked the most:
“I’ll tell you what I dislike the most of all—those superior types who look down on any girl who hasn’t got the same views. What right does anyone have to be so critical? We’ve all got our own lives to lead and different ideas on how to do this. The place money has in people’s lives annoys me too. Okay, I know it’s essential, but at the moment it’s all-important to too many people. Another thing is social injustice. No. I’m not going to say anything about racial discrimination because people just say, ‘Oh, another coloured fella with a chip on his shoulder. Take all the things Bob Dylan writes about though—housing problems, people starving and dying, wars. I sometimes get very frustrated because I feel so strongly about these things and can’t do anything about them. I’d like to put all the oppressors into the oppressed position.”
If you just high-fived your laptop screen, congratulations. You, my friend, are on the right side of history along with Phil Lynott. Here’s a little more from Phil on the desire to have a child and be a good father, unlike his own father:
“Do you know what else I’d like to do? Adopt a kid. Now, why can’t single people do that? I’d like a kid, and I’d be good to him and look after him and give him a good life—better than he’d have in an orphanage. No pun intended!”
Of course, since this is a nineteen-year-old burgeoning rock star we’re talking about here, Lynott does give some insight into the stuff you’d expect a nineteen-year-old dude to be interested in. Such as girls with strawberry blonde hair, cars (especially if they are “kinky”), and not being the marrying type because he’s too much of a “flirt.” (He would marry Caroline Crowther eleven years later on Valentine’s Day.) You can read the entire interview here.
Phil Lynott giving a spoken-word performance of the song “Shades of a Blue Orphanage.” Lynott wrote the song as a tribute to his grandmother Sarah who raised him with her husband, Phil’s grandfather, Frank. It is taken from the television special ‘Me & My Music’ recorded in 1976 (but broadcast in 1977).
This month sees Cherry Red releasing the first expanded edition re-issue of Marc Almond’s The Stars We Are since the album’s original release in 1988. The Stars We Are is Marc Almond at his most commercial, but that is in a no way a slight. Marking the singer’s final collaboration with his musical partner Annie Hogan, the lush balladry of The Stars We Are—Almond’s 4th solo album proper (if you don’t count his Marc and the Mambas side project)—is also one of his very best, an all-killer, no-filler affair that spawned five singles, two of them international hits.
There are three amazing duets on the album that I want to call your attention to. First is “Your Kisses Burn,” an astonishing number performed with Nico, in her final studio recording. Being a big Nico fan and a big Marc Almond fan, I was awestruck by the infernal power of this song when I first heard it. It’s scary! I can vividly recall playing it over and over again at top volume the day I brought the CD home. It cannot be said that Nico didn’t go out on a high note, but according to Almond, interviewed by The Quietus, she had difficulty singing that day:
“Nico was a mysterious figure, enigmatic with that great musical and artistic connection to The Velvet Underground and Warhol, which were things I was obsessed about at school. And of course that wonderful intriguing voice, icy and remote yet warm at the same time. She made a sound I’d never heard before - maybe some sort of a gothic punk Marlene Dietrich. The first time i heard her music was with The Velvet Underground, but I bought Desertshore, The Marble Index and The End and liked them more. There was also her musical association with Brian Eno, which made her more intriguing.
“When I became a musician, she was always at the top of my wish list for a duet of some sort. I was so nervous to contact her and EMI were not really for it at all, as you can imagine. I wanted to make sure that she was treated like the legend and the star I felt she was. EMI balked at her demands, but I was insistent. It turned out she was lovely if fragile, and we played pool and drank tea and talked for ages. The song was a problem, it turned out to be a bit too complicated, too orchestral for her and she began to deteriorate as the day went on and the methadone took effect. She still managed to deliver that wonderful Nico voice. We left on warm terms with plans for a better track more suited to her.
I think this one is fucking incredible. You be the judge. PLAY IT LOUD:
And then there is the album’s BIG HIT, “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart,” Almond’s duet with Gene Pitney on a remake of Pitney’s own top five song of 1967. The Stars We Are was originally released in late 1988 with a solo Marc rendition of the number, but the duet—with the same backing track—went to number one on the UK pop charts and stayed there for an entire month. Marc really gives it his all here, while Pitney’s vocal takes the song to a new height. There were TV appearances galore—the pair were even invited to be on Wogan—and this charming music video shot in Las Vegas.
