On One

Two pieces of On U Sound for the last day of March. First up the truly inspiring African Head Charge and a track from their 1981 album My Life In A Hole In The Ground, a groundbreaking record from Adrian Sherwood and Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah. Sherwood crated the minimal backing tracks. Bonjo laid down hand drums and percussion on top. Chants and FX were added, creating an unholy stew combining dub and African rhythms with anything else that fired their juices- free jazz, post- punk, whatever. 

Stebeni's Theme 

Second, fast forward to 1996 and Dub Syndicate, a long running collaboration between Sherwood and Style Scott, which by the mid- 90s resulted in an album of remixes from a variety of UK dub producers. Iration Steppas remixed 2001 Love- a clanging riff, discordant horns, echo and delay and then a massive rhythm track rides in. Eventually Allen Ginsberg appears saying 'let's all make love in London', a sample from a 1967 film about Swinging London that features Pink Floyd and a cast of thousands- Lennon, Jagger, The Small Faces, Vashti Bunyan, Chris Farlowe, Julie Christie and more in all their summer of '67 glory. 

2001 Love (Iration Steppas Remix)

Isolation Mix Three

It's over halfway through April already. The weeks seem to be flying by even though some of the days seem very long. This is Isolation Mix Three. I thought I'd do something different from the ambient, blissed out, opiated sounds of the first two mixes and this mix is something that I first wrote about doing in a post here about three years ago. This is an hour and three minutes of spoken word and poetry and music. Andrew Weatherall features in various guises and with various poets, the Beat Generation and The Clash are represented, there's some reggae and the unmistakable voice of John Cooper Clarke.

Jack Kerouac/Joe Strummer: MacDougal Street Blues

John Cooper Clarke: Twat

Misty In Roots: Introduction to Live At The Counter Eurovision

Linton Kwesi Johnson: Inglan Is A Bitch

The Clash (and Allen Ginsberg): Ghetto Defendant (Extended Version)

Allen Ginsberg/ Tom Waits: Closing Time/America

Andrew Weatherall and Michael Smith: The Deep Hum (At The Heart Of It All)

Joe Gideon and The Shark: Civilisation

Woodleigh Research Facility and Joe Duggan: Downhill

Fireflies and Joe Duggan: Leonard Cohen Knows

BP Fallon and David Holmes: Henry McCullough (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Mike Garry and Joe Duddell: St Anthony: An Ode To Anthony H Wilson (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Allen Ginsberg: I Am A Victim Of Telephone

Slamdance Cosmopolis

A Clash song and cover for Friday, a song from the tail end of the group's lifespan, when the days of squats in Davis Road must have seemed an eternity and a world away. By 1982 The Clash were playing stadiums (supporting The Who) and releasing an album which was partly made for mass appeal with singles that would get them on the radio and also an album that was very internationalist in its subject matter, about the Far East and New York rather than the Westway. Much of Combat Rock has a melancholic, weighty feel. Ghetto Defendant has a downbeat reggae groove with a particularly good bassline from Simonon, many memorable lines from Strummer about heroin addiction and Allen Ginsberg as 'the voice of God'. Jean Arthur Rimbaud, The Paris Commune, Marseilles, Guatemala, the Hundred Years War, Afghanistan...

Mick initially saw Combat Rock as another long album, fifteen or sixteen songs with extended dance mixes and lengthy intros and outros. He lost that argument as the album was remixed by Glyn Johns, trimmed back to forty six minutes and had several songs shelved. The Sound System box set included this original, longer Mick Jones version of the song, everything stretched out a bit further, more reggae groove, more bass, more Strummer and more Ginsberg.

Ghetto Defendant (Extended Version)

In 2017 New York's Megative put out a cover of Ghetto Defendant, an even more downbeat version than the original, slow and heavy but with enough groove to get you shuffling, slightly. Megative have their own apocalyptic take on the punky reggae party and on the basis of this cover plenty to bring.

Ghetto Defendant 

This Is The Impression I Get From Looking At The Television Set

Whoever spliced Allen Ginsberg reading his 1956 poem America with Tom Waits' Closing Time created something beautiful and profound. You can take as much as you want from Ginsberg's poem at the moment.


America (Closing Time)

America's Greatest Living Poet Was Ogling You All NIght

Back at the start of the year Iggy Pop released what may turn out to be his last album. Eight months later it still sounds like a good record and contains several songs that are as good as anything he's done for ages. It also sounds like a record he wanted to make rather than a contract filler or something to occupy some time. The lead song was Gardenia, opening with a great tremelo guitar part from Josh Homme and then Iggy's baritone voice comes in singing about Gardenia, a stripper he used to love/admire. The sound of the song harks back to Berlin period Iggy, mechanical and with groove. The line about 'America's greatest living poet' comes from a time when Iggy and Allen Ginsberg spent an evening in Gardenia's company, Iggy waiting decades to use this memory in a song.

Gardenia

Good Woman

Ages ago a friend lent me a Cat Power lp- I can't remember which one but I listened to it and decided it really wasn't my cuppa tea. I don't think I stuck with it very long. I found this clip recently- footage of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg hanging around the streets of New York in 1959, soundtracked by Cat Power's Good Woman. Which I now love. The vocal and ever-so-distorted guitars, and with some lovely backing vocals. Some plucked strings, a dash of harmonica maybe. The right side of melancholic.



It's good when a completely different context allows you to hear something differently and get a different response. I may have to go  and buy the album.

Good Woman

Sacco And Venzetti Must Not Die

It's funny how these things develop in little bursts and how one thing leads to another. My compadre, technical advisor, guitarist and brother-in-law H has started a blog called Spoken Word Rock. He posted this which I just had to re-post here; Allen Ginsberg's poem America (which I wrote about back in August) read by Ginsberg, set to the music of Tom Waits' Closing Time, with some great cut and paste visuals. All of which ties in with my recent rediscovery of the Beats, and has some kind of message for tomorrow's Presidential election. Maybe.



Sacco and Vanzetti were a pair of Italian-American anarchists charged with murder in the 1920s and convicted on flimsy, xenophobic/racist evidence. A witness recalled in court one of the assailants 'moved like a foreigner'. The judge added his own prejudices and the two men were sentenced to death. Both were eventually executed.

America (Closing Time)

I Saw The Best Minds Of My Generation Destroyed By Madness

Jack Kerouac may have been the handsome, freewheeling, checked shirt and chino, hitch-hiking, Zen typing, King of the Beats but in the long term Allen Ginsberg was probably a more sorted fella. In the mid 50s he pioneered a new form of poetry and won an obscenity trial over his poem Howl, particularly fighting against homophobic laws and attitudes. in the 60s he adopted the hippies and they adopted him, befriending Bob Dylan and being conspicuous in the anti-Vietnam movement. On meeting London's swinging 60s leading lights he stripped naked; John Lennon left he room aghast muttering 'not in front of the birds'. I thought I had an mp3 of him reading America but can't find it. It's a great poem, starting...

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. 
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956. 
I can't stand my own mind. 
America when will we end the human war? 
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb 
I don't feel good don't bother me. 

And finishing...

America this is quite serious. 
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. 
America is this correct? 
I'd better get right down to the job. 
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories
I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. 
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Instead this is Ginsberg reading his epic Howl.

Howl

While in New York for their residency at Bond's Casino The Clash crossed paths with Ginsberg. Joe Strummer and Ginsberg collaborated on some lyrics, though Strummer later said Ginsberg's contribution was only a few words.Ginsberg then provided vocals on the superb Ghetto Defendant, from Combat Rock (including some memorable lines- slamdance cosmopolis, enlighten the populace; strung out committee, walled out of the city). Today's bonus download is the version of Ghetto Defendant from Mick Jones' unreleased Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg bootleg (later to be pruned and polished into Combat Rock). This one is rougher and features more Ginsberg.

Ghetto Defendant (Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg version)