A Witness: One Foot In The Groove

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Ron Johnson 1988.  ZRON 30

Discogs

Another Ron Johnson classic tonight, this time from Manchester’s A Witness.  This is an easier listen than Big Flame, but still has the jagged guitars and the debt to Captain Beefheart.  Add surreal lyrics, great tunes and some fantastic guitar riffs, and the result is irresistible.

A Witness have a connection to various other similar bands of the time, most notably Bogshed, Big Flame, AC Temple and The Membranes, but came to an abrupt end when the guitarist, Rick Aitken was killed in a climbing accident.

More to come from this band…

Various Artists: A Baker’s Dozen From Vindaloo

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Vindaloo Records 1986.  YUS 8

Discogs

This is a sampler for Vindaloo, the Brum label run by Robert Lloyd.  It’s best known for discovering We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It, represented here several times.  In their early days they were probably the most incompetent band I’ve ever seen, but they were charming, fun, and wrote some decent material.  I also thought they did a good job during their chart phase, although that was never really my thing.

However, for me Vindaloo’s main achievement was Ted Chippington, the otherworldly non-comedian I first saw supporting The Fall.  You may well hate him – most do, but his belligerant refusal to obey even the most basic rules of comedy made him utterly unique as a performer.  There’s none of his stand-up here, just some musical “numbers”, which are hilarious if you get it; the worst karaoke you’ve ever heard if not.  She Loves You got some daytime radio play (Steve Wright liked it as I recall) and was a minor hit.  Yes, it’s a joke, but I think he performs it with real pathos.

Normally I like the Nightingales, but here they were in a weird Country and Western phase which I thought was terrible.

Various Artists: The Last Nightingale

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Rē Records 1984.  Rē 1984

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My mid teens were dominated by a scarcity of music.  I couldn’t afford to buy much and hadn’t discovered Peel, so my subscription to Birmingham Record Library was pretty important.  The trouble was they had a buying policy dominated by snobbery.  There were huge quantities of  dry classical music which didn’t appeal, some jazz which I mostly didn’t understand, vast quantities of what was called “Easy Listening” back then – the likes of Bert Kampfaert.  They thought that the people who liked pop music would damage the records, so there was precious little of that.  The diminutive Rock section though occasionally had some gems.  I hadn’t heard of most of it, so I used to borrow records based mainly on whether I thought the cover looked interesting.  It led to some pretty awful music, but also some discoveries which have stayed with me since.  One day I borrowed a Soft Machine retrospective, Triple Echo and was completely mesmerised by everything on which Robert Wyatt appeared, an obsession which has never left me.  There’s been none of it here so far because most of what he recorded is still available, but this is an exception.

Robert Wyatt has always been profoundly political so it was no surprise to see him on this benefit EP for the Miners’ Strike.  It’s short, but is an absolute gem.  The project was put together by Chris Cutler who wheeled in a bunch of mates, including Wyatt to perform the two jazz based tracks on side 1.  They’re beautiful songs sung wonderfully as alway by Wyatt.  Side 2 includes two spoken word pieces by poet Adrian Mitchell.  I don’t normally go for that sort of thing, but these two work well.  The first is a bit of a rant about how horrible school is, performed as a kind of spoken blues.  The second is a post apocalyptic tale.  Sandwiched between them is a remix of an old track from Henry Cow – a band Wyatt has worked with and who were consistently interesting.

Ruthless Rap Assassins: And It Wasn’t A Dream

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Syncopate 1990.  SYN38 and 12SYX38

Discogs  Discogs

I love a bit of social commentary in music especially rap, and this single does a particularly good job.  It’s the story of a couple emigrating from the Caribbean in the 1950s with high hopes, quickly dashed by the hostile reception they got from the xenophobic Brits.  One verse is about the woman, the other the man and the whole thing is told from the perspective of their UK born son.   This is a part of UK history everyone who lives here should know about, but it’s not just an earnest history lesson.  The words are beautifully written, and it works just as well musically, with loping backing giving a nice caribbean vibe alongside the well placed Malcolm X samples.  It had rave reviews at the time and Peel played it quite a bit, but it bombed.  The band then took a real dive getting involved with Shaun Ryder and Black Grape.  I guess they had bills to pay.

This is the CD single bundled up with the remix 12″.  Do you need that many versions of it?  I guess not, but it really is a fantastic dose of Brit rap.

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Big Black: Il Duce

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Homestead Records 1985.  HMS042

Discogs

More from the mighty Steve Albini – a slightly perplexing homage to Benito Mussolini which I assume is tongue-in-cheek.

I’ve always thought this was an odd choice for a single.  It’s better than most bands manage in a career, but it doesn’t really stand out against the other stuff they did that year.

The B side is from the Atomizer LP which I think is their best.  It sounds like the same version to me, but haven’t bothered to check.

I never quite came to terms with the drum machine Big Black use.  Of course it was a big part of the revered Big Black sound, but really I prefer Shellac with their human drummer.  Criticising Big Black for that is unfair though – they produced some of the best guitar based music of the 80s which I played to death.

Apparently Steve Albini had one of his customary hissy fits when Homestead issued this as a 12″ against his wishes.  They left the label as a result.  This however is the common as muck 7″.

I may add to this tomorrow – been to the pub and am struggling to string anything meaningful together.

Bongwater: Double Bummer

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Shimmy Disc 1988.  SHIMMY011

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This is one of my favourite albums of the 80s.  It’s an insane sprawling psychedelic masterpiece, without doubt the highlight of Bongwater’s career, and main man Kramer too for that matter.

The most obvious starting points for getting to grips with this massive work are the large number of cover versions.  There’s a bonkers version of Led Zep’s Dazed And Confused sung in Chinese, a slowed down, dark performance of Gary Glitter’s Rock n Roll Pt II, a surprisingly straight cover of The Soft Machine’s We Did It Again, a couple of Beatles tunes.. the list goes on.

There’s lots of effective tape manipulation courtesy of Ann Magnuson which adds to the insanity – there’s something really effective about well chosen snippets of spoken word sandwiching the musical parts.  Magnuson also contributes some very surreal stories – Iranian Country Club is a favourite, and then there’s the cheeky David Bowie Wants Ideas, although he’s morphed into David Byrne by the end of the track.

Like an earlier Kramer related post, the length of this album makes it a bit overwhelming, but it is worth the effort.

The Chesterfields: Blame

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Household 1988.  HOLD 3T

Discogs

I had quite a tasty treat planned for today, but the upload failed, so another single it has to be.

There’s nothing particularly original about the Chesterfields, but as I’ve said before, there’s a lot to be said for a great pop song well performed, and this one has a trombone as an added bonus.

You could never accuse the band of outstaying their welcome, specialising as they did in very short songs.  I very much like the idea of saying what you want to say and then shutting up.  However why it was necessary to use so much vinyl for so little music isn’t clear.

The band have featured here a couple of times before, thanks to their tenure on Subway, but this single is from much later in their career, which I guess is why it sounds so slick.

The Nightblooms: Crystal Eyes

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Fierce 1990.  Fright041

Discogs

The Nightblooms were a Dutch band who had obviously made quite a study of the likes of MBV and Slowdive, but they did take their aesthetic somewhere a bit new.  This single is awash with fuzzed out guitar, loads of wah-wah and twee female vocals very low in the mix.   The song is so great it feels like they must have nicked it from somewhere, but I can’t place it.  The B side is similar, but without a tune it doesn’t work that well.

It’s an odd release though because it’s on the somewhat dodgy Fierce Records, which have featured here quite a bit.  However this is a totally normal record.  The band are real and were signed to Fierce.  It was distributed properly, has the playing time you’d expect, with proper covers and label art work.  It might be the only Fierce release I have which is like it.

Big Flame: Tough

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Ron Johnson 1985.  ZRON 4

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I guess Big Flame will always be best remembered for appearing on the C86 compilation, but they didn’t come close to fitting that cliché because there was nothing twee or unoriginal about them.  Their angular, jarring guitar sound became what their label was best known for, and was some of the most interesting guitar based music around back then, with a healthy dose of radical politics thrown in for good measure.  However it’s not an easy listen, so if you’re after unchallenging indiepop, look elsewhere.

They seem largely forgotten now apart from the occasional re-issue, none of which are now available.  However they were apparently a huge influence on the Manic Street Preachers in their early Richie Manic period (no real connection though between Big Flame and what the Manics went on to become).

Kit Clayton: When Cedars Fall

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Soul Jazz 2003.  SJR 071-12

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Kit Clayton was a fairly constant presence on the glitchy electronic compilations, usually on Mille Plateaux, that I spent a lot of time listening to in the late 90s and early 2000s, and this 12″ is pretty typical of his output.  It’s very much the geeky, computer based end of elecronica, which back then was the most interesting part of the genre.