V.A. Saturday

Jon Savage is a writer who fully deserves the status legendary attached to his name- since the early days of punk he chronicled the music and the subculture, a  writer and journalist who knows his stuff and who cares. His Sex Pistols book England’s Dreaming is probably the definitive account of account of UK and US punk and his oral history of Joy Division, This Searing Light, The Sun And Everything Else,is the best account of that band’s trajectory and story bar none. He has had for many years a sideline as a Various Artists album compiler, including some VA albums that have had repeat plays round here over the years: Fame- Jon Savage’s Secret History Of Post Punk 1978- 1981 and 1966 Jon Savage’s The Year The Decade Exploded are both Bagging Area favourites and his recent one, Do You Have The Force? Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of Electronica 1978- 1982, is a genre busting, futuristic compilation that finds proto- electronica in Throbbing Gristle, Soft Machine, UFO, PiL and The Flying Lizards among others. 

In 2015 Caroline True Records released Perfect Motion: Jon Savage’s Secret History Of Second Wave Psychedelia, 1988- 1993, a treasure trove of the period across four sides of vinyl, a snapshot of guitar bands, pop acts and dance music that to Jon, was what the title suggested- a new wave of psychedelia. Jon found it in Shack, The High and The Stone Roses (for this release the head spinning track Full Fathom Five, Elephant Stone played backwards, named after a Jackson Pollock painting), he found it in Deee- Lite, Pet Shop Boys, 808 State and Joi, he found it in Saint Etienne and Electronic and he found it in ‘the scene’s resident genius’, Andrew Weatherall (Clock Factory by Sabres Of Paradise, Andrew’s remix of Sly And Lovechild and his production on Screamadelica, in this case Slip Inside This House, Primal Scream’s cover of a first wave of US psychedelia band, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators).

Full Fathom Five

Jon takes some delight I think in stretching the boundaries of the genre he’s compiling, in finding what he’s looking for places some people wouldn’t. His latest compilation for Caroline True Records, out at the end of last year, is titled Jon Savage’s Ambient 90s, a concept and compilation that’s very up my street. True to form Jon stretches the definition of ambient so far it almost snaps the fabric of music to pieces, but it all makes sense too. In 1992 Jon started sending articles to Jockey Slut, fired up by the new music being made- ‘a new way of looking at the world, a new language’, he said at the time. Jockey Slut were more than happy to publish 2000 words on the importance of Aphex Twin by the man who saw Joy Division at the PSV. 

On Ambient 90s he compiles tracks by William Orbit, Aphex Twin, Underworld (Blueski from Second Toughest In The Infants, three minutes of Karl Hyde’s blues guitar looped and distorted), Sandoz (Richard Kirk from Cabaret Voltaire), React To Rhythm’s Intoxication (a huge progressive house track with a vocal sample whispering, ‘this works almost instantly’, a track so rhythmic and thumpy it can’t be really called ambient but let’s go with it), U-Ziq and several others. It closes with this by Biosphere, a 1994 release by a Norwegian artist on a Belgian label that starts out with background noise and acoustic guitar and floats away on ambient waves, synths and washes of sound ebbing and flowing as the acoustic guitar keeps time. 

En- Trance

Temple Head And Filthy

Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs have a very good sideline outside Saint Etienne, putting together themed compilation albums for Ace Records. Often these mine the rich seams of the 60s and 70s, unearthing forgotten album tracks and B-sides. Their most recent album is Fell From the Sun, a selection of 98BPM tracks from the summer of 1990 where the dance music revolution slowed down and a floaty, chilled out, modern psychedelia came in, records for the sunrise. 

Many of the songs on the album (double vinyl, single CD)  have been posted at this blog before- Primal Scream’s Higher Than the Sun (produced and remixed by The Orb), Sheer Taft’s Cascades, Saint Etienne’s B-side Speedwell, One Dove’s Fallen, BBG’s Snappiness, the Jon and Vangelis/ Martin Luther King inspired Spiritual High by Moodswings, the Apocalypse Now! sampling Never Get Out Of The Boat by The Aloof and The Grid’s Floatation. You’d be correct in seeing the hands, or the spirit, of Andrew Weatherall all over this compilation- Loaded was one of the records that kicked it off. There are quite a few I’ve never posted (one below and also Soul Family Sensation’s I Don’t Even Know If I Should Call You Baby, which is odd as I love it and was sure I’d written about it at some point). There are lesser known songs from Massonix, Elis Curry, History and Q- Tee and Critical Rhythm. It’s a lovely snapshot of a time and a place (Britain in the summer of 1990), perfectly chiming with this period of hot and sunny weather we’ve been having. The sleeve and  Bob’s sleevenotes are spot on too, as you’d expect.

This is one of the songs on Fell From The Sun that I can’t believe I’ve never posted here, Temple Head by Transglobal Underground. All the summer of 1990 elements are present- a unifiying, coming together ‘Na na na/ Na na na’ chant, that 98 BPM chuggy rhythm, loved up pianos and a ‘watch the skies’ vocal sample (from the film The Thing From Another World). The group signed to DeConstruction who re- released Temple Head on 12″ the following year. 

Temple Head (Pacific Mix)

Fell From The Sun goes very well with another compilation covering the same period put together by Jon Savage and released in 2015, a double vinyl album called Perfect Motion- A Secret History Of Second Wave Psychedelia. Savage also saw it as a new (or neo) psychedelia and pulled together his snapshot of the 1988- 1993 period, a time when dance artists, guitar bands and pop groups with new technology and drugs made music that seemed to promise endless possibility. Jon’s compilation also has Saint Etienne (with Q-Tee, on their B-side Filthy) and Primal Scream (Slip Inside This House, itself a cover of freaked out 1960s psychedelia) and fellow guitar travellers Shack, Northside, The High and The Stone Roses (with one of their head-spinning backwards tracks, Full Fathom Five) alongside Deee- Lite, a Pet Shop Boys B-side, Weatherall’s remix of Sly And Lovechild and his group Sabres Of Paradise’s Clock Factory, rave from 808 State, DHS and Joi and DNA’s remix of Electronic’s Get The Message. A slightly wider ranging selection than Bob and Pete’s but the two compilations sit side by side very well, two halves of the same pill.

Filthy was the B-side to the 1991 re- release of Saint Etienne’s first single, their cover of Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart, a genuine lost classic. Riding in on a, yep, filthy bassline and a swamp rock guitar solo sampled from Afrique, South London rapper Q- Tee delivers a scene stealing vocal, rapping and singing. ‘This is not a media hype’, she drops huskily before the xylophone solo comes in. 

Filthy

Use Hearing Protection

On Monday I got to the Museum Of Science And Industry to see an exhibition which has been open since the start of June and which I finally got to on its final day- Use Hearing Protection, a version of the Factory records story. Manchester has been drowning in its own nostalgia for many years now but this exhibition was excellent all the same and really skewered the period when Factory first started, those early years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Looking at the flickering film footage playing with OMD’s Electricity on the banks of tv screens at the entrance to the exhibition was like looking at another world and also the city I remember as a kid- derelict buildings, the Arndale Centre, dirty orange buses. There was an introduction to the main players- Wilson, Hannett, Saville, Gretton, Erasmus, Granada TV, Situationism- and the teardrop guitar Ian Curtis plays in the Love Will Tear Us Apart video.

There were many posters from the time, many loaned by Rob Gretton’s family and Tony Wilson’s family. These ones stand out, designed by writer Jon Savage, advertising gigs by Durutti Column at the Lesser Free Trade Hall and a Joy Division gig with support from A Certain Ratio and Section 25 (which would set you back £1.25). 

The central room was an exhibition of all the items that make up Fac 1-to Fac 50 in the Factory catalogue- not just singles and albums (though they were all there with sleeve proofs and sketches) but the posters (Fac 1, Fac 15, Fac 26), the menstrual egg timer (Fac 8), the film scripts, the Factory notepaper (Fac 7), the badges (Fac 21) and much more. The major releases, Unknown Pleasures, Closer, Love Will Tear Us Apart, Still and Movement, were accompanied by extras- film clips and interviews and pieces of Martin Hannett’s studio equipment. There was an appreciation of the somewhat unsung role women played in the early years of Factory- Ann Quigley, Lesley Gilbert, Linder, New Order’s Gillian Gilbert and Lindsay Reade. 

In the room next door (see picture at the top of this post) there were a wall of floor to ceiling screens with nine different live performances projected, starting with Joy Division and ending with New Order. In between this start and end point were some lesser known Factory acts such as The Names and Section 25 and the totally bewitching clip of The Durutti Column playing Sketch For Dawn in a park in Finland in 1981 (later released as part of a Factory video, Fact 56). 

The next room had photographs of Manchester during the period, to put some historical and social context around what was going on at Palatine Road, The Russell Club and The Hacienda. Photos of the Hulme Crescents, the multi- racial crowd enjoying themselves at a Rock Against Racism concert in Alexandra Park, grainy shots of footbridges and people, children playing on bombsites, a post- industrial city on the verge of something even if no- one can really see it at the time. On the way out you could walk through a mock up of the edge of the Hacienda’s dancefloor- the future it suggests, the way out, Manchester’s rebirth as a modern city begins here. 

There are so many single releases in the first 50 Fac numbers that are from the fringes of the culture, pieces of minor brilliance that Factory’s team saw something special in and put out in beautifully designed sleeves that set out to make a statement (and for Gretton, Wilson and Saville to subvert as well). ACR’s All Night Party. OMD’s Electricity. ESG’s You’re No Good. X-O- Dus’ English Black Boys. The Distractions’ Time Goes By So Slow. Section 25’s Girls Don’t Count. Crispy Ambulances’ Unsightly And Serene. Stockholm Monsters’ Fairy Tales. And this one, a long time favourite of mine, a one off single by a group of teenagers from Blackpool, Tunnelvision. They’d split up by the time a second single was suggested, leaving one sole 7″ single as their legacy- a doomy, sombre, rough- edged slice of post- punk beauty called Watching The Hydroplanes. 

Watching The Hydroplanes