V.A. Saturday

The 1977 various artists compilation album New Wave looks like a major label cash in (it came out on Vertigo, a subsidiary of Phillips/ Phonogram). The cover, bright red with a photo of leather jacket clad punk spitting beer at the camera in front of a corrugated iron fence, is typically ’77 punk. The album’s title looks like an attempt to make something threatening palatable, new wave rather than punk. But the fact is, it’s a really good primer of mainly American 1977 punk bands with some pre- punk or proto- punk acts thrown in and there’s hardly a song on it you’d skip (I make an exception for The Boomtown Rats who I’d always skip). The sleeve thanks Linda and Seymour Stein (who scooped up most of the US punk/ New Wave acts for Seymour’s label Sire) and also Jake Riviera and Kosmo Vinyl from Stiff Records, both of whom knew their stuff. 

New Wave opens, as all punk compilation albums probably should, with The Ramones and one minute thirty two seconds of rushing buzzsaw guitars and Joey’s snarled vocals about Judy and Jackie…

Judy Is A Punk

From there it’s bam- bam- bam of U.S. punk and proto- punk- The Dead Boys, Patti Smith’s Piss Factory, The Runaways, New York Dolls, Richard Hell and The Voidoids and Love Comes In Spurts. France and Australia are represented by Little Bob Story a Skyhooks. Flip it over and side two kicks off with Talking Heads (if you’ve placed the needle past The Boomtown Rats), jerky, staccato, New York art with two loves  that go tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet like little birds. 

Love Goes To Building On Fire 

The Damned show up with New Rose, the first UK punk single and the one that got them blackballed by the punk crowd for the crime of speeding up the recoding in the studio, studio trickery being NOT PUNK. More Ramones, more Dead Boys, more Runaways, more Dolls and The Flaming Groovies who always seem like the outliers on this record, their 1967 San Francisco garage rock always feeling a bit too studied and retro for 1977 despite Shake Some Action being most definitely a good song. 

New Wave was a second hand shop staple for years- all the way through the 80s a record you could guarantee finding in the Punk section. Pulling it out again and playing it for this post, it still packs a punch, a 1977 sock to the face. 

Weekend Machines

Jezebell have been pushing their way into the Balearic/ acid house world over the last two years, especially so in the last 12 months. Their album Jezebelearic Beats Vol 1. caused a fuss when it came out digitally last summer and again with the vinyl release this spring. The vinyl release has slightly fewer tracks than the digital and runs in a different order, the sequencing of four sides of vinyl an artform in itself. Since my copy of the album arrived it’s been semi- resident on my turntable, an opportunity to enjoy the album all over again. From the languid, Ibizan beats of Jezebellaeric (with a voice over from the legendary DJ Alfredo) to the ten minute blissed out feel of Jezeblue, the album is filled with a laid back, coastal feel. It also has plenty of moments where the tempos rise, the beats get thumpier and the feel is more intense, more dance floor oriented- Swamp Shuffle finds Jezebell leading Byrne, Frantz, Harrison and Weymouth for a dizzying spin under the mirror ball. 

Man 2.0’s Red Shift, remixed by Darren and Jesse as the Jezebell Inner Child Mix, is an electronic maelstrom. Jezebell’s Trading Places (3 PM) is a mid- paced, mid- afternoon warm up, the sound of a few liveners sunk and the head spinning a little. If you’re quick there are a handful of copies of the album left at Bandcamp. 

Jezebell have been at it in real life too- Jesse and Darren played a Jezebell DJ set at The Evil Acid Baron’s Weekender in Devon last weekend and in June Darren and guests host a Jezebell takeover at The Golden Lion in Todmorden. 

Jezebell have a new track out today, a seven minute banger with the self explanatory title Weekend Machines. Described in their own words as a ‘late- night, strobe- lit, smoke- machine, low- ceiling, eyes- closed, spring- loaded, acid house avalanche’ Weekend Machines is a hairpin turn away from the beach and poolside sounds in favour of something darker, thumpier, and more direct, an injection of electricity and intensity- four four drums, definitely machine made, wobbling synth sounds, chugging bass that pushes, acid house mayhem, and a distorted voice that wriggles into the ears and the brain, a voice that ends up repeating one word- ‘machines’. It’s the next step. You can listen to or buy this room- shaker here. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Rheinzand

In the five years they’ve been releasing music Rheinzand have racked up an impressive back catalogue- two albums, a bunch of singles and a slew of remixes (the remix package of tracks from their debut album ran to twenty three- there’s that number again- different remixes by twenty two other artists and one by themselves). Straight outta Ghent, Belgium, the three piece group consist of singer Charlotte Caluwaerts, multi- instrumentalist and producer Reinhard Vanbergen and DJ/ producer Mo Disko. The slick, sleek and irresistible sound they make pulls from house, disco, Balearica, soul, funk and pop, building on dance music’s history while aiming for the future. I love them- you should too. This mix tries to not just feature four- four dancefloor bangers but offer a slightly blurrier, out of focus selection of Rheinzand songs, a little off kilter but with hooks and beats aplenty. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Rheinzand

• We’ll Be Alright (Single Edit)
• Break of Dawn
• Obey (Hardway Bros Live At The SSL Dub)
• Kills And Kisses (Skylab Remix)
• Electrify Me
• Slippery People
• Porque

We’ll Be Alright was a single released in October 2021, a song written as the world emerged from lockdown and released as a point of optimism, a message that things might just be ok. It flutters and dances about, minor piano chords and a rising bassline pushing forwards. Charlotte’s vocal soothes and soars, ‘high tide, low tide, we’ll be alright’. Synths and a sitar float around. We’ll Be Alright is a gently psychedelic pop song- heady stuff at the time and since. 

Break of Dawn was the opening song on their self titled debut, released in March 2020 just as the world began to shut down due to Covid and a record that is among the best of that strange year’s albums. It fades in in a blur of sound and bass, sounding not a million miles from an early 80s Talking Heads offcut, before some slide guitar appears. 

Obey was a 2019 single, remixed by a trio of excellent people- Scorpio Twins, SIRS and Hardway Bros. The Hardway Bros Live At The SSL Dub is a dubby take, the burbling synths and a two note guitar line riding on top of a growing groove, the sinuous bassline always at the centre of things. Sean Johnston is in no rush, as ever, and stretches things out for over eight minutes.

Kills And Kisses was a 2019 single, also like Obey on the debut album. Skylab’s remix was on the mammoth remix package from 2021 along with remixes by the best names in the business- loops, chopped up vocals, thumping rhythms, stop- start sections, head spinning dynamics. 

Electrify Me is a nine minute epic from Rheinzand’s second album, 2022’s  Atlantis Atlantis, a song that sounds like an explosion at a disco factory with Barry White narrating while the tempo speeds up and slows down like the drum machine’s got a mind of its own. 

Slippery People is a cover of the 1984 Talking Heads song, from the 2020 debut album- as good a cover of Talking Heads as any I’ve heard with a distorted buzzing bassline, disco strings and chanted playground vocals. Porque is from that album as well, a gorgeous dance – pop song, Charlotte’s singing of the word ‘porque’ worth the price of the record alone. Porque is Spanish for because, which is as good an explanation of what Rheinzand do as anything else. 

Monday’s Long Song

We went to the cinema on Saturday night to see the re- released print of Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads’ 1984 concert film, directed by Jonathan Demme and showing the nine piece band on fire in Los Angeles at the end of the tour to promote the previous year’s Speaking In Tongues. I first saw it in 1987, bought on VHS and played repeatedly. The re- release doesn’t do anything the earlier one didn’t but seeing it on the big screen and at volume was a total joy. The set up of the film is well known- David Byrne arrives on stage on his own with ghettoblaster and acoustic guitar and plays Psycho Killer. An 808 drum machine kicks in and David plays and sings along. During the instrumental section he staggers about the stage like a man being shot, his wired energy setting the tone for much of the rest. Over the next few songs the band join him one by one, first Tina Weymouth for Heaven, then Chris Frantz and then Jerry Harrison. After that Steve Scales bounds in on percussion, Edna Holt and Lynn Mabry take up their place at the front of the stage next to Byrne on co- vocals and dancing and then guitarist Alex Weir and Bernie Worrell on synths/ keyboards. Once the stage set is built and band are assembled its a full on Talking Heads show, with stunning versions of Slippery People, Making Flippy Floppy, Swamp, Tom Tom Club’s  Genius Of Love (proving Chris and Tina could write hits too) and more. The version of Life During Wartime is absurdly good, the band running on the spot, Byrne circling the stage, running round the drum and keyboard risers three times and arriving back at the mic for his vocal. The sheer exuberance and joy the band exhibit, magnified by the big screen, is brilliant to watch, David Byrne’s choreography and sense of theatre central to the show but not overpowering it- his dance with the lampstand during Naive Melody and the preacher persona performance on Once In A Lifetime are stunning. If you’ve seen Stop Making Sense you’ll remember all of these parts- seeing it all again at the cinema was a blast. Everyone in screen two on Saturday night left with a smile on their face.

Before Stop Making Sense Talking Heads released a double live album, The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads, a two disc chronologically sequenced album drawn from various gigs between 1977 and 1980. In 1980 Talking Heads played Emerald City in New Jersey, the band expanded from the four piece version and heading towards the nine headed monster that would make Stop Making Sense. Houses In Motion is one of the key tracks from 1980 masterpiece Remain In Light, a weird slow motion funk groove and David Byrne’s unique lyrical outlook- ‘For a long time/ I was without style or grace/ Wearing shoes with no socks/ In cold weather…’. 

House In Motion (Live at Emerald City 1980)

Saturday Live

Last week’s Saturday Live slot was Jane’s Addiction in Milan in 1990. This week’s travels ten years back in time and a few hundred miles south to another American band, although one cut from a very different cloth to Jane’s L.A. rock- Talking Heads. 

Talking Heads have recently announced a re- issue package of their legendary 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense. Filmed across three nights, Stop Making Sense blurred the lines between gig and film, a high concept collaboration between David Byrne, Jonathan Demme and the band. The staging, starting out with just Byrne, an acoustic guitar and a ghettoblaster, then the stage being assembled as the group joins Byrne on stage, through to the big suit of the end, was as much part of the film as the music. 

In Rome in 1980 Talking Heads are playing a gig, no elaborate set or extras, just an extraordinary hour of music from the band, already expanded beyond Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison into a six piece band capable of reshaping the Talking Heads studio sounds into a live set. Adrian Belew is on guitar, not quite lead guitar but definitely more than a hired hand- his playing uses feedback, noise and texture as much as anything as ordinary as a solo. Bernie Worrell has joined on keyboards and percussion, bringing the space age Parliament/ Funkadelic groove. Buster Cherry Jones is on bass (along with Tina) and backing singer Dolette McDonald is one of several voices along with Byrne’s own frenetic, anxious lead vox. It all looks like they’re having enormous fun, writing the punk- funk rulebook and sending post- punk into a new place. Equally it’s easy to see why Harrison and Weymouth began to feel like side players in their own band. 

The Rome crowd are enthusiastic from the start, a wired, guitar heavy run through Psycho Killer. They follow it with Stay Hungry, from 1978’s More Songs About Buildings And Food, a short song in its recorded version stretch out with an extended instrumental section, Belew’s guitar and Harrison’s keyboards kicking up a storm. From there they play several songs from 1979’s peerless Fear Of Music- Cities, an otherworldly I Zimbra, Drugs and the never-ending, breathless thrills of Life During Wartime. It’s wired, intense, life affirming stuff, confident in itself and knowing this has not been done before. They play their hit, their cover of Al Green’s Take Me To The River. But, the real treat in this gig are the songs from Remain In Light, songs from an album at that point only a few months old. Remain In Light saw the light of day in October. The Rome gig is December. They play Crosseyed And Painless,  Houses In Motion, Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) and The Great Curve. These songs- fully realised, extended grooves, multi- rhythmic Afro- funk crossed with New York art rock/ post- punk, the imaginations of Talking Heads and Brian Eno running wild- played live by a group at the peak of their powers. There’s no touring fatigue, no boredom with playing the hits every night, no going though the motions. Belew adds a whole new palette of guitar sounds and the danceable grooves brought by the extended line up are irresistible. Everyone switches across mics and instruments, cowbells are picked up and hit, shakers are shaken. When the gig moves towards the finale, we get a double header punch. Born Under Punches has a long intro, Belew manipulating his amp’s feedback as the band stoke the groove and then Byrne slides in, ‘Take a look at these hands…’, Dolette crooning with him, twin basses providing a huge low end wallop. After the slow burn, intense funk noir of Born Under Punches they launch into the joyous and ecstatic The Great Curve, a jerky, amped up stream of consciousness with heavily distorted guitar playing from Belew and Afro- funk rhythms. The Romans are appropriately appreciative. 

Fate’s Faithful Punchline

A few weeks ago Nina Walsh rediscovered and shared a YouTube playlist made my Andrew Weatherall when he and Nina were doing Moine Dubh (the record label they formed to put out weird, off kilter folk music based in Crystal Palace). Nina said Andrew often forgot his usernames and passwords for YouTube and was constantly having to create new accounts- it’s nice to know that’s something that affects top DJs and producers as well as the rest of us. The playlist, Dubh Drops, is here and features an array of acts including Cheval Sombre, The Shadow Project, Hungry Ghosts, Amanda Palmer and Edward Ka- Spel, The Black Ryder, Dean Wareham, Rose City Band, The Carpenters and Negative Lovers. It also includes this gem by The Legendary Pink Dots…

Fate’s Faithful Punchline

Led by finger picked acoustic guitar and Edward Ka- Spel’s echo- drenched voice and eventually some strings, Fate’s Faithful Punchline is moving, gorgeous and elegiac psychedelic folk. The Legendary Pink Dots are an Anglo- Dutch group, formed in London in 1980 and have since then released forty- seven albums, twenty- six live albums and forty- eight  compilations. And you thought The Fall were prolific. 

I included Fate’s Faithful Punchline on my latest mix for Tak Tent Radio which went live at the weekend, an hour of songs that you can listen to here at Tak Tent or here at Mixcloud. Andrew Weatherall’s fingerprints are to be found elsewhere in the mix in the form of his remix of The Impossibles from 1991 and a Beth Orton song he produced that was a B-side on the Someone’s Daughter CD single. 

• Alex Kassian: Spirit Of Eden
• Martin Duffy: Promenading
• Eden Ahbez: Full Moon
• 10:40: Ninety- Now
• Coyote: Nothing Rests
• David Holmes: No- One Is Smarter Than History
• Gal Costa: Baby
• The Impossibles: The Drum (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• A Certain Ratio: Houses In Motion (Version 1)
• Ultramarine: Stella
• Beth Orton: It’s This I Find I Am
• Legendary Pink Dots: Fate’s Faithful Punchline

Heaven

Heaven, it turns out, is situated on a side street in Magaluf. This may be news to the major religions of the world. The entrance seems to be more of a roller shutter too than the promised pearly gates but it’s nice to have these things cleared up. There are loads of heavens in music- according to Belinda Carlisle it’s a place on earth and standing in front of this venue last week I was inclined to agree. Back in 1987 I’d rather have poked my eyes out with forks than admitted liking this song but thankfully now I’m older I can come clean….

Heaven according to David Byrne, is a place where nothing ever happens, where the band play your favourite song, all night long and where ‘it’s hard to imagine/ that nothing at all/ could be so exciting/ could so much fun’. Talking Heads sound effortlessly sublime on this song, the sweetest moment their most bewilderingly brilliant album, a record that doesn’t have any kind of weak spot, has some seriously deranged moments and sounds like the feverish work of a group of musicians at their absolute peak. 

Heaven

In 1981, two years after Talking Heads released Fear Of Music, Echo And The Bunnymen released arguably their best album, Heaven Up Here. The title track is a dark, frenetic, urgent piece of post- punk, the band flailing around and moving rapidly, all scratchy guitar and thumping drums. Ian sings of empty pockets and being unable to afford beer. ‘The apple cart upset my head’s little brain’, he complains before settling on giving up the whiskey for tequila. The centre section, ‘groovy groovy people’ he sings, ‘we’re all groovy groovy people’ is exhilarating, a rush, and then it’s back to the main riff and Ian’s found somewhere for the Bunnymen- ‘it may be hell down there/ But it’s heaven up here’. There’s more rapid fire words, more drums and then a sudden dead stop.

Heaven Up Here

Is There Anybody Out There?

For sheer joy and exuberance in the pleasure of making uptempo music with new technology that allows non- musicians to experience the same creativity as musicians Bassheads 1991 single Is There Anybody Out There? is hard to beat. Built around a bunch of samples , the song started life with Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, The Osmonds and Afrika Bambaataa at its centre- not surprisingly some of these had to be interpolated or replayed following legal shenanigans before it was officially released on Deconstruction. 

The rap is a particular joy-

‘What’s this for a ceremony, hanging around?
We got to get down, rock it off on this shaky ground
Come on and spit it out your hearty-party moon everywhere
Let’s see you people laugh at people punching out in the air

Get down to the hiphop be-bop-a-lula
You get a sound that is all coming to ya
I wanna get ya, I wanna teach ya
I’m gonna get this beat to hit ya!’

Is There Anybody Out There? (Extended)

In November 1991 the duo, brothers Nick and Desa Murphy from Neston on the Wirral, rounded up some mates and performed the song on Top Of The Pops when it went top ten- in another edition of Top Of The Pops that was rave heaven Bassheads appeared alongside Bizarre Inc. and Love Decade (and the previous week the video was played on an episode with Rozalla and the mighty Altern- 8.