Austin’s Black Angels are currently on tour, and, on Sunday, mr. and mrs. kamper will embark in our motorcar to the distant city of Boston, Commonwealth of Massachusetts to enjoy a live revue from this pop combo. We are frightfully excited to finally experience for ourselves this new thing the kids today are calling the ‘rock and roll.’ It’s been a long while indeed since the two of us ‘cut the rug’ at one of these vaudevillian cabarets, I do so hope we won’t stick out amongst the ruffians and scallawags known to frequent such speakeasies. I presume that a frock coat with silk-faced lapels, waistcoat, Cashmere striped trousers, ascot, and spats, of course accessorised with a top hat, boutonniere, and white gloves, would be appropriate for such an engagement?
Some months ago, we expressed our profound admiration for the Black Angels by bestowing upon them our highest honor: their very own edition of the Happy Valley Hoedown.
Earlier this week, I shared the odd experience of having heard the Clash in the grocery store (no, it wasn’t “Lost in the Supermarket”). Today, I opened the Wall Street Journal and found this: “Stew, the Tony-Nominated Star of ‘Passing Strange,’ on Albums He Loves.”
Adviser is a regular feature in the Friday Journal — a comic picks his/her favorite comedy albums, a director his/her favorite action films — and the choices are usually pretty darn solid, sometimes predictable, sometimes fairly offbeat, depending on the chooser. But Stew’s list is more offbeat than most. He starts off with Thelonious Monk and the Beatles, no arguments there on any list of favorite albums, and even choice number three, Lou Reed’s Transformer, is a bold choice but still well within the canon. Great albums all. But then Stew steps waaaay off the beaten path with his next two selections: Public Image Ltd.’s Metal Box (1979) and The Fall’s Hex Enduction Hour (1982). Even within the hipster alternoverse, these are highly obscure but very cool choices.
First Metal Box, one of the most notorious albums ever released. Public Image Ltd. was the band that John Lydon formed after the Sex Pistols broke up and he decided he was done making music people might enjoy. Though PiL’s music became more accessible later on, their early stuff (this was their second album) could be, um, challenging. Listen to the sample of “Albatross” on the WSJ site. No, there’s nothing wrong with your speakers. That’s Jah Wobble’s bass line, which has been known to cause heart palpitations among the aged and infirm. And that’s probably the most accessible song on the album. Stew says of Metal Box, “I used to play that record at parties at 3:30 in the morning, and turn the bass up really loud.” Just be grateful you didn’t live in the apartment below. As John Lydon himself says on his website, it wasn’t only the music that was challenging. In its original form, Metal Box consisted of three 45 rpm 12” singles, housed in a metal film canister (it was manufactured by the The Metal Box Company in London’s East End — hence the album title.)
The joke of the thing was that it was impossible to get the records in and out of the container without scratching them all to hell, and this entirely avoidable irritation, along with the dramatic change in musical direction, was John’s subtle way of suggesting to fans what they could do with their expectations of his post-Pistols career. Or as Lydon now admits, “Lets be honest about it, it was a great piece of mischief.” Only 60,000 copies of Metal Box were ever produced, and it was later repackaged into conventional form and released as Second Edition (though Metal Box was rereleased in 2006 in its original metal cannister in case you’d like to spend 50 bucks to scratch it all over again). Metal Box/Second Edition is a throbbing, hypnotic, bloody mash of an album, veering wildly between soaring genius and sheer wankery (and sometimes both at the same time). A perennial favorite.
Below is a clip of Public Image Ltd. doing “Poptones” from Metal Box/Second Edition on the Old Grey Whistle Test. For a true dose of the surreal, check out this clip of PiL doing “Poptones” and “Carreering” on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand on May 17, 1980. This clip was legendary in my circle for many years, a piece of punk samizdat that everyone claimed to have seen but no one actually had (sort of the punk version of having been at Woodstock). Johnny’s utter disdain for the entire proceedings is priceless. Supposedly, Dick Clark later said this was one of his favorite performances from the show.
Now for Hex Enduction Hour. To call The Fall prolific is an understatement — their discography from 1979 to 2007 includes 94 albums, encompassing 27 studio albums as well as live discs and compilations. And that excludes EPs and singles. But Stew obviously knows his Fall, because Hex Enduction Hour holds a place of honor in the Fall pantheon, and is arguably their single best album (though I might make a case for 1985’s This Nation’s Saving Grace or 1986’s Bend Sinister). It’s a ferocious, unrelenting sonic blast of an album, the first recorded with The Fall’s new two-drummer line-up, which injects an urgent, percussive fury into every track. A true classic and easily one of my all-time favorites.
Though perhaps not all would agree. According to one story, Motown Records expressed an interest in signing The Fall in 1984 and asked to hear their back catalogue. Hex Enduction Hour was the only album that Fall leader Mark E. Smith had on hand. The letter the group received back stated, “I see no commercial potential in this band whatsoever.” (Brian Edge, Paintwork, Omnibus Press 1989, p72).
Below is a clip of The Fall doing “Totally Wired,” which is not from Hex but from the same era.
Within the consistently high-larious oeuvre of Flight of the Conchords, “Business Time” gets a lot of deserved attention for its eerily accurate take on married sex, but let us not forget about “Think About It”, their spot-on homage to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.”
Let the Kamper be perfectly clear, so there can be no misunderstanding: The Fleshtones are the funnest live band you will ever see.
I know whereof I speak, as I have partaken of my share of fun bands. So it is with great authority and supreme confidence that I again proclaim: The Fleshtones are the funnest live band you will ever see.
Oh really? you ask. What about the B-52s?
While concurring wholeheartedly that the B-52s are a heck of a lot of fun, I hereby assert that the Fleshtones are even funner.
Okay, you may say, but what about those wacky Go-Gos?
Sure, those gals were fun (especially back when Belinda was still chubby), but the Fleshtones are funner still.
Don’t know the Fleshtones? Well, let’s see, they’re from Hitsburg, New York, they’ve got a song called “Shiney Hiney,” and they play their own patented brand of Superock, which they’ve been doing since 1976!
Just check ‘em out here, ripping up the Kamper’s fave tune.
So ask yourself a question. Are you ready for some Superock?
___ Yes! Sign me up for some Superock with the Fleshtones!
___ No. I prefer my current Superock-less existence, dismal as it may be.
Yeah! Supreme greetings to you, fun-seeking Superock fan! The Kamper has some good news for you, because the Fleshtones are on tour as we speak!! (Actually, the B-52s and the Go-Gos are also on tour right now. What year is this, 1982?)
The Fleshtones will be at Cafe Nine in New Haven, Connecticut on March 6 and at Harper’s Ferry in Boston on March 7. Haven’t decided yet which show I’ll be attending. Other upcoming gigs include Providence, RI; Baton Rouge, LA; San Antonio, TX; Austin, TX; Houston, TX; New Orleans; Buffalo, NY; Cleveland, OH (my hometown); Columbus, OH; and Rochester, NY. Then the ‘Tones jet off for their European tour.
So if you live near any of those towns and you like to have fun, you know what to do! (Hint: see the Fleshtones.)
Steve Wynn fronted the Dream Syndicate, one of my fave bands back from when I was a too-cool-for-school college radio geek in the early eighties. After Dream Syndicate broke up, I lost touch with Steve’s music, and it wasn’t until I saw an article about him a few years ago in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal (shows you how square the Kamper really is, getting music tips from the WSJ), that I decided to check out what Steve’s been doing lately.
Turns out he’s been delivering some fantastic albums, both solo and with his new band, Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3. In 2001, Steven Wynn put out Here Come the Miracles, a dark, sprawling double album that ranks right up there with anything he did with Dream Syndicate. The crime writer George Pelecanos wrote, “Here Come the Miracles is Steve Wynn’s Exile on Main Street, his Zen Arcade, and yeah, his Physical Graffiti. Which is to say that this could be Wynn’s most resonant recording, the one the heads’ll still be listening to ten years from now.” Then, as if that wasn’t enough, Steve followed that one up just two years later with another double album, Static Transmission, and you know what? It was even better than Here Come the Miracles. Two double albums of new material in two years and both of them fantastic? Who else has done that lately? As one reviewer pointed out, if Here Come the Miracles was Steve’s Exile on Main Street, then Static Transmission was his Sticky Fingers, a tighter, more focussed effort, but no less intense or unsettling. In 2005, Steve put out …tick…tick…tick, which is another keeper (though I haven’t delved into it yet like the other two).
So here are a few from Steve Wynn. First up is “What Comes After,” which opens Static Transmission.
Next up is “Amphetamine,” also from Static Transmission. Let me tell you a little story about this song. In January 2005, I caught Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3 along with the Silos (candidates for their own Happy Valley Hoedown down the road) at T.T. the Bear’s in Cambridge, MA. Late in the show, Steve & the band delivered an absolutely blistering version of this tune. The club was pretty empty by this point, but they just cranked up and tore into this thing with everything they had, and I’ve got to say that that it was one of the most furious live performances I’ve ever seen. I didn’t even know the song at the time — I stumbled over to the merchandise table afterwards and told ‘em to give me whatever disc had that song on it. So here it is — surely one of the greatest driving songs of all time.
The moral to the story? Pick up these discs and put some cash in Steve’s pocket, and for heaven’s sake, see him live if you get the chance. So sayeth the Kamper.
The Kamper ventured out into a veritable Winter wonderland Wednesday night to attend a showing of Control, the new biopic of Ian Curtis. For those junior kampers out there who may not be up to speed on their post-punk iconography, Ian was the troubled lead singer of the British band Joy Division. He hung himself in 1980 at 23 years old, having released just one full studio album, Unknown Pleasures, with Joy Division (their second studio album, Closer, was released posthumously). The three remaining members of Joy Division went on to form New Order.
Before we get to the fictional Joy Division, here’s the real thing, from September 1979. That Dylan-looking dude at the beginning of the clip is performance poet John Cooper Clarke, who appears as himself in the film. His website is here, his Wiki page here. Trivia note: those oh-so-bored looking Mods directly in front of the stage (visible at 1:15) presumably were there to see The Jam, who played on the same show.
Good clip, that. The movie, unfortunately, is another story. That’s right, Control did not thrill the Kamper, or his kronies: I saw it with three other people, two of whom are Joy Division fans and two of whom are (or were) unfamiliar with the band. Not one of us enjoyed the movie. The director, Anton Corbijn, is primarily known as a photographer, and it shows. The movie is shot in beautiful black and white but it’s inert, lifeless. A big part of the problem is the source material — Control is based “Touching from a Distance,” a book by Deborah Curtis, Ian’s widow, and she’s listed as a co-producer on the film — so the story focuses primarily on Ian’s teenage marriage to Deborah and its inevitable disintegration as his fame grows. Will Ian remain faithful to his long-suffering wife, who has believed in him from the very beginning, or will he go with the fetching young groupie? Which will it be, Deborah or Annick? Will he choose the safe, conventional life or will he instead kick out the jams?
Here’s your answer: Who cares? I mean, really, who gives a crap? The romantic travails of people in their early twenties are inherently tiresome, and the choice is obvious from the get-go to everyone except Ian and Deborah. It doesn’t help matters that Ian endlessly drags it all out, first cheating with Annick, then pledging his fealty to Deborah and breaking up with Annick, then splitting with Deborah to be with Annick. Hamlet is more decisive than this guy.
But we could look past the domestic angle — we could forgive every agonized late night phone call, every teary confrontation, every hastily scrawled apology note — if only the movie had something, anything, to say about how any of this informed the creative process. How did his personal torment inform Ian’s song writing? What were the sessions like for these seminal recordings? What kind of give and take occurred between the bandmembers? What were the various cliques and factions? How were the songs written? How were they arranged? How did they evolve? For that matter, what’s the deal with the band’s adoption of all its overtly fascistic imagery? You will find the answers to none of these questions in this movie. The actors portraying the various bandmembers enter the studio and play the songs exactly as they appear on the albums. Control has no insight to offer into what made Joy Division unique from the hundreds of other bands gigging around the Greater Manchester metropolitan region circa 1979. I do know from the movie that Ian lay on his bed smoking pensively while listening to David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane and then got up and danced around in front of the mirror, but that’s about it.
Here’s an example of what passes for the creative process in this movie: Ian is sitting on his couch. Ian is trying to write. Ian faces the white page, pen poised. Ian touches pen to paper. He’s writing something! What is it? We glance over his shoulder, voyeurs at the moment of profound artistic creation. Ahh, he has written, “She Lost Control” in block letters. Wow. That’s almost the name of a Joy Division song. But wait, his pen is moving again. Ian has gone back and added an ’s, amending the line to “She’s Lost Control.” Oh my God! That changes everything, because that is the name of a Joy Division song! End of scene.
Particularly galling is the movie’s portrayal of the other members of Joy Division (Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris), who come off as utter ciphers. Based on the evidence in this movie, a viewer would be amazed to learn that the remaining members went on to play in a wedding band, let alone going on to form New Order, one of the most influential bands of their era.
Speaking of New Order, here’s clip of them from BBC Studios in 1984, doing one of the Kamper’s all-time faves. (As a side note: I feel Bernard deserves major props for having the courage to appear in public in these shorts. Give him a break, though, it was the eighties. More puzzling still is why Gillian is wearing a nightgown.)
Another of the film’s curious blindspots is how it treats Martin Hannett, who produced all of Joy Division’s music. I won’t go into his whole CV here (check out his Wiki page here), but suffice it to say that he was largely responsible for Joy Division’s sparse, haunting sound. He’s scarcely present in Control, which is akin to making a film on sixties girl groups and leaving out Phil Specter.
To be fair, it’s not accurate to say that I gained no insight whatsoever from Control. I did learn that Ian was a highly conscientious worker at his day job at the unemployment office. This guy was good at his job! In fact, given how things turned out, he probably should have stuck with the day job and given up on all this rock and roll nonsense.
Ian Kevin Curtis — Unemployment Officer Extraordinaire!
The strangest aspect of Control is how unnecessary it feels. There’s already a terrific film about Joy Division and the Manchester scene during that era, Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People (2002). It focuses on Tony Wilson (founder of Factory Records, Joy Division’s label), played hilariously by Steve Coogan. Check out a clip below. There’s more insight into the band in this four minute clip from 24 Hour Party People than in all of Control’s two plus hours. The clip beautifully captures the fertile but essentially hostile relationship that existed between Martin Hannett and the members of Joy Division. And here’s some trivia for you: Sam Riley, who plays Ian Curtis in Control, played Mark E. Smith, lead singer of The Fall (another great Manchester band) in 24 Hour People, but his scene was cut and only appears in deleted scenes on the DVD.
Being natural born curmudgeons, we here at Happy Valley News Hour are no fans of Christmas music. And the only thing worse than Christmas music is novelty Christmas music — all that ‘Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer’ crap. But our grinchy little hearts grew three sizes when we heard “Mr. Mojo’s Christmas” from the Wise Men.
HVNHers should know that CD singles of “Mr. Mojo’s Christmas are available for $6.99 (shipping included) from H.M. Adams, P.O. Box 17131, Encino, CA 91316 (Checks, money orders payable to H.M Adams). You can contact the Wise Men here.
If novelty Christmas music is your thing (and hey, it’s cool if it is, we’re not judging you or anything, don’t get so defensive), you should mosey on over to Mistletunes. They’ve collected so much novelty Christmas they need to categorize it by decade. Now that’s a lot of Christmas novelty music. It also raises the question of whether, in our current self-referential, meta-, uber-ironic age, there really is any Christmas music anymore that isn’t novelty music. I mean, is anyone writing HTG (honest-to-goodness) Christmas carols anymore?
I’ve been listening obsessively to Austin’s The Black Angels ever since Pandora had the good sense to slip one of their tunes into regular rotation on my station. Thanks Pandora Radio Robot Programmer!
The Black Angels just finished a tour, and I am bummed that I missed them a few weeks ago in Boston. Here are their remaining tour dates. But you’d better hurry (and live in Texas). The first song I ever heard by TBA was “Sniper at the Gates of Heaven,” so that’s the first one I’ve posted.
Next is a lugubrious cover of Iggy’s “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog” from Bonnaroo 2007 in Manchester, TN. This is a staple of their live show. There are cleaner versions of this song around, but this one seemed to capture something essential about seeing them live. This clip comes closest to recreating my experience at most shows I see, from the vantage point to the overheard conversation at the beginning of the clip.
