Category: [Music]

Goddamn it, Chud

I’ve been rewatching some of Pat Finnerty’s stuff lately, so the YT algorithm has been suggesting more, including this one which I somehow had missed before. Not only did it introduce me to “San Quentin” (not a Johnny Cash cover, fortunately), it also introduced me to the even more egregious “Figured You Out“, which just… Christ. So yeah, I just got one but TWO new reasons to despise Nickelback. I don’t usually expect much from a Sunday night, but that’s a lot more than I usually get.

Da ya think I’m fashy?

Via Billy Bragg’s Bluesky:

Whoops. Someone let their inner Morrissey out, didn’t they, Roderick?Indeed, according to someone else responding to the above, this isn’t a new thing…

International Times issue 94, December 17 1970. If Eric Clapton ever sees that, he’ll probably wish he’d said his own piece about Enoch Powell in the underground press where apparently nobody paid much attention to it rather than on stage… though people do seem to have picked up on it since then, from what I can see online, but this is the first I’ve discovered it, it doesn’t seem to be as well known as Clapton’s incident. The whole interview, such as it is, can be found at the IT archive; a slightly curious time capsule in which violence comes up a lot and Rod reckons his own career won’t last much longer, and the Enoch Powell bit is the only part highlighted thus. I assume someone at IT really wanted that to be noticeable… I suppose Rod still gets points for his support of Gaza and Ukraine, but if he thinks Cuntface Farrago would be anything even approximating an improvement to the admittedly kind of awful Starmer Labour, he’s fooling himself, obviously.

Oh not another one

And just a few hours later it’s goodbye Douglas McCarthy from Nitzer Ebb… no word on what took him out, but he was apparently diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver last year so I’m guessing alcohol caught up with him at last. A damn shame, whatever the case. I was shocked to discover he wasn’t even 60 yet; apparently he was just 15 when Nitzer started, so only 18 when the first single came out.

I never saw Nitzer Ebb live, but I gather they saw me; back in 2006 they were one of the main acts at the Under the Blue Moon festival, performing upstairs at Newtown RSL while I was downstairs with the Inflatable Voodoo Dolls… we were part of the DJ lineup, and also we played a short live set (friends of ours were also playing support upstairs that night), and apparently Douglas and Bon came down to witness our semi-musical shenanigans and enjoyed whatever the hell it was we were doing. So there you go. Lift up your hearts:

And, with rather more hair, here he’s guesting with Alan Wilder’s side-project (as it still was at that time) Recoil on a cover of Alex Harvey’s “Faith Healer”:

We believed you, Mr Wilson

News just breaking that Brian Wilson has left the building. Apparently he was diagnosed with dementia last year, as if the poor bastard didn’t have a life full of problems… one of the biggest of which, of course, was Eugene Landy, who I’m glad Brian outlived and achieved things without (wish he could’ve outlived the scumbag Mike Love too, but we can’t have everything, I suppose). Brian lived a more difficult life than most people in the world of pop music, and he’s at rest at last, and I suppose we can be grateful for that for him.

Thanks but no

This was, apparently, a 1983 flyer for Pantera when they were still glam:

Yeah, there comes a time when “the 80s were like that” ceases to be an excuse. I understand why they’d rather write their 80s period out of their history than be forced to relive Rex Brown’s hair from that time. They used to get played a fair bit on Triple J in the 90s after Phil Anselmo replaced Terry Glaze, but I never particularly liked them then or now and was even less enticed by their earlier glam metal incarnation… but seeing the above flyer for some reason enticed me to finally give Metal Magic a listen for the first time…

None of Pantera’s early albums had good art, but the first one was uniquely cursed…

…and it was… okay? I mean, I hesitate to call it good, but it was mostly tolerable, not as actively terrible as I’d expected it to be, one or two actually tracks actually kind of cut the mustard… just not especially distinctive in any way, which I suppose isn’t too surprising given all of them were still in their teens at that point, Vinnie Paul was only 16 when this was recorded and was a major asset even then… So yeah, that was OK. Mind you, when I do want the best in headbangin’ kick-arse rock’n’roll, I still don’t think I’ll be turning to Pantera as my first choice…

Dub housing?

I’ve been listening to this tune a fair bit lately:

“Invasion” by King Tubby from 1975’s Dub From the Roots. You may agree with me that this thing starts off in quite striking fashion with that synth sequencer thing going off, and what it initially put me in mind of the music from Joe D’Amato’s film Anthropophagous (WARNING! You will see scenes from a Joe D’Amato movie):

But it’s clearly not actually that despute the similar skittering synth bass noises, and in any case the record predated that film by about five years. And so, in order to satisfy my own infernal curiosity because I am cursed to want to know about these things, I decided to try and find out more even though I suspected that might be near impossible…

…though I could’ve been wrong about that. This rather helpfully observes the original is this:

However, as you can see, the version on the B-side here is actually by Augustus Pablo, not Tubby. So I’m guessing Tubby’s version was specifically made for his own LP? What complicated things was checking Discogs for more information, which turned up a single by Jackie Edwards called “Invasion” on which Tubby is credited for the dub, but it’s not the same as the one on the album… but whatever. That just left the mystery of the “title card sequence”…

…which, implausibly but evidently, is THIS thing, a “special report” by CBS News from 1967 about homes of the future and what 1967 thought 2001 would look like. Apparently they thought computers would be common by then. That synth thing or whatever it is must’ve seemed suitably “futuristic” to serve as the opening titles music; what I wonder now is, was it conjured up specifically for the program or was it library stock? And none of this explains how Tubby got his hands on it or why, but I may have to leave that mystery unanswered… at any rate, there are a few other tracks on that album deploying these “sci-fi” sounds, so it wasn’t just “Invasion” he was being peculiar with.

RIP Mr Stewart

Sly Stone, pioneering funk and soul musician, dies aged 82

Sly Stone, the American musician who lit up generations of dancefloors with his gloriously funky and often socially conscious songwriting, has died aged 82.
“After a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues, Sly passed away peacefully, surrounded by his three children, his closest friend and his extended family,” a family statement reads. “While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come.” […]
Among those paying tribute to Stone was musician Questlove, whose documentary about Stone, Sly Lives!, was release earliest this year. “From the moment his music reached me in the early 1970s, it became a part of my soul,” he wrote on Instagram. “Sly was a giant — not just for his groundbreaking work with the Family Stone, but for the radical inclusivity and deep human truths he poured into every note … His work looked straight at the brightest and darkest parts of life and demanded we do the same.”

I’ve got to say, the timing of this news is kind of hilarious, given that it comes only a few months after Sly Lives!, the title of which was supposedly a dig at people who, understandably, could’ve sworn the artist formerly known as Sylvester Stewart had in fact ceased to be with us many years ago. Well, he’s definitely not now… The amazing thing about him dying now, of course, is that somehow he lived long enough to do so; given the amount of drugs he was hoovering up during the 70s (which I suspect contributed to at least some of those undefined “underlying health issues”), I’m surprised he made it out of the decade, never mind this far into this one. The band itself was probably doomed to a short life, especially once the drugs took over, but that was a mightily bright flare-up while it lasted… by way of an example, here they are on TV in 1968 before things started to go downhill:

Hope I die before… oh. Fuck.

Pete Townshend in flight

Happy 80th birthday to the artist occasionally known as Bijou Drains! What a shame Pete had to spoil his big day by announcing that Zak Starkey had been fired again from The Who’s drum seat, just a month after they sacked him then rehired him a few days later… there was something really odd about that situation, but I never bothered writing about it cos once they rehired Zak that seemed to be the end of it. Clearly there’s been more “communication issues” than Pete was letting on. Zak is evidently and understandably kind of pissed; having been their drummer for nearly 30 years—much longer than the band had been around before their initial split in 1983—and then being let go so close to the end of their apparent last tour, he’s entitled to be. Still, happy birthday to Pete in spite of all that; 80 is a respectable age for anyone to achieve, but especially in his line of business. And in a way it’s kind of reassuring to know The Who is still as dysfunctional as it was 60 years ago…