THE MODERN LOVERS @ 50

"One two three for five six!" Bam bam bam! And we're into the iconic sleeper that punk bands would be putting into their practices for decades. Road Runner tells you almost everything you need to know about this record: the garage rock slam, the fewer the chords the better, the sing talk vocals and the relentless progression forward. You hear the whole band and above it Jonathon Richmond's idiosyncratic vocals, goofy here, poignant there, occasionally stinging. It's a song about personal freedom but also about getting your driver's licence, slamming in a car and driving anywhere, connecting, feeling the modern world like the breeze through the window.

This band began in high school but Jonathon Richman was already a veteran. He'd been touing his stuff on stages since 1967, supporting the Velvet Underground and hanging with them. By the time this recording was made, its songs were crafted and ready, not so perfect that they rode on prepared parts but not so loose as to get jammy and ditch form. The music is appreciably a band effort and can get a little wayward but by this stage it's down to Richman's control over the various personae he adopts. These characters guide the songs.

Astral Plane is a horny teenager slyly telling the girl who won't sleep with him that he'll see her on the mystical setting of the title. It's done in a kind of jazz age snap, two four and be there. Old world has future Talking Head Jerry Harrison shine on organ. He loves the '50s apartment house in the 1970s sun, he loves the secret knowledge of the past and the young man he is now. 

This album is made from demos, partially produced by Velvet alumnus John Cale. The debt is there in the simple chords and clean tone of the rhythm guitar. The first distortion is on the wandering lead break in Pablo Picasso, a lament in envy of the artist's power over women. No one ever called Pablo Picasso an asshole. It plays on a single chord and Richman's vocal stands on the footpath watching as the master of seduction (be he Picasso himself or any alpha scenester leering around the town).  End of side one.

She Cracked drives on beeping guitars and restless rhythm section beating forward as Richman tells us about a girl who seems chaotic to him but he likes it. He loves, he hates, she eats garbage while he tucks into health food. She's big with the students and it makes him feel inadequate. "She cracked, I'm sad but I won't..." The shouted chorus could be from 1967 or the 1977 to come. Punk before its time.

Then there's Hospital. "When you get out of the hospital let me back into your life. I can't stand what you do. I'm in love with your eyes." Slow descending chords on the organ sound like church. It always sounds to me like the boy from I'm Straight made his move and it ended in disaster. Now, he waits outside the singles bars she goes to, incel to stalker. "I can't stand what you do, sometimes I can't stand you. It makes me think about me, how I'm involved with you," he says in a rush and then, more quietly, "but I'm in love with this power that shows through in your eyes." He's never said any of this to her. When she does get out of hospital the only contact between them will probably be confined to visual, all those eyes, tear stained or worthy of obsession, and it will frustrate. It's not all droolingly superficial; he does think of her, how she would met the world as a young girl with wonder and, though the line is joking it's also scarifying, he goes to bakeries from a lack of sweetness in his life. Have you ever been this controlled by obsession? You have if you lived through the years fifteen to twenty. If you were dirven to poetry it would not have been this clear-eyed and empathetic. He's not puffing himself up, pretending his crises are two sided, he's admitting he has no power to change this and that any attempt at concilliation is doomed. It will ony mean more pain. The power that shows through in her eyes will only be directed toward him in self defence. The wrong person went to hospital. The slow circles of the chord progression roll on.

Someone I Care About is the kind of Kinks track that every garage band in the land tried out. He doesn't just want sex, he wants someone he cares about, ending the riff on the seventh with the cry, "alright, gentlemen". Three and a half minutes of exhilaration. Girlfriend's end of the party slumping slow rock. Richman himself sounds end of night. He walks into the gallery and looks at the art. He goes to the baseball stadium and feels the awe of the game. Both things let him understand the majesty of a girlfriend.

Modern World is all hand claps and spiky seventh riffing, distorted organ solo, call and response choruses and more Jonathan siging abou the girlfriend he needs. He likes the modern world because it's not as bad as all the students go on about. He likes it all. He's the same guy in the car with the radio on in Road Runner. Full circle.

This album sits by itself. I don't mean that it isn't as derivative as any record by a bunch of adolescent will be. I mean the derivations are just not important. Yes, I can hear the Velvet Underground in these grooves along with half of what went on Nuggets. I can hear Television, Talking Heads and a world of late '70s punk, as well. What I don't hear is the unpolished nihilism of a band that didn't quite fit into anything when it was recorded and didn't on its release years later.

The tracks were recorded and finished by 1972 but the LP didn't come out until 1976. It's a blend of sessions, remixed from the source tapes. Jerry Harrison donated his tape of Hospital. He was already in Talking Heads by then but happy to help. By then, the Modern Lovers no longer existed beyond this, their only official platter. By 1974, after a failure to turn these recordings into an album and a lot of internal unrest, the band dissolved, leaving Jonathan Richman to go it alone which he is doing to this day. So, why bring the thing out at all?

Well, this reminds me of a case from decades later and in a different medium. Tarsem Singh's film The Fall, a fantasy about the wonders of storytelling and the imagination comparable to The Princess Bride, contains some of the most arresting visuals you are likely to see but is held up by decent writing and performances that are pitch perfect. On its release in 2006 it did some festival business but stiffed whenever it was offered to everyday cinema audiences. Why? Because it's a hard sell. The international images are breathtaking, the humour works and the balance between it and the more serious concerns also works. But. There are character deaths, animal harm, some convincing gore and a central motivation of self harm. This is a kids movie that can't be shown to kids. 

The Modern Lovers wasn't very 1972 at all. It had strong songs that could rouse or provoke thought. The music was engaging all through. Richman's personality carried every track. But it just wasn't The Faces or Blood Sweat and Tears or Humble Pie or Led Zeppelin or Don McLean or Carol King or ... I could do this all day. If it had been released when the New York scene bands were springing up, it would have been one of the few records of that tribe that had a chance at hitting. But by that stage it was another seminal stack, one of the records everyone had and then other people wanted to sound just like it. It was hard to sell stalking and venerality that wasn't cock rock in the early '70s. 

Jonathan Richman's teenagers weren't Bruce Springsteen's, David Bowie's or even Alice Coopers. They had no glamour, no class or bravado, they were losers. By 1976 when it did get released, disco was young and appropriately mindless, love songs sounded like Boston. Over the pond, the stirrings of the so to be infamous snarls and walls of power that would be British punk were making room in the crowd for the likes of this record but it was and remains a personal discovery. People then and since hear the goofiness of Road Runner and think they're in for a bubblegum Velvet Underground. They probably give up after Pablo Picasso.

This record can be unlovely on first listen. It needs to be lived with, listened to while walking or doing the dishes so the spiky bits normalise and you start to hear what Richman is talking about. When the cute songs become one with the Hospitals and She Crackeds it sounds like a whole deal. Not bad for a record made in shifts months and even years apart. The CD releases are all good and include extra tracks that feel right like I'm Straight and Dignified and Old. Finally, an augmented record that improves on the original. If you come across this version, fine. If you come across the original version, fine. Just commit to a few times with it. You'll keep it because it'll keep you.

Listening notes: For this article I listened to thevery clean and full mastering at CD resolution from a legit retail online shop. It's the best I've heard it.

My 1985

View from my balcony at Bangalla St Auchenflower, taken 1985

In January I boarded the Sunlander to Brisbane for the last time. I didn't mark the occasion with any particular note as I didn't realise that the rail service would be retired and I wouldn't set foot in Townsville again for almost four decades. I tried not to think of the reduced purpose there was of my staying in the Auchenflower place or even Brisbane. I felt directionless. No uni, no band. Things were going to change.

Everyone had moved out except my brother who didn't bother with the rent any longer as he had no justification and knew I could just move out. He hadn't stopped being a dick. That was for life. The quieter house felt good in that it was peaceful but also empty. Everyone else had moved out to get away from Stephen. Fair enough.

I kept writing the book and tried to keep in touch with the people I knew at Uni. I kept writing songs though I had no idea what I'd do with them.

Over the next months, my parents would come down to work on the house and be somewhere else. I think both had retired and were wondering if they wanted to sell the place or even move into it. It worried me. I was still kicking the can down the road. Dad would get to work on the things that needed attention. I woke to the thunder of his hammer on the roof. He replaced the boring white door with a carved one and fixed the wobbly front steps and everything that could got painted. I did the balcony outside my room.

The songs I'd written were burning a hole in my creative pockets. I went to the cinema one evening and Greg spotted me from the street. After catching up I asked him if he'd be into helping out with them. He was keen. We practiced a few and organised with Pat Ridgewell to use his 4-track reel to reel studio under his house in Taringa. They worked as well as they were going to and we took tapes away. 

Margot came over one day and announced she was moving to Melbourne for a job at Latrobe Uni. Would I be interested in starting a share house with her? Dad stepped up his hints about how intolerable life at number 24 was going to get including me giving up my room. I had to move out somewhere. Melbourne sounded great so, after a lot less dithering in the conversation, I said yes and, after she left, I started planning it.

I bought three teachests through the Trading Post and filled them with books and everything else I was taking. (check diaries for dates)

As to music, I still listened to 4ZZZ and 4EB. I kept up with whatever TV brought news (Rockarena was a favourite) but I felt a decreasing affinity with what was appearing on them. I noted REM but was puzzled as to The Smiths' popularity (still am). A vein of electronic music was thickening and heating to enter the culture but it left me cold. At twenty-three, I was feeling old. I was listening to the songs I'd done at Pat's place as though they were golden oldies.

Then again there were some songs to note.

Live it Up had Mental as Anything joining the OzRock battalions, crossing lines that didn't seem visible anymore. Would I Lie to You continued Eurhytmics' regugitation of Sweet Dreams. Walking on Sunshine sounded like it came from the late '70s. Like a Virgin and 1999 proved I was right in my indifference to both Prince and Madonna. She Sells Sanctuary did sound good with its big riff and old school rock vocals. In Between Days made the Cure sound like New Order and I didn't get why. Nick Cave's Tupelo was intriguing but not played enough. Echo and the Bunnymen brought out no albums but the great single (especially as a 12 inch) in Bring on the Dancing Horses. Talking Heads seemed like they were just being absorbed by the mainstream with things like Road to Nowhere. Simple Minds did someone else's song for a movie and it was a stunner (Don't You Forget About Me). We Are The World was a lousy song in comparision to the U.K. one for the same cause but it was easier to sing the chorus and got to more people. I started watching Live Aid but woke up when it was over. Remember that crack about The Smiths? I did like How Soon is Now. Bittersweet was the Hoodoo Gurus best. 

Dire Straights did an oafish song called Money for Nothing and I have cause to recall it. I was, by September, ready to the trek south to Melbourne. I called my father who was happy for me, venturing away from the family dependency. When I asked him for money he made the usual noises about having none but asked how much. I said $500. He laughed warmly and told me how to take receipt of it through the bank. I knew I should have asked for more.

The bus left frorm Queen St. Stephen and a few of the people form the '84 house saw me off. And off I was. The bus took over a day to reach Melbourne and that's how long I had to listen to the first two tracks of the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms which begins with Money for Fucking Nothing. Two yobbos who spoke in grunts and mumbles in the seat in front of me were the perps. They even mentioned that they were headed for North Melbourne which is where my friend James lived. I lived a few uneasy hours imagining them seeing me on the street. I hate those two songs to this day.

But then we crossed the Victorian border and charged along to the outskirts. The city's older look beguiled me adn I couldn't stop beaming. Finally, we taxied into the terminal in a massive spring downpour. James appeared at my shoulder as I got my luggage. We embraced and he drove me to his place where I'd be staying for a while as Margot and I went house hunting on the weekends. He reminded me that I owed him a bottle of bourbon which we picked on the way. We drank. A lot. And at one point we walked to Carlton where I had my first Melbourne coffee. It was cold and rainy and it felt like a city. I was home.

THE BEATLES' RUBBER SOUL @ 60

The sharp treble of the opening riff of this album tells us about the album we're about to hear. Cheeky bluesy bends lead into a loping circular riff on the guitars and bass. The vocals are strict parallel fifths and resist easy identification of which of your favourite Beatles is singing. This is a proto-funk workout and you're being asked to dance as sleazily to it as you can. The chorus brings in more swagger with a piano filling in with a rise and fall to and from a seventh. A boy is told by a girl that she wants to be a movie star and the quickest he can get is to offer to be her chauffeur. She accepts, even though, in the killer final verse, that she doesn't even have a car. Across the decades, that's still funny.

But while it's not what you would call a career change into comedy, it fulfils the notion growing in the culture that an album can be a multifaceted statement from performers who could do the lot. The Beach Boys had already released their Party! album, a set of covers (including Beatle songs) with chatter and laughter flown in during the mix. Drive My Car isn't quite that but it was pointing to something that they had an increasing lean toward: variety. It was a Fabs song, no question, but its "beep beep yeah" ultrapop harmonies were both moderne and showbiz.

Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) changes things immediately with a gentle acoustic strum and a beguiling melody which Lennon then obliges by singing. "I once had a girl or should I say she once had me." I wonder what the contemporary listener made of the strange bright twanging of George Harrison's sitar as it echoed Lennon's vocal lines. The lyric, like the previous one, is a narrative. He wanders home with a woman from a club or a party, they drink wine and chat until the morning but she makes it clear that he's not welcome in her bed. The next morning he burns the fancy wood of the title to burn the place down. It's not quite the joke of Drive My Car and its subtlety is snide. It took a schoolfriend of mine to suggest the meaning of the last line before anything like it occured to me.

You Won't See Me Feels different from anything earlier. The piano and organ are pushed forward and rhythmic and the guitars are small scratchy bites in the distance. A very active bass holds the ballast as the chords go up the stairs, back down and back up with a sturdy forward motion. The song also speeds up as it goes along. It's a Paul song, one of his disgruntled boyfriend numbers (The Night Before, Another Girl etc.) but it moves like a gleaming diary. It's melodic, cool, bright with doowop harmonies but he's telling her to act her age. It's meant as a quirk-of-love number but just comes across as a report by a contractor. It might be softer in texture and more cuddly but really, it's not that far from what Gang of Four made of the same theme.

Nowhere Man starts with three-part harmony. They would die before the admission but it's an approach for more expected of The Hollies (more on them in a bit) with the vocals pressed into glittering light as chords. John's bright lament speaks of a man without purpose or form, a hollow vessel. Lennon claimed this as a self-description but it could easily apply to any of the bright young things they collided with in Swinging London Clubland. He understands this all too well and appends, "isn't he a bit like you and me?" The middle eight sees the vocals bifurcate between Lennon's gentle croon and the others applying more of the doowop goodness. The guitar solo is actually a dual attack, two of the new Stratocasters with as much treble as was permitted by the International Ear Safety Commission as Lennon's and Harrison's guitars, already on the piercing bridge pickups were put through several channels in series to defeat everything under 1khz and advance everything above. I'm guessing about that but if you know the song, you know. The beautiful arpeggiated figure ends on a triplet down to the lowest G and is capped a silver bell like harmonic, one of the gentler innovations by the band. The final repeated line of, "making all his nowhere plans for nobody" is topped by MacCartney way above everyone. Ten years later, Queen would sign their names to this approach.

George had two numbers on Help and he has two here but there's a difference. While the Help songs are fine examples of mid-'60s they pretty much just take their place on their sides. Rubber Soul was already proving to be a major shift and the third songwriter needed more to compete with. His first was this, Think For Yourself. A thick fuzzbass leads chromatically from G to Am. Dm to Bb and so on. George didn't know the rules and just threw the chords together because they sounded good that way. It's why his debut Don't Bother Me is more lively and driven than either of the Help songs which were written more conventionally. Think For Yourself seems to constantly change its footing yet stays solid. The chorus ("do what you wanna do ...") has a James Bond ring to it and punches home the message to do what it says in the title instead of flailing into destruction. If You Won't See Me was coldly bitchy, this is brutal. George's droning solo vocal set in bright harmony backing helps the medicine go down.

The Word is more contemporary funk with a more controlled but still complicated guitar/bass figure than Drive My Car. A falsetto harmony tells us to hear the word that's so fine, it's sunshine, it's the word love. Lennon's solo verses sound like confessions of life before and after knowing the word before the others come in. While I can appreciate the proto hippy message, and the music which is sublime, this always sounds like a commercial to me. I never skip it but I never play it for its own sake.

Michelle rounds off side one with a thick Eurovision croon from Paul that, with his characteristic deft handling of minor chords, has a beguiling dusk by the sea romance to it rather than the IloveYouloveEverybody'sTruelove boy girl songs they made themselves famous with. It features a curly guitar solo with the tone knob all the way to zero for a continental jazzy touch. I'm saying all this but the thing is beautiful.

Side two opens with the Ringo number. As with the cover version of Act Naturally on Help, this original (Lennon, McCartney and Starkey who said he contributed about five words) has a pop country flavour. Big bright harmony choruses with solo vocal verses and a few downmixed asides to help the hoedown gallop. It's ok. 

Girl, on the other hand, isn't ok. Musically, it's outstanding: finely honed progressions and light strumming with a slow folk feel as Lennon recounts his tale of unrequited devotion. The middle eight shifts up a few steps with an intense minor passage as the backing vocals sing the word tit rythmically in falsetto. The chorus of, "ah girl," is puctuated with the kind of loud inhalations that would have otherwise been edited from the mix. They sound like long tokes by a broken lover telling his lot. Surprising us with a kind of Greek folk passage at the end of dual guitars plucked like bozoukis that takes us far further in thatn we expected to go before lightening back up for the chorus to fade.

I'm Looking Through You is another Paul as aggrieved boyfriend but this time it's a jaunty folksy number that screams into mid-decade pop for the chorus. Ringo reputedly taps on a matchbox for the rhythm. The trebly guitar from most of the rest of the album is back. A middle eight sounds like Paul doing folk the way he did bluegrass in I've Just Seen a Face. It's songs like this, though, that, as they push the band forward through contemporary pop to heights, where it's important to recall that these songs were penned by twenty-somethings whose burgeoning control of their lives could get shirtfronted by their still developing emotions. "And you're down there!" screams Paul.

In My Life is one of the most poignant Beatles songs. So many of the tricks of the trade the writers had so far amassed are here including perfect placement of minor to major juxtapositions so that they just sound natural rather than overly dramatic, judicious use of harmony vocal and double tracked solo lines. For such an aching and gentle song it's suprising to hear only electric guitars and played so sparsely and exactly. George Martin's celebrated faux Elizabethan solo (achieved by playing at one speed and inserting it at another)  charms wihout effort and the repeated  guitar figure that plays with the translucent thirds is gorgeous. Is this a young person projecting himself into age or just one discovering a premature nostalgia? On the surface it's a love song that lists the treasures of memory as little compared to his current love. This works prefectly well but there's a lurking doubt working. Lennon's final bare falsetto of the refrain can send shivers. 

Wait is a leftover from the Help sessions and added as filler. It's fine with a lot of good volume pedal, harmonies and guitar rtones but its stop/start structure still bothers me. It feels like it never quite takes off.

George's second serving, If I Needed Somone, is a shimmering display of harmony and the last whole song 12 string showcase he would present. He happily confessed that he adapted the main riff from The Byrd's Bells of Rhymney but after the opening few notes the two figure diverge. The song is George solo for standout lines but mostly the same kind of tight and bright harmonies we've been getting this outing. Lyrically it's like a nice version of Don't Bother Me, assuring the girl he'll let her know and first if he ever finds himself lonely and miserable. I wouldn't buy that either but it does at least have thering of honesty. (The Hollies released this as a single the same day as Rubber Soul was released. It charted respectably but George, while accepting the first charting of any song he wrote, and the royalties that followed, called the recording rubbish, as though done by session musicians. A public spat ensued. It's a fine recording of an arrangement near identical to the one here.)

Last and worst is John's Run For Your Life, one of the many from his Beatles catalogue that he largely disowned. You can hear why. An aggressive acoustic strum is joined by the band (including a riff on that wicked Strat bridge pickup). It's a great folk rock groove. But then the words kick in. "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man..." This line is lifted from the rock standard Baby Let's Play House, recorded by Elvis and Buddy Holly, but the rest of it is Lennon playing around with that notion and just going on. The chorus makes the threat of murder sound like a sea shanty. It even got to me as a fifteen year old when I heard it. My head shot up as its violence rolled on. I made up a persona for the narrator. That helped. It was hard to relate the singer of In My Life with this psycho. Even to the fade and the end of the album where he's riffing on the word now, it's a committed act. 

I first heard this courtesy of my sister's boyfriend back in the mid-'70s. Before it, I'd heard all the later albums and had a few compilations of the earlier material. This was the first opportunity to hear all the songs I knew in context with all those I hadn't heard. I listened through headphones while my family were watching the Saturday movie on TV. I looked into the strange warped image of the band on the cover, stretched, a forest behind them and the joke title in big, orange, boopy '60s lettering. The faces are confident, four young blokes on top of the world. That's what the record sounded like, too.

I wondered, if I was ever going to be a rock star if I'd have the opportunity to make a statement like this: I've arrived, take this. The music was a mix of instantly appealing pop with glittering harmonies and arrangements that breathed with jangling electricity and warm timber surfaces. The songs were either about slight things or jokes, or very deep issues with one song after another feeling like a statement. Then a Vox organ stab and fiddly treble guitar lick would come in and it would again just sound like pop from the '60s.

Later, when I had all the initial sequence of studio albums I was able to make a comparison. There is a clear line of development and dare on the timeline. Then when the bigger sounding songs from Help give way to these if feels like all the others were public prototypes. It would be another year or so until I heard its successor (now that I think of it) which immediately won me over. If Rubber Soul is Revolver's younvger, callow self, it yet is a couple of sides of engagement that, heard, are not forgotten. And if Revolver made me think of a dark and alluring movie, Rubber Soul feels like the makers of great pop songs who had more than an hour to spare to do something more with the routine. Of all that came before, this one is the first that seems like a latest album. There were no singles in the U.K. from it but they did bring out the mighty double-A Day Tripper and We Can Work it Out. I have to work hard to imagine what it felt like to hear this and wonder what would follow.

Listening notes: I chose the version on the Mono box set as it sounds the most like the one I first heard and is the mix that the band themselves approved. The sound on the CD is stellar. Also, this brings me to the end of Beatles blogs as I've come full circle, staring with Revolver in 2016, picking up Please Please Me on in 2023. Now I'm here. It's been invigorating considering these records again after letting them get so familiar. I'd reommend it.

FAD GADGET'S FIRESIDE FAVOURITES @ 45

Fad Gadget was Frank Tovey. Fad Gadget looked like a band live or on the liner notes of LPs but all of it came out of Frank's mind and vision. This wasn't unusual in the days of the bur between band or core of acts like The The or Soft Cell who were centred around single thinkers or performers. Visage used the medium of the music video (which was NOT invented by MTV!) to present less a group or solo artist than an entity composed of a team. Frank fitted into that milieu unremarkably, chugging out the vinyl and busily getting on stage with a mix of live music and performance art. But while we know Soft Cell for Tainted Love and Visage for Fade to Grey, and we might remember Throbbing Gristle as an attitude and a stunt approach to live performance, but Fad Gadget always take a few thoughts past the name.

That's not the fault of the work on the records. Fireside Favourites bristles and grooves with electronica that sounds of its time and the songs themselves are a strong blend of punk sneer and the starker kind of thinking then emergent of dark commentary. Really, if you want a good bingo card of post punk, you couldn't do better. On that alone, I'd recommend this as a worthy listen. But there is more than that on offrer.

Pedestrian is driven (nyuck nyuck) by a circular riff on a spiky synth snarl. The progress of humanity through its transport is still held back by the need to get around on your feet but those who choose to do that are told to wait at the stoplights or face annihilation. You can dance to this.

State of the Nation has that discoish vaguely Middle Eastern lope. A brooding organ plays under Tovey's dark snarl. "Life begins when you're ready to face it" is a great line but it's virtually buried in an aside.

Salt Lake City Sunday is an unrelenting harang against the religious organisation, rhyming repent with "they want your ten percent" When he comes to rail against the practice of posthumous conversion it's: "Leave my ancestors to rot in their graves." It's important to remember that a lot of the acrid darkness of these electronic doomsters of this time were happy to interrupt their program to take the piss. It didn't diminish the darker meaning even slightly. If anything, it enhanced it by resufing to give in to over-earnest  whinging which would have earned the ridicule of others.

Coitus Interruptus is an unsmiling description of the marketing of sex as a leisure industry set to a robotic backing. and slowly fading with a series of absurdist sexual grunts, barks and bellows under a gothic organ solo.

Fireside Favourites begins with a synth brass swagger that sounds like Shirley Bassey doing a Bond theme backed by Coil. It's all Tom Jones seduction filtered through a deadpan disgust until Frank starts noticing the nuclear holocaust has begun and the pair canoodling in front of the fire are actually burning to ashes from a missle strike. Good times. Good times ...

Newsreel combines drum machine, real bass guitar and screeching keyboards with Tovey's report on media practices getting so intrusive as to insert mics into wounds to record the sound of death. There's more and worse as the precussion breaks down into a fractured march as the news teams and platoons begin to merge.

Insecticide begins with weird distorted cries. A minimal synth backing takes up as Tovey with a wobbling vocal effect recounts the life of an insect in a human home, driven to smashing its own brains out from the human response to it.

The Box is a rewrite of the single Back to Nature is the closest thing on the record to a rock song. Frank's thin vocal describes a premature burial. Is it figurative, though? "Let me out!" in the first verse becomes, "Let us out!"

The Arch of the Aorta is mostly instrumental and is a good contribution to the era's scattered vocal free or mostly vocal free mood masterpieces like The Cure's All Cats Are Grey or Devo's Gut Feeling. It's not clear that Tovey's repetition of the title phrase is looped or just performed. Other voices might be sourced from found material or performed but the gleeful cold against hot melody and voice material approach ticks about three numbers of that bingo card I imagined before. Pure British post punk and loving it.

Some friends in the '80s, looked though my record collection and found the Birthday Party's Junkyard which I was borrowing to tape. It was a few years old but one of them picked it up as though it were a nursery favourite. "We used to clean the house to this," he said with a warm grin. See, I never owned this album either. I knew the name of the act (and assumed it was a band) and would have easily heard a fair few of the tracks played on 4ZZZ. But I wouldn't have heard it at parties. And it makes me wonder how you would have listened back i' the day. In headphones while the family watched the news? Dancing in the lounge of a sharehouse by the light of the bathroom off the hall? Studying? 

It's not that it's bad music, on the contrary, but there's a homogeneity made of the approach to the arragnements and textures and the declarations of the lyrics that pits a dark, dim view without the shouted slogans of a Midnight Oil nor the creaminess of a Dare-era Human League. There are effective ventures into abstract experssion all through but it's not the scarifying tracks of Throbbing Gristle. Beside names such as these, Fad Gadget appears to fade but they shouldn't. It's important to remember how much post punk mixed an elevated professionalism with self-discovered innovation. It got more bizarre and confronting but a lot easier to digest. While Gary Numan was monotoning about cars and androids, Frank Tovey was reading the newspaper back in a voice that didn't let go of you, it's just that his stuff sounded home made, as though he saw something while getting a carton of milk from the shop and rolled the tape the moment he got back in.

So, what do we do with Fad Gadget? His statements were as strong as any of his contemporaries and his approach that gathered found sound as well as picking up on what was then a burgeoning electronica and even with PR manageer wet-dream looks that could have had him as a pin up in a few seconds of exposure, he might have stormed it in. That he seemed easy enough bound in spider web costumes, moving as a mime while the march of the synthesisers droned around him is testament enough that his final bingo number, wsas the thing that set him in his underfame, was that he was in this for the gig, not the acclaim. Maybe that's it, however punk and then post punk we might have got, we still demanded our favourites be popular AND true to themselves. That's human enough but the second part is all we should ever ask. That's what Frank Tovey gave us.

Listening notes: I never had this on vinyl nor even on a cassette dub. As I pieced it together from YouTube clips and then failed to find a hard copy, I bought a download at CD resolution. Audio quality pristine. 

NEW ORDER'S LOW LIFE @ 40

A rapid fire snare intro leads to a full band assault, topped with the same melodica that helped us grind through In a Lonely Place. But the grind has left, replaced with a bouncing energy and sweet lead vocal. The story of the song is the surprise return of a soldier to a wife who's been told he's been killed in action. 

Next is Perfect Kiss. Some deft electronics before the riff bursts in and the story of a self-destructive friend and his tragic end could be about Ian Curtis or the litany of deaths reported from AIDS in the mid-80s. The chorus about believing in a land of love and a land above have a frail religiosity to them, rendering the rest of the tale sombre. The perfect kiss of the title is declared the kiss of death in the final line. This is supported by a structure that goes from a bright dance arrangement in the verses to a more intense chord backing for the choruses and then a passionate rushing chase with the opening riff developed. By this time New Order were releasing their singles on the albums but adding the value of different mixes or even perofmances. The twelve inch single version of Perfect Kiss adds a zoo of extra effects both naturally recorded and electronically created and it extends the rushing conclusion to an orgasmic effect, playing it again and again until a final descent in the bass and a baby's cry. We don't get that here (you can hear it on the Substance album) but the song, even constrained, still yields power.

The video of this song (directed by Jonathon Demme) was presented as the bend playing it in a studio which, right or wrong, was convincing. Around the room there were doors with frosted windows. In one of those a silouhuette of a short haired man was lightly moving to the rhythm. This was widely believed to refer to Ian Curtis, as a tip of the hat by some accounts or an outright ghost caught on camera by others. 

This Time of Night used to be announced by Bernard Sumner at live shows as Pumped Full of Drugs. A strident electro arrangement with a mournful lead vocal by Bernard whose using the lower end of his range. It tells of a destructive relationship wherein the love that began it has dried to a husk and the rest is mechanical routine. The second half of the song, under an insistent keyboard figure, is a lengthy plea from the victim to the abuser to cease but this is couched in a crippling co-dependance. It fades without conclusion.

Sunrise starts with a thick, dark, and slow figure on the synthesiser. Peter Hook's bass riff enters with urgency, bringing the rest of the band in with a galloping rush. Large dramatic chords bring thunder between the verses. The pained lyric tells of an authority who might hear every petition given them but refuses to respond. Is this a path to atheism through personal agony. Perhaps it's another abusive relationship. The cruciality and pace of the teller's frustration continue in the instrumental conclusion, itself ending with a fragmented guitar delay. A whimper not a bang. End of side one.

Elegia is an instrumental that could be a horror movie theme. Minor key arpeggios creep up from the silence. A chorused guitar provides a counter figure. The arrangement thickens and progresses through different expressions of the same ground like a Baroque chiccone. It does outstay its welcome if you're waiting for a vocal but it's a fine side opener on an album dedicated to making grave statements through bright and shining electronics.

Sooner Than You Think is a story from touring. The arrangment is more big electronics and small guitar skirmishes. Is it a road romance gone wrong or, more generally, impressions of the culture and lifestyle of the country being toured? Possibly the least affecting track on the album.

Subculture begins with a beautiful cinematic riff in a harpsichord-like synth voice. Over a Georgio Morroder-style synth bass throb, Bernard coos lines about walking in the dark, talking in his sleep, solitude and social life. "What do I get out of this?" he asks. "I always try. I always miss." This could be the lament of every Joy Division fan who went to a party in the '80s. It's a compelling song that is never allowed to burst into histrionics to sound self-tragic. This was a single, though, and the twelve inch was a massive overproudction of this version with female backing vocals played on a sampler and big instrumental breaks. I like bits of both but, for the honesty in the lyric, I would always prefer this one on the album with its plainer telling. It really does feel like its under the culture.

Face Up crashes in with the kind of blinding brightness that the band would charge into headlong from here onward. In a Lonely Place gets a whole line to itself in this song about about a breakup. "Oh I cannnot bear the thought of you." That line isn't as negating as it first appears. After the disintegration of a relationship the very thought of the other can be agonising while any of the initial love is morphing from passion to torture. The song appropriately ends on a fade and points to the rest of the band's initial career.

To listen to the first few New Order albums is to take a moment wondering how they got from one to the next without a smoother transition. From Movement's Martin Hannet-dominated helming that made it sound like Closer II rather than the new start the band were trying for to the piping melodica at the start of this set there seems only the vaguest continuity. The thing to glue them aurally together is to listen to the singles which do speak of more gradual changes, making a smoother curve. From the Joy Division accredited Ceremony/In a Lonely Place, though Everything's Gone Green, Blue Monday, Cofusion and Thieves Like Us, we get a band neither abandoning their initial dark punk attitude nor jealously preserving it. There is a clear progression in the trek from guitar based rock to the heavy electronics of the mid-80s. This would later form a rift but for now, the band had found a sound of its own.

Peter Saville was still directing the band's cover art and, here, broke with his own tradition of concept-laden work to a more conventional representation of the band with photos created with a Polaroid camera. It was the only time the likenesses of the band had appeared on their cover art and, typically, it was unconventional (if appropriate). Percussionist Steve Morris was the first face you saw and keyboardist Gillian Gilbert was the last, Hooky and Bernard went inside. This was alterable with tracing paper and adjustable photographs (maybe I'm confusing that with the CD release, I never had this on vinyl).

By the mid-80s, fans and casual listeners alike could expect change within a slow curve from New Order. If anyone still asked them in interviews about Ian Curtis they would reduce their responses and move on to the next question. Low Life took them beyond even the contrary pull of things like Blue Monday which seemed to harbour the same dour concerns as anything from Joy Division but was clear about forging ahead with the technology. The songs feel more crafted and the overall brightness of the music never gets too samey (as it threatened to do on the previous set Power Corruption and Lies). It was the sound of a band with a past who only wanted to talk about the future. 

OUT OF OUR HEADS - THE ROLLING STONES @ 60

A slash of guitar opens fire with a sharply falling riff. As if it wasn't heard, it happens again. Jagger comes in with the rest of the band and they're off, swinging and loping around like a holy rolling preacher and his congregation except it's all about a girl and the pitch is already manic with the band rushing along with the shout of the vocal and the big thunderous guitar slowly guiding the whole show. When the backing vocals turn up they are somewhere between sweet doo wop and the snotty backing calls of The Yardbirds or The Who. If anything, this sounds like it comes from over ten years later, with the same amphetamine boost that drove The Dickies' crazy version of The Banana Splits. The original by Sonny Bono (yeah, that one) and Roddy Jackson was by Larry Williams who was one of the great early rock shouters and his take is a fine example of solid R&B. This time, instead of adapting a favourite, The Stones push it right out of its own envelope in a cover as tearing as the Fabs' version of Twist and Shout. If you didn't know This was The Rolling Stones, you'd think it was '70s punk. If they had done nothing else, they had learned how to start an album by getting everyone up to do the speed  and whisky frolic. All that in one and a half minutes!

And then you get Mercy Mercy and Hitchhike which is how they used to do covers. They're both fine, and if you're inclined toward the sound, you'll leave them playing. There's the big boom guitar that they'd been perfecting the big dual guitar arrangement started with the likes of It's All Over Now.

That's How Strong My Love Is is a cover of Otis Redding's torchy soul ballad, done with those big guitars and a forward momentum and a heartfelt Jagger vocal.Things mellow down for Sam Cooke's Good Times which the band delivers with a smooth sheen held up by strong bass and band-wide vocals. The arrangement puts rock instruments in where Cooke's original is more orchestral and creamy. It's more a tribute than the reinvention that the opening track.

The side ends with one of the few originals, Gotta Get Away. Bright guitars and a lower fuzzed out one sounding like a brass section and the band getting laid back, Jagger comes in with a plaintive and melodic tune about a breakup that really does sound like the last time.

Side two opens with Chuck Berry's Talkin' About You. The Stones ditch the frantic Berry pacing, opening with a precursor to the big Keith chord riff and getting on down the road with sleaze and intent. This is a band that doesn't suspect it's going to sound like a bigger and meaner version of this in about three years.

Cry to Me is not given with Solomon Burke's gymnastic vocals but something more reserved. It's a strong take with high emotion and good use of the twin guitars and backing vocals but, at best, it's a fine attempt at adding the swinging London cool to the storm of the original. It's the Stones pleasing a crowd. See also the net track We Got a Good Thing Goin'. It's there to let everyone know how the band could keep a venue warm.

Heart of Stone is next and completely outclasses most of the covers on this LP by showing how to learn lessons and still sound like yourself. A tight 6/8 lament with a snarl, this one uses the sinuous guitars of The Last Time and the baritone arpeggios of It's All Over Now, Jagger's increased emotional and vocal range, finally convincing falsettos in the backing and a stirring climb to the chorus that just makes you want more. One of the best early originals. 

The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man is attributed to Naker Phelge, the whole-band credit given to joke numbers like We Want the Stones on the "live" album. That sells it short, though, as it's a fine and funny mockery of the hangers-on of the Amercian style of the burgeoning rock music industry like this one with his toupee and seeya sucker suit whose too cheap to save a dime for the bus but full of his own merit and essence.

I'm Free builds on a fluid bed of tremolo guitars and a vocal approach that nods through an original to the glories they's just been playing to soul and R&B on this record. It's a worthy original but it's overshadowed. 

This is the band that had already released The Last Time and (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, pillars of riff rock that shake the walls of guitar shops to this day. A quick look (don't even listen) at any compilation of early Stones material and you'll understand that the prominence given to singles left their early albums emaciated. The Beatles third album was all Lennon-MacCartney originals and screamed global success. Out of our Heads feels pedestrian by comparison. Two years of US tours, mayhem and rampaging success and the result is so resolutely OK?

WIth their chief rivals on a roll that would go many years and through so many creative ceilings, no one could pretend that albums were the stocking fillers of the rock world. While the band's singles would continue to rip holes in the sky, it would be nearly half a year of waiting until their own first home grown killer LP. It's almost as though they were watching the clock with this. It's all prefectly stated and includes some inspired moments but against their rivals in chief and up and comers like The Kinks and The Who ripping ahead with their own recordings it feels like treading water.

Then again, this also is probably due to static management as much as it is to low creativity. Wunderkind Andrew Loog Oldham wasn't the only manager of the band. There was a lot of old showbiz stasis happening to all the music making in the U.K. industry. Oldham's flair with the directions of the singles and his slavish devotion to Spectorism certainly pushed the stunning list of bangers the band released on 45rpm and, himself, probably considered the LP a second thought. Rubber Soul and Pet Sounds were on the horizon to change everyone's mind on that idea. Meanwhile, there were these kinds of albums that reminded fans of the clubs and pubs and promised hints of the new and, as long as they looked as good on the sleeves, provided some cool decor to the batch pad of swinging London. 

THE BYRDS' TURN TURN TURN @ 60

If you tell someone that a band made the same album a few times in a row you will risk turning them off before you get any further. Well, I'll risk it this way: The Byrds made the same album five times, they just it better each time. While sounding unmistakably like themselves, especially when trying to sound like others, the songcraft and musicianship were constantly enriched. They are one of the signatures of '60s rock to the extent that the insertion of anything from their first five albums into a movie soundtrack will do more for the setting than millions of dollars worth of art direction. They were also one of those bands that only seemed to be on compilation albums for a long stretch. They seemed to have survived entirely on Dylan covers before fading into hits 'n' memories radio. That's what I thought until I heard this, their second, album.

To be a recording artist up to the early '60s meant you got art directed, hair and clothes, and told to sing this musical gimmick that some old man had written. When the nova event happened with The Beatles hitting the U.S. (i.e. the galactic) market, everyone wanted their music made by the people who wrote it. Add the instant cool of a young Bob Dylan and you could throw out all that lovey dove malarky and get some real statements out in the open. That's all fine if you were Dylan or The Beatles but most aspiring chart toppers weren't. 

This meant that those charts were stuffed with cover versions. Even the Fabs put covers on  their first albums to fill them out. So, when young folkie session man Jim McGuinn and friends went and saw A Hard Day's Night, everything fell into place. Some of that art direction and rock instrumentation later and his band made of friends and people who looked good in a bouffant started churning out the kind of cover versions that no one else was doing. Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man went from his quietly stabbing acoustic number to The Byrds' glorious cathedral of chime and choir. In 1965 that was like doing a metal take on Elliot Smith now. Like seeing any trope's origins, it seemed cliched until you knew.

So when the band went front and centre with their take on Pete Seeger's setting of lines from Ecclesiastes it mattered. I welcome you to YouTube versions by Pete Seeger and Judy Collins where you'll hear beautiful and elegant renditions of this perfectly constructed song. When you then hear the first track on this album with its impossibly thick and clean electric 12 string fanfare and solemn but shining vocal harmonies you will know the transportation of it. This is not a crass rock 'n' roll joke on the oldies, it's a strident celebration in a rock setting. Turn Turn Turn opens the window with a deal more force than anything on their impressive first LP through both the band's pluck in trying it on and the sheer perfection they achieve. If Judy Collins' melting solo rendition sobered you up, this new take could be the mental metronome to Vietnam War protests. Along with moments like The Beatles doing Twist and Shout or The Stones' Little Red Rooster, The Byrds Turn Turn Turn improved on and consolidated what they'd proved was their eternal contribution from the previous outing. 

Two important techniques are at work, here.  The first is the upped ante of putting dual 12 string parts in the arrangement. If the instrument's qualities made a difference in the first album, two at once broadened and reinforced huge swell of it. During the solo where McGuinn is playing a rapid claw hammer arpeggio of the changes against the melody ringing out in front the music is elevating. The other is that they got better at their own harmony scheme. This is simpler than you'd think. Two vocalists sang in precise unision, taking the song's melody. David Crosby added a descant, often improvised which lent a kind of organ chord effect to the vocals. While this approach can stifle creativity on the fly by being too regular, here it sounds spontaneous and free. This is one of the great cover versions. A lot of people think it's an original from the confidence and execution. It almost is. 

After this a bright bluesy riff  propels the whole band into a brief open string drone before the vocals come in, urgent and cool. It Won't Be Wrong is a throwback to early McGuinn songwriting but it fits in this treatment that establishes the uniformity of the music overall as busy, bright and, whether fast or slow, solid and centred. This one is all early Beatles with harmonies clearly schooled in the John low and Paul high approach. The return to the base key after choruses and bridge is a precursor of the same technique they'd use later in Eight Miles High, a gripping establishment of mode.

Set You Free This Time surprises with its mature sounding vocal and country inflections. It's one of the moments like Here Without You on the debut, that shows how confident a songwriter Gene Clark was. He takes the vocal, introducing a clearly distinct voice after the opening two choral performances. It's a more grown up look at a relationship song, as well, with the narrator recalling the early signs of trouble in the solo sections and the other's regret and pleas in the harmony second part of the verses which end with the title. The sense of heartbreak is palable and feels as strange in this album as the lead-heavy I Come and Stand at Every Door does in the following set.Because of that, I used to skip this one (as a teen listener) until experiences like it happened to me. Now, I find it beautifully sober.

Lay Down Your Weary Tune opens with the band in full voice and instrumentation for the large scaled chorus. This is broken by McGuinn's solo vocals for the verses. Like Mr Tambourine Man, the band is expanding a Dylan original to cinematic breadth with the unvarying melody pressing on like a march across an epic landscape. I will never tire of hearing this song.

And again a big sound is followed by an intimate one. He Was a Friend of Mine is led by McGuinn's acoustic arpeggios with the same clawhammer picking he used on the solo section of Turn Turn Turn. Like the title track, this is an adaptation of an existing tune, a folk song in mourning for a fallen comrade. McGuinn overlayed the sentiment with a statement of grief after the Kennedy Assassination. The shiummering harmonies' solemnity are timeless.

Side two begins with The World Turns All Around Her and it springs up with the trademark 12 string riff (the intro adds a little grinning swagger) and bright harmonies. It moves at a clip but the Clark original is about a boy pondering his mistakes in his broken relationship and pleas the new boyfriend be more devoted than he was. The middle eight which tells of his understanding of what he effectively threw away is a mster stroke of songwriting, allowing a pause and shift in feel and key before the final verse springs back into the compromised elation of the music. I will choose this as a single selection quite habitually.

Anyone who made anything of the shift to country rock years after this couldn't have heard this record with side one's country ballad and the hymn-like homily of Satisfied Mind. The solemn unision singing breaks out for the chorus when Crosby's descant soars high overhead. A joy.

If You're Gone is another Clark original and the lead is taken by him. The lyric is a series of propositions beginning with the word 'if". After a series of these conditional statements about the effect of the other he is singing to, the final two lines spook me out:  'If I love you I might never know your name. If you're gone then there is nothing that remains." Instrumentation is sparse but that is to aid the placing of the extraordinary backing vocals which are wordless hums forming organ-like chords. It's as strange as hearing a Yardbirds compilation album where Hang On Sloopy gives way to the Gregorian Still I'm Sad. It's quiet but heartfelt and unforgettable.

The second Dylan cover is The Times They are a Changin' and it gets the by now standard Burds treatment, making Dylan's voice in the darkness version danceable and radio friendly. McGuinn again lends his Dylan party impression to the solo lines before the other two vocalists chime in with harmonies. Not remarkable but not a skip either.

Wait and See is a McGuinn/Crosby collaboration and is superior filler with a lyric about seeing a hot girl. It's couched in brilliant harmonies and rich Rickebacker chimes and is over before it's begun.

So far, this sophomore effort comprises a consolidation of the great start of Mr Tambourine Man, expanding the band's musicianship (particularly the vocal arrangements) and songwriting powers in a carefully helmed quality management by the producer Terry Melcher. This sounds even more like the product of a tightly co-ordinated band that sound distinctive and pleasurable whether expressing sadness or sprightly energy. Then theres the last track.

Ending the last album with a kind of tongue in cheek version of a wartime oldie verged on embarrassing but was saved by an earnest approach that made it work. They try to do that again with Oh Susannah. The Stephen Foster classic from the previous century was known to anyone who'd had to sing it in music class in the American education system. It was a pretty good fit for the band that was clearly happy to embrace genuine folk tunes and filter them through harmony-laden rock. So, why oh why did they decide to do this one as a joke? We get the whole verse and chorus melody played out on the 12 string with cute little tinkles and bumps from Mike Clarke on the drums and then gthe band comes in for a romping vocal version. Repeat twice, including the excruciating 12 string melody. It's the sound of a band at rehearsal thinking they're being funny by doing an inappropriate version of an oldie or a softy (like a black metal cover of a Carpenters song). This kind of shit is only ever funny at the time and should never be recorded and heard again. If We'll Meet Again worked despite the humour and kept short of cringe, Oh Susannah on Turn Turn Turn bolts right into the centre of a grimacing faux pas. It means that the celebrations end with the plastered uncle who thinks his strangled rendition of My Way is a scream while the catering staff quietly clean up the tables with their eyes lowered.

The refreshed CD release of this from the mid-'90s features a number of extra tracks, including a decent cover of It's All Over Now, Baby Blue and a banging original The Day Walk (Never Before), both of which would closed the record in strength. Even the unfinished instrumental Stranger in a Strange Land would have done that. But no, this self-concious joke that is longer than everything else on the album apart from the title track, destroys this otherwise strong offering's chances of being thought of as a perfect advance from the debut.

I first heard this album when I was fifteen. A school friend had it at home as part of his elder siblings' collection and he taped it for me. It played me through that middle year period very easily, the heights of its invention, ringing electric guitar (which I didn't know was a 12 string, and angelic voices merged perfectly with the chirps of the cicadas out in the yard under the sun. The Byrds were one of the select bands I pursued when the great reissue revival of the early '80s brought us rereleases of The Kinks, The Who, The Doors and so on on new vinyl so we didn't have to rely on finding good copies at op shops. The 1996 CD was pure pleasure (apart from that one dud) and I fell into the joys of the album all over again with stunning presence and detail. 

Turn Turn Turn was a band tightening up everything that had worked for them on their debut release and presenting the thing they didn't have for that, experience. The sound is decisive and the songs, old or new, are strong. They might have kept that up for the rest of the decade without adverse criticism. What would happen, though, was further exploration. Call it acid, if you like, but add a lesson-learning disastrous tour of the UK and the restlessness of any young group of artists who need to find new paths. Not everyone did that as fast as The Beatles but this transitional effort opened the door on to years' more progression done with style and, curiously enough, honour.

Listening notes: I chose the1996 rerelease for this blog as its clarity, depth and presence exceed the vinyl rerelease of the '80s which I also had. As far as I know, this is still available. Before I forget, I should mention that this will be my final Byrds anniversary article as I've already done the remaining titles to the end of the '60s by them, having started in 2016 with the one on Fifth Dimension.