1981@40: COMPUTER WORLD - KRAFTWERK

Having influenced every last purveyor of synth pop Kraftwerk themselves emerged to make a few statements on the world as they saw it and as, if it but knew it, it would see itself. Computer dating, home computers, consumerism, the wired state and money and more sat at the centre of their inspirations and while pop bands trying to be hip about it really plundered '60s spy-fi tv and movies and, at worst, cautioned a world of Countdown viewers about the dangers of becoming a number. The difference between them and Kraftwerk was that Kraftwerk actually used and understood computers, crunched their own numbers and let anyone who'd listen that if they themselves didn't start doing just that then they would be the numbers to be crushed. Oddly, in the last decade before the computerless homes, they seemed to have missed the boat.

In 1981 mentioning computers in song lyrics felt done. That was mostly due to those ones I started with, the popsters with ditties about tyrannical machine overlords, impersonal number identities or surveillance. To be Kraftwerk and call your album Computer World after Computer Games had blazed up the pop parade seemed as naff as it could get and it easily could have seemed that influencers of Bowie, Gary Numan and Eurodisco now looked as saurian as Led Zeppelin. The cover was a hard yellow picture of the band's heads appearing in the monitor of a blocky old computer terminal. Elsewhere they staffed the industrial looking machines of an unpronouncable German electro brain, in plastic toupees and robot expressions. Very Devo.

But not even Devo came close to the nightmare of the future that Kraftwerk were proposing. Yes, the synth-o-march of the title track bagged entities like Interpol and the FBI into a forbidding list of corporate identities and chants of "business, numbers, money, people" and then, "crime, travel, communication, entertainment. The arrangement was subdued and murky in opposition to the sound of Man Machine and certainly Trans-Europe Express. It sounded like music lit by a burglar's torch.  Apart from the luminous riff that sounded more like a company jingle than a pop hook the music tramped like a battalion of sanitised officeworkers, not faceless mercentile robots but everyday white collars, pretty people who counted your cash or refused your dole payment, the world, in fact, as it was. Kraftwerk aren't warning us against a bleak future but describing where we were.

Pocket Calculator's riff sounds the most like a lot of the UK synthpop that surrounded the record. It's the kind of bright and boppy major key figure that could easily be imagined on a guitar as a synth. Around it the electronics squeak, snarl, pop and snap. The narrator is the operator of his pocket calculator, adding subtracting etc. as well as pushing the little tune button. But what feels like an optimistic jingle about portable technology is more about the pervasion of it. Little calculators weren't new at the time (I'd had several at school in the seventies) and were long normalised as a means of quick number work. It's the numbers that are going to work, here, as their users increasingly depend on them. The instrumental outro suggests the spread of this relationship, it's toy upbeat smile increasingly sinister.

Next we hear from those numbers themselves, beginning with a wobbly robot voice German chanting from one to four. We also hear the count in Japanese, English, Italian, and Russian. There's a percussion track but the synth is chromatic, almost as random as a sample and hold setting but clearly intentional. It is the sound of numbers working around us, in the circuitry, through the phone lines, in the shadows and obscure corners of our daily administration. It merges into the restatement of the title track as a quieter but more assured instrumental. No words needed. The effect has taken and our world is different and will not think to turn back.

The old side two begins with what in 1981 felt like overstatement as a lonely citizen uses computers to connect. He calls a number for a data date. How virtual that might be is up to your imagination. The same blend of clavinet harshness and ringing high keyboards in this modal music intensifies the bleakness of the image. The vocals, as with most of them on this album, are renedered a step back from hard clairty by going through a delay with a very short, metallic echo. The human voice doesn't come a lot colder than this. Most ot the track is instrumental as the imagined ritual plays out as part of the new way of living. It is quietly crushing.

Home Computer's riff is the darkest one on this dark record. Thick, staccato bass sliced from somewhere in the minor scale and repeated in a pulse. There is a brighter sounding counter riff, opened up to an major arpeggio, but it isn't there to provide light. "I program my home computer, beam myself into the future." That's the lyric. And you get four of those. Mostly it's the blunt bass riff, here and there descanted bya higher keyboard or interupted by the prettier counter theme. If there are games on this home computer they are relegated to breaks; you go to work and you come home to more work. And that's it forever. A rising bubbly figure adds another phase but it just sound like more programming. The by now typical second half or so of instrumental features the third rising figure punctuated by harsh electronic snares and a stylised phone ring.

It's More Fun To Compute is the final stage as the robotic user chants the title as a harsh distant electronic scream on the synth sounds. Riffs or musical themes are liberally recycled from the previous track to emphasise the transformation that has happened in the digital cocoon. There is a lugubrious restatement of the Home Computer theme on a legato string-style synth and the effect is of lamentation. We have reached this point because we couldn't turn back or stop when there was newness to make us better. Finally (after four of its six minutes of instrumental) the percussion ceases and we are left drifting in the dark with the lament. End.

So, in 1981, the idea of Kraftwek doing this was an, "oh. come on." Wasn't that just like Queen doing their punk song back in '77? But that's nothing like the album Kraftwerk produced as soon as you listened to it. The cover art showed them as mannequin-like servants of the machine and the songs were about teh absorption of humanity into digital information flow but there was not the slightest sigh of gimmick to be had. If anything, they scaled the electronics down to concentrate on delivering a message where the form of the lyrics and structure of the arrangements said more than videos of them bouncing around in sci-fi costumes. This wasn't about doing the robot on Space Station Alpha it was about life in 1981. It was dark and achingly melancholy. We weren't becoming machines, just getting used to serving them.

I think there's less to be had from asking how well they predicted the future, point for point, than in considering how the culture at first absorbed the notion to the point of becoming indistinguishable from it. This is not all bad - human connection is the same as it was with the internet (just heavily amplified) - but when it is bad it is scary. And that's way before you get to the dark web. The trust in the con has also been amplified and scammers have long worked on the same principles as the advertising industry. We buy the scam with the knowledge of the scam; even if we don't respond to it there is pleasure in acknowledging the attempt. As for sex, it went from text-only spontaneous erotica, to torrid IRC autopornography, to online porn entering the mainstream and dating sites hanging galleries of personal fiction with endless variety. And the more we think of ourselves as being at the controls the deeper inside the great buzzing and beeping control box we are. If Kraftwerk didn't quite get the details right a mere twenty years before it changed then who among us shall point the finger?

Back in 1981 the outfit that let the world know that pop music did not have to be an amped up 60s rock band but could continue to innovate and provide powerful scores for the times released a statement that gently wiped the fashion for pop futurism aside and told us to beware. We weren't going to beware. It was too much fun dancing like Robbie the Robot or turning the other way and pretending that clunky indy rock kept us safely outside the system. But there is no such place as outside the system. That's why there is no sci-fi to Computer World but plenty of social realism. Its message like its music might have been too dour and genuine for us then, and now too open to ridicule as a kind of missed guess but it's accurate, then and now accurate.  While they still had plenty to say this still feels to me like the last stand before they themselves joined in. They already had been the robots with the models in the hall of mirrors and celebrated sparkling days on space age trains. One pause is perhaps all they needed to tell us, one last time, that while me might not be able to change what was to become of us we might learn to live it our own way.

1981@40: MOVEMENT - NEW ORDER

So, your band did well locally and in a very short time amassed a nationwide following which followed you through a rapid musical development and then,just as you were about to conquer America which was waiting for you, your singer takes his ball back and you can't play anymore, well you don't feel like it on the day. Led Zeppelin had disbanded after their drummer left (for similar reasons) and the trio left behind in Joy Division were still young and well liked as musicians which would have let them walk into any band they wanted without a scratch on JD's legacy. Instead they did something right. Well, a few things, actually. First they chose to continue under a different name. Second, instead of holding a tv competition show for a new singer, they each tried out and settled on one. Third, they got a new member to fill out guitar and keyboard duties. So, no Doug Yule's Velvet Underground or INXS as a self-cover band with a singer from tv. They played Joy Division's dates in the U.S., released a mighty single to finish off the official Joy Division legacy (kinda) and then wrote and recorded Movement.

This record did not have that good a reputation when fresh. If you listened to it the right way (so to speak) it was watery JoyDivision with a guy who couldn't sing. While the next LP Power Corruption and Lies and even singles released after Movement were more confident statements of where the band was headed, Movement gets left as a completist's album the way Still was for Joy Division. That's a pity as Movement shows a band finding their own way at their own pace and finding that the pace of the way is as fast as it was between Unknown Pleasures and Closer. They are the same musicians, after all. It's not like Smokie decided to ditch the AOR hits and get all angsty. Some of this does sound a little like Closer II but careful listening will reveal the forward march in every track.

The first thing new listeners heard from this metamorphosed version of their favourite band was not the jackhammers and medieval drumming of Atrocity Exhibition but a lone guitar, a little wobbly from a chorus pedal playing a brisk downward figure but not a crushing minor third. The drums and bass pick it up and the second guitar adds seom swirling overdriven arpeggios. The vocal is by Peter Hook but at this stage it might have been either of the other two as it's pushed back to sit among the other instruments, only just a little over them for clarity. Fans had already heard the upbeat major key sound of Ceremony as it's own single and about half of it live on Still. But where that sounded expansive of the previous sound this sound bright with a fanfare like riff high on the fretboard and infectious danceable rhythm. The words are addressed to a second person and describe an act of finality but also an attitude of resumption. It's like a statement to anyone who needed to hear it that the new name and sound were from the same people and, no, they werent going to try and get away with pretending it didn't happen.

But then things do go down. Truth begins with a gentle odd beat on a drum machine that is joined by a melodica, the reedy schoolkid blown keyboard that would feature in the band's music for years to come. Here it is playing a lamenting figure on a minor third and down modally to a tone below.  It's Bernard's voice as it will be for almost all the songs on the record. It's a strange day and he feels isolated from everyone he sees as he walks along outside. An instrumental section brings the familiar sound of overdriven guitars that sound like machines. A song of mourning? Hard not to think it.

An echoey synth and bass with a thumping kick drum and machine percussion, Senses takes on a kind of funk that was tried in Komakino by the old band. Two brief verses with abstract images and the refirain, no reason ever was given. The funk workout continues but it's not a boogie party with the synth drone of death rising from the depths and the brittle guitar duel not sounding like Chic. Eventually, the downward motion prevails and repeats until it halts in a swirling cloud of synthesis.

Very similar territory is navigated for Chosen Time with the funk more regimented into a machine like briskness. Sumner's frail vocal narrates a figure helpless to understand what has happened to his friend. I think this is unambiguously about Curtis. The jammy workthrough of the riff ends in the same kind of arcade game synthesised splatter as Insight from Unknown Pleasures. 

Over on side two, I.C.B. begins with a much grimmer lone guitar riff that is more quickly backed with a stamping kick drum and then insistent bass riff. Bernard's thin voice is fragile, barely above a whisper, as he sings strings of abstraction that add up to a sense of helplessness again. Two verses, a riff workout and an end with more of the Insight game beeps and squeals. Then, after the band has stopped a soft bass note has been left on as a kind of gentle counter. The title might well stand for Ice Cream Brontosaurus but probably does stand for Ian Curits' Burial. The melancholy created by the vocal, soft as thoughts while riding in a car to a cemetery, and the constrasting force of the music build a cloudy day of conflicting emotions. It's a song of resignation and always gets straight to me.

The Him is the most elaborate arrangement on the album, shifting from the quiet bass riff of the opening, through the introductory keyboard and muted trumpet, the controlled harmonised vocals and then the raging banshee wail of the instrumental sections. It's not elaborate because of any complex counterpoint (it's one riff all the way through and a three-note one) but the emotive passages which range from the ominous to the intense to the great howling instrumental sections after each verse, the second delayed as a cinematic synth drone ramps up the tension before an even more violent playing of the distant screaming synth section storms in. Bernard is left with the final words of the song, which is seeped in images of guilt and religion: "I'm so tired. I'm so tired...." Seldom has emotional exhaustion felt so satisfying. This song was the only thing that worked after the worst break up of my life happened. I was almost levitating listening to it.

Doubts Even Here. People without depth will say this song sounds like something from Closer and leave it at that. A few bars of military tom toms march until the meltingly beautiful figure of contrary motion begins on the keyboards. This will be almost the entirety of the song's harmonic structure, a procession of insistent epic of the strings and a building interplay between the bass and guitars both tightens and expands. Three verses of imagery that might well be Hook's statement of grief but also contain anger which could apply to a world beyond that. And then something happens at the end. Hook sings a three note melody rising to a minor third as the harmonic structure changes from modal to diatonic. Instead of the lower voice returning to C it falls to A which changes the emotional tone immediately from the worrying intensity of the verses to something more grinding and tragic. Also, as this is happening we hear new member Gillian Gilbert speaking. Sometimes in collision with Hook's singing and sometimes between lines. It can be very difficult to work it out. I don't really want to do this as the mystery of it adds so much to the emotional weight of the song. Then again, when I found this out it adds to it. Gillian is reciting the seventy-seventh Psalm which is an odd piece of work that goes like this:

I was dazed and I could not speak.

My thoughts went back to times long past.

I remembered forgotten years.

All night long, I was in deep distress.

As I lay thinking, my spirit was sunk in deep despair.

Will the Lord reject us for evermore and never again show favour?

Has his unfailing love now failed us utterly?

Must his promise time and again be unfullfilled?

Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Has he in anger withheld his mercies?

But then, O Lord, I call to mind thy deeds.

I recall thy wonderful acts in times gone by.

Weirdly, if you read this while listening to the song her voice seems to sound completely clear.

Denial closes the album with more heavy tom toms, churning guitars and a faceless vocal from Bernard with words about a failure to communicate or perhaps even to understand and act in prevention. "It's just something I know. The answer's not there. It comes and it goes and it frightens me." And then, finally: "time worked so well upon us, inside of me, inside my soul." The intensity ends only when the song does and it does so suddenly without lingering. Album over.

Of course the death of their friend by suicide was going to affect them deeply and find its way into their music. The effect of this is strange considering where this band had come from. While Ian Curtis with his stormcloud of a voice was absent from the sound and replaced by voices that often sounded cowed by self consciousness and thick emotion his death dominated their first long statement. Recall that, apart from anything else, they were writing about someone who was distinct from the one the fans thought they knew, distinct even from the one they believed they themselves knew. Recall, too, that these were people in their early twenties who were channelling into their skill an event of crushing impact with a perplexing origin and a series of increasingly complex shockwaves into the culture. 

But this is not a concept album, not, at any rate, the way that The Wall was a concept album. It's still poignant to think that in the midst of the bizarre cult-like mourning of Ian Curtis from the groundswell the band's own compulsion to make statements like this found a setting in a changing sound. As rapidly as they were developing it's notable how little this record resembles Joy Division. What it does sound like is a transformation the ex Joy Division go into the studio and come out as New Order. That's far deeper a change than the band that created Ceremony which even bore the Joy Division byline on the label. None of their records, their albums or their epic 12 inch singles sounded anything like this again. So, there they were at the station, talked about the only thing they could talk about, and when the train came they got on and never came back. 

LET IT BE SUPER DELUXE (5 CD + 1 Blu-Ray)

About a year too late but it got here, The Beatles final album release from the original sequence has been given the same treatment as Pepper, White Album and Abbey Road. There are a few surprises but mainly this was the set that I expected to be a labour of worship for the sifting duties alone. Untold hours of tape of the band rehearsing, getting distracted by jams and occasionally reforming into a musical unit to deliver some songs old school. The version of Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues on Anthology 3 sounded so tired it was painful and the tracklists of old bootlegs from these sessions never quite enticed me as they seemed packed with stuff like that. So, props to the crew who presented this ... kinda.

My anniversary take on the record can be found here. The six hour extravaganza retooling of the filmed material is still to appear as of this writing and, while I have never been fond of the movie, record, stretch of time in the band's history, I'll be subscribing to the Disney channel to see it ... a few times. Lifelong tragique, sorry. But enough about me, what do I think about this presentation?

Five CDs and a Blu-Ray housed in mini-LP covers and set in a gatefold cardboard holder which is easy to handle, the discs slide out without labour and are returned to the slots without drama. The book is hard cover and on good glossy stock (there'll be more in the separately available Get Back book). All of this slides into a solid cardstock black case with die cut holes for the faces o' the Fabs. Though a lot more limited, you can do a Physical Graffiti by putting the black and white pics of the disc folder in those holes for a super arty look. And then change it back and so on every few songs as the tracks play on. The days aint gettin' any shorter. Anyway, a really lovely physical package. Now the content.

The Blu-Ray

The Spector album in three presentations: Stereo and DTS Master Audio 5.1 in 24 bit/96 Khz and Dolby Atmos at 24 bit/48 khz. The stereo in hi-res allows little more light or air into the mix but on your home system will feel full and present. The DTS is extremely crisp, not needles in the ear crisp but delivered with such breathtaking precision and range, such clear lines on everything to horn sections, choirs or the shiny notes of acoustic guitars that you could really just stop with it there. But go to the next step: the Dolby Atmos might disappoint for a few bars because it feels a lot less detailed, less crisp than the DTS. It also sounds more gathered to the centre. This is not because of the lower sampling rate (any more than anyone can genuinely hear the difference between one 44.1000th of a second sample from the next) it's a lower rate because it has more to do. Not fly around the room like the sound in a movie but to stay put and put you right at the heart of the music and, whether it's the rustling guitars  and close harmonies of Two of Us or the soaring solo in Let it Be or the choirs and brass of Long and Winding Road, it gives you the same sensation of being in the perfect spot at a prefectly mixed gig. Vocals reach out, the tom toms propel, the kick ... kicks. You are there with the band and you feel loved. Ok, alright, but it is a beautiful way of presenting multichannel music. Long gone are the days of the Doors on DVD-Audio where the guitar riff of L'America flew around the room for no reason whatsoever. You've got the best seat in the house and the music is breathing in front of you. 

Oh, almost forgot, they have finally got the menus right. Sounds trivial but what I mean is that when you put this into your Blu-Ray player you get a menu that, while it does start with a toned down title track, asks you how you want to hear it INSTEAD of just playing the thing, leaving you to scramble around your remote trying to get that cursor in the right place to choose the right format by which time at least some of the vibe has crumbled. This one let's you decide first. Completely different experience which erases a sore point on all the other hi-res digital releases. This one waits for you. You choose. You sit back and bliss out. Heaven.

The Book

Hardcover with good photos and content on every page including brief memoirs and a handy track by gtrack article with recording sheets, lyrics in biro on lined paper, and the story behind the songs and recording. Paul writes a fuming note to Allen Klein about Spector's orchestral arrangements that ends: "Don't ever do it again." There's less to it than there was to the books for Pepper or the White Album but there was a lot more to cover for them. This makes a pleasing companion to the music and is worth looking through while listening. I know that sounds like something from a 1969 EMI catalogue but it's accurate.

Recommendation: If you just want the album with the new mix could I suggest that you find a online retailer that has hi-res downloads with a non-lossy compression format? Flac is the file type I use but there are others. It's not just the higher resolution as a benefit (really CD quality is better than most of us can physically hear) but the dynamic range. I took a look at the CD files in a wave editor and all of them are compressed to the wall. The loudness wars have unfortunately not finished. This can contribute to a fatiguing experience, the music might well feel a little breathless. All the hi-res download versions offer good dynamic range which makes the music feel a lot more natural.

CD1 The original album, kinda

The new mix of the album follows the trend from the Sgt Pepper rerelease by beefing up the bass and gathering things that were extremely panned toward the centre. This doesn't create mono but serves, with an eye on the compressor and EQ, to warm everything up and allow for a more realistic sense of space. It's a robust, contemporary sounding album. If you didn't already now, the arrangements follow Phil Spector's presentation from 1970 so Paul is still strolling along the winding road with a heavenly choir o'erhead and the one on Across the Universe is still there. I Me Mine is the same extended edit and Get Back still ends the album with the joke about the audition. Unless you prefer the thinner sound of the original this will delight.

CD2 Get Back - Apple Sessions

I know a fair bit about the band but I'm not going to take the tonka toy home on Mastermind with a Beatles speciality. That said I have a feeling from some of the chit chat here that some of these tracks are from the initial time at Twickenham Studios. Does it bother me? Not on your nelly. It's a lot of takes and aborted attempts at new songs mixed in with whimsical cover versions and chat. Will you listen to it mofre than once? How much ironing do you have to do?

CD3 Get Back - Rehearsals and Apple Jams

The most immediate value lies in the noodling versions of later tracks from Abbey Road as well as solo careers. Paul helps John with the middle eight of Gimme Some Truth and both John and Paul help George with the opening line of Something. All things Must Pass sounds like it's being tried out at the same time as the band and studio staff or film crew are lunking around making tea and lifting furniture. In the midst of the noise Paul joins George in a shimmering harmony of the chorus of All Things and seems to like it so much he's still singing it after the jam. There is a jammy song with Billy Preston on lead vocals that is worth hearing if only for how he kind of wipes the floor with the kind of thing they were leaning toward on songs like Don't Let Me Down.This might have been the spot to put the wonderful version of Besame Mucho that they do in the original film. But no. 

CD4 Get Back LP - 1969 Glyn Johns Mix

This is one of the many drafts of the album under its working title submitted to the band by engineer Glyn Johns. If you read the accounts of this you have to wonder how prissy The Beatles had to be to just keep knocking him back when he was already forging ahead as a producer in his own right and not someone who'd knowingly push bad solutions. You can read about the in-fighting and egos all you want but the real political contest you need to be aware of is that between the band and Glyn Johns who was left to guess how to present the hours of failure and ear-numbing shambles. Hotshot or not he wasn't in the position to go and thicken everything up and apply the audio polyfilla until it was slick and unrecogniseable. They'd said they were going back to the basics, warts and all, as nature intended but they weren't ready for how thin and unpolished it was sounding and would sound as a record if released. The original cover art (reproduced for this set) was a recreation of the debut album Please Please Me with the band shot from below, leaning over the rails of the landing at the EMI building, only years later with much longer hair and new style. With that in mind pretty much anything Johns offered would have driven to the bone the difference between the bright energy of the first album and the ragged op shop version of the band on this new one.

Johns opens with a live and tougher version of One After 909 which does provide a good link to the old days as it was an abandoned number from the early years. The Let it Be version has none of its drive or Harrison's stinging Telecaster lead and becomes a completely redeemed number for me (I still skip it on Let it Be). Also, it ends with the audition joke that was put at the end of Get Back with which it has been most closely associated. The rest is a lot less spectacular with a sloppy jam edited together of oldies and a chorus of the next track. I hate Don't Let Me Down, the chorus is repetitive and interminable and the song never develops. Even the middle eight is nothing special and the whole thing is played at a glacial pace, preceded by too much banter and larking. A lacklustre Dig a Pony follows with a loose band who sound tired and a Lennon who is uncharacteristically off pitch. I've Got a Feeling is the take that appeared on Anthology 3 and is ok but hs none of the dynamics or force of the Let it Be version. Get Back seems to have been tirelessly practiced as it always sounds good. Yes, it's a simple song but the arrangement is a thing of elegance. Here again. Very slight talky bit from Paul in this one. For You Blue shows that George had some decent chops as an acoustic player. Johns keeps it low and detailed. While I never liked this one the difference in the mix alone allows a few listens. Teddy Boy which Paul cleaned, pressed and presented on his solo debut the year after. While its not as sabotaged as severely here as the Anthology 3 version you still have to strain a little to get a feel for what became a modest but lovely McCartney number. Lennon's square dance calling is kept to the end and is thankfully lower in the mix (sorry, but it only ever comes across as bitchy).  A slower Two of Us with less energy follows. Maggie Mae is the same as the one on Let it Be. There is more Dig It than on Let it Be if that's what you wanted. Let it Be itself is more or less the single version with the leslied guitar solo that could never compete with the revised one Harrison tore out for the released album. The Long and Winding Road has more space than both Spector's and subsequent orchestra and choir free versions but it still sounds like a run through than a song. And with a a curio version of the outro of Get Back the album that would be comes to a final fade.

Johns has steered a cautious course through the stated intention and what quality he could discover in a Sargasso sea of tape. He keeps the feel live with a lot of banter so that it sounds like a working band but not so over-professional as to come across like Beach Boys similar attempts which were all but scripted. The other side of the coin is that he had to keep the edits inconspicuous and so needed to let more of the original tape run without flown in vocals from this take or a bass track from that. In fulfilling The Beatles wishes he was effectively forced to offer them two sides of comparitive garbage and the fault was clearly theirs. That slick and cheeky Please Please Me mockup was looking dodgier by the day.

If this had been released before the monumental Abbey Road (whose slickness and rich production pretty much stands for what is considered timelessness in a rock record) this dragging artefact might have remained a completist's must-have, one step above side two of the Yellow Submarine soundtrack. But all of these discs with their mix of songs that remained in a low development state and others that got through the filter to the glories of Abbey Road and early solo albums does give pause as to why some of them did get left behind. McCartney has been happy to play Let it Be or Get Back in his live sets for many years now. Across the Universe was chucked in through a lack of material from Lennon, having already been recorded and committed to a charity album, never to be quite done again seriously, despite its durable beauty. It was Phil Spector's skill that made I Me Mine a real album track, Harrison apparently just left it as this tiny moment of potential. It begins to look like a messy room after a bully boy kid has gone through it and taken all the good toys.

So, it was never going to work in that way. See also the grander plans for the live gig that was meant to be the culmination of the film. Greece? The Sahara? It took a few years and Pink Floyd to get that one done right but they weren't The Beatles at the end of a long and grinding decade. they went to the roof of the building they were in, played a few numbers and packed up. This was not going to cut it as a document of those times anymore than an accurate depiction of a battle will necessarily come off as anti war. But it really is nice to have.

The EP (and what it isn't)

Four more iterations of tracks from the album in their single forms. This is the contraversial platter. Both Sgt Pepper and the White Album had their great expectations that were dashed on release day. We didn't get a Carnival of Light nor the 27 minute version of Helter Skelter. And now we don't get the complete rooftop concert. Long bootlegged and of great significance to fans is the gig the band did actually do at the end of the movie and the last time the four of them played live under their name. It's gold and it's not here. But let's think about that.

The set list includes three Get Backs, two I've Got a Feelings, two Don't Let Me Downs (aaaaargh!) and one each of One After 909 and Dig a Pony. If you've ever seen the original film you might have a Mandella effect memory of it being a lot richer than that. But that's what the content is and the only changes that can be made are abbreviations. Wouldn't it still be good, repetitions or not, just to listen to what people in the streets were hearing on the day? You bet and I'd probably give it more than a few spins. And, look, if you're going to give us the whole soporific Glyn Johns album couldn't you at least shell this out?

Well, that discounts any concern about low quality: this album's place in history depends on its listeners knowing it was meant to be raw and unscented. Spector's cosmetics don't quite put a lie to that as so much of the banter and surrounding atmosphere were retained. So why not a warts and all rooftop concert? 

Well, let's go back to those other examples for a second. Carnival of Light by the accounts of folk like Beatles scholar Mark Lewisohn is a formless soundscape of mumbles, bangs, echoes, shouts, feedback etc., starting nowhere and going back there repeatedly for what must seem like forever. Do I want to hear it? Sure but I bet I wouldn't return to it. The Beatles were great at sweetening and garnishing their songs with the noise and moment of avante gardism but when they attempted to start and stay there results were mixed (then again, if I listen to the White Album I won't skip Revolution #9). As for the 27 minute Helter Skelter it's best to read up on it in books like Lewisohn's Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. First, it's not a long version of the one on the White Album. There were only two complete takes of that and both are on the Super Deluxe of that album. No, it's the listless attempted blues (on the SD but also in a shorter edit on Anthology 2) which broke down into jamming and a rendition of Blue Moon and whatever was in the air that day. It's not hard to play something for that long and get carried away with the mood of it but go and listen to the slow take again and see how long you last. On the other hand the White Album SD did include the glorious Esher demos which are compelling and feel like a real part of the tapestry. 

My point is that the projected precentage of people who would pay for these alleged holy grails would shrink rapidly as soon as they were tabled as real propositions. The other Beatles themselves opposed McCartney when he campaigned to include Carnival of Light in Anthology 2. He had a book coming out that depicted him as the real avante gardist and this Macca-led freakout would sweeten the performance of the page turner. You really don't have to be that cynical to understand that.

The other thing is that the mammoth documentary is yet to come. It will almost certainly be supported by a blu-ray or even 4K physical release which is where the Rooftop gig might find a place. This would feel like fan milking on a global scale and is absolutely not beyond the likes of the benefactors of the Beatle legacy/merchandise/product. Why put everything out when a little bending of the context makes it yet another dollar spinner? Nothing personal, it's just business.

For me, I'd like it here. Among the exhausting reiterations of the same material the context alone would give it compulsion. They gear up on a cold morning. Warm up with a few run throughs, play some songs and get shut down. This is the way the world ends. And then Abbey Road. Just makes sense to me.

There was a deluxe version of the original album with a box and a book and an LP. I've only ever seen pictures of these but it's worth a thought. The LP came out after the one really recorded last which was Abbey Road with its joyous but saddening note of farewell. The outpriced special ed of Let it Be was soon replaced with a single sleeve record which is how I bought it and most others knew it. That packaging seemed a little more honest about what was to meet the listener, a record by a band who sounded relaxed enough to goof around, and a few good songs. As it had come out later than the real series finale I, like many, thought of it as the exhausted end of a gigantic career. A bit of reading fixed that (when the books appeared) but the impression presists to this day that it's the last corporeal statement of The Beatles. This is one ofthe dangers sewn into the fabric of the fragile idea of reducing greatness to humility without a clear direction. There is no direction to Let it Be which is why it's so bitsy and contains more than its share of numbers that anyone can express disdain for without pushback from lifelong fans. So, now here it is again, in a big expensive box whose handsomeness is savagely belied by the often crunching failure inside. And here I am again, a contemporary tragic, shelling out for the biggest and best set of the many it comes in, whingeing about the omissions. But then, I'll sit in the dark, choose the Atmos mix and cosy up whenever it gets good. Because it does, always, eventually get good.

1981@40: FIRE OF LOVE - THE GUN CLUB

It wasn't all synthesisers. Filtering through post punk from the late '70s and growing into lavish blooms came things like this album. They were American and like the punk bands that were based on the UK innovation of that notion they got it all wrong. But getting it wrong is how you discover things and what The Gun Club was that the music behind all that 12 bar style that bedroom guitarists find contains worlds of shadow, sex and power. Once established, terms like psychobilly and cowpunk were stuck on bands like this which lumped them all together. If you heard this in 1981 as a young honky you might have picked the influences of all the Pebbles and Nuggets albums that made the demimonde of garage rock of the '60s available in easy packages. But the two advantages the Gun Club had were a scholarly awareness of the legacy and the bottle to push it onstage and wear it.

Ringing and raging guitars from screeching riffs to earthquakes of barrechords under some of the most committed and dangerous sounding vocals of its time, Fire of Love burst out of the speakers and into the darkened living rooms of numberless parties. Frenzied, sexy and threatening, The Gun Club made with the blues like no one had since the time of the originals. And everyone loved them. Everyone except for me.

Eleven tracks of rock assault and it's over. And for me, outside of that context of young bodies and nervous systems like my own gyrating in the dark, they just sounded old. Every track with its lines about dressing like an Elvis from hell or preaching the devil's music or voodoo or whatever else also informed the cover art, sounded, to me, like a revival of Creedence. It was effective but did we really need it? Well, maybe so. The sole track that sounds a little different from all the others on this record is Jack on Fire, a nasty song about a nasty piece of work that uses the dynamics of the rest of the album to a real effect. Told in a jazzy 2/4 stride, it's cool cat strut works a treat. Then it's back to the old folks at home on speed.

That said, I hated psychobilly, cowpunk and whatever anyone wanted to call it that week. Partly, I'll admit that this is because I didn't get it and wanted all my new music to be a mix of big scary electronica and modified '60s psyche-pop. But it was more than that. I felt threatened by the look. What I mean by that was the skeletally skinny boys with nothing but front and wild grins who lanked around the scene picking up and waking in new beds the year round. Well, that's what I thought. I wanted everyone to find my short back and sides north of England austerity to be irresistible because ... well, I didn't actually have a reason. But the cowpunks were like every single other type that works scenes for their own rewards and will get into anything at all that works. The music is not the point, understanding that it's worth something in the market is. And that is where post punk snobs like I was will always lose and deserve to: we made ourselves into far worse relics than any of the cowpunks or rockabilly diehards ever could because at least they could drop everything and flail while we stood against the walls trying to get people talking about Syd Barrett.

I also hated the bands that blossomed from this branch. Their releases were cute and the videos like jeans commercials and when you saw them live they sounded like pub rock cover bands. It was yet another occasion where musical proficiency (because ALL of them played perfectly) could mean so very little. The music itself was nothing like the image. Anyway, I need to stop ranting about this as it's an embarrassing confession and one few would care about.

The point as far as this article goes is how this record stands up at forty years of age. Well, it doesn't. There is no point in my doing a track by track account when they all sound essentially the same and, from the height of decades, feels try hard. The problem is that as soon as something new gets the spotlight like synth pop, dub, EDM or Trip Hop there will be a gang of neanderthals ready willing and able to turn their pubrock chops into more roots rock and roll with the same bastard cliches from the'50s as this crew. I understand why. I would, given the choice and my youth back, far prefer my chances of fleeting happiness in a sweaty rock gig than in a freezing basement listening to tapeloops among a lot of other enthusiasts in overcoats. I still hate this, though, and I hate every attempt at killing off real invention with ever more flavoursome cliches. But that might just mean I hate the world. Well, sometimes I do.