Listy business.

This all started out because I buy a lot of vinyl.
Over on Rate Your Music.com I have a list of the same title as this blog and the idea was, here, for me to write about the albums and etc that I buy and post a picture of them. Maybe not all of them but of the interesting ones. Like the Aztec record in a previous post. I just never seem to find the time to do this but I guess I'm going to backtrack a little and write about some old albums that turned out to be interesting. It's good practice to write every day and besides, no cunt reads this anyway so here we go..

Water/Music on the Brain

I play music - as an artist, a writer and musician. I'm often to be found scribbling away in the corner of the room with a guitar across my knee, trying to wring a song out of some little phrase of string of words. I do this because, after many years flop flapping about between drawing, writing and playing music this is the one that has stuck.

If it feels good - do it, they say. Well I guess that's part of it. I wouldn't consider myself the most adequate of guitar players, I guess I see it as just a tool to get the job done.  I'm not that musical, I don't hear melodies in the buzz of traffic or the lilt of a persons voice. I can't read music or write notation but I could find the chords of a tune on the guitar but I won't be able to tell you what key it's in because, well, that's not really important to me.

I write songs as a way to reach people - I guess that's as much as it is - never having been that much of a people person inasmuch as I'm kind of a loner, I don't make friends too easily (makes me sound like a psychopath- eek!) but I think that I have some deal of compassion. Music gets me through, it always has done. I like music that is uncomplicated but deep, that comes from the heart. People playing other people's songs get to be a drag. You can only interpret so much, but then I suppose there are people for whom interpretation is everything. It is possible to define the world you see through other artists language - not just by banging out Louie, Louie on yer garage sale electrical guitar, but in the way that a song moves you, in the way that you want to make it your own. I've been bashing away at Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner for years now because it's one of those songs that just stuck in my head - I don't know why - there have been books written on such a thing (which I have to admit I've not read, yet) but it, perhaps, comes down to the individual.

I've never seen myself as making money out of playing, it's not really my thing. It all comes down to the song. As we compose, scribble, cry or get drunk with our little sheaf of papers, we're revealing things about ourselves that we wouldn't tell our loved ones or our shrinks. Think of all the songs you listen to and try to analyse, what they mean, what the writer wanted to say and what they ended up saying by the end of it all. I'm a firm believer in writing as autobiography- that everything relates to my perception and experience of the world - and that my drive to write about what I see, or read or hear is coming directly from my own reaction to these things.

I think my point here is that this is also what drives me to listen so obsessively to so many differing artists, so many writers and musicians, I think about all the time flowing through their heads, their thought processes, their emotive phrasing that could be only relevant to a single moment of their lives and I wonder what other people get from a song. How do we define why we listen to music? What little mechanism in our minds that snaps into awareness as we hear a familiar beat, a rhythm, a vowel sound and then at what point do we disconnect after? Does it ever stop, do record collectors (you know the type) simply switch over to obsessive compulsive fetishism at some point and lose interest in the content. I mean to say, there are records we buy simply because of their ridiculousness and never play, well, maybe half a side..

If you're expecting a nice, succinct summation of this post then you'll be disappointed, as usual I am in a bit of a contemplative mood and this is the result. To search for a meaning in it all is perhaps the wrong way to look at it but a constant awareness, a self-vigilance is probably not a bad way to go.

I hope you realise that I'm not really talking about myself here, just trying to reach out and make a little sense of what's around us..

Media Control

What happened? Shit, oh yeah so, I was writing this and got distracted so I've started it again and was going to blather on about records and why I'm hooked on them. Remember CD's? Remember how they were once seen as the saviour, the answer to getting up and flipping the record over? Well, now you have to listen to something from beginning to end in one go. Tapes were cool, they're a bit chic at the moment but I can't see them returning to where they once were.

My first records were at christmas when I was eight or nine years old. I was given an old record player that used to live in the attic and was almost entirely made out of white plastic- even the speakers. People brought me singles and I had a Madness album -Absolutely, their second and a nasty Shakin Stevens album of his first band, The Sunsets which was still music for Holiday Camps but had slightly more of a Rockabilly ensemble thing ogoing on. But still, it was a Shakin' Stevens record and I have no excuse for not having burned it or thrown it out of the window at kids on bicycles.

CD's were fodder for the new wealth of the 1980's who promptly taped them so they could listen to them in their car, or who, like I and many others, had only tapes of said albums recorded by somebody who was the only person with a player. You wanted to believe the sound quality was better but, in the end it was still a tape and depended entirely upon the quality of your stereo.

Minidiscs proved a pointless medium for prerecorded music and bombed. My local record shop, back at the beginning of the last decade, had a minidisc of Londons Calling on the shelf for years, next to the Cassette racks and above the CD's, next to the picture discs and box sets. When Vinyl ran out of luck, and you could buy stuff like The Faust Tapes for less than two quid, I switched to cassettes, it was cheaper (did I talk about this in my VU post? Shit,) and there was a large variety to be found. It also meant the unparalleled joy of digging for tapes in charity shops, which brought up interesting finds.

At some point I realised I would be moving overseas and made the painful choice to sell my vinyl and switch to CD's. Knowing that a great many albums went to good homes was helpful, but there were a great many that just got dumped at charity shops (that many of them came from charity shops in the first place helped a little) but I just swaapped out for the discs, which now I'm swapping again for the vinyl, if I can find it. Those seven years have been tough and now many albums I first bought in the 1990's are almost impossible to find, even with the new kid- the digital download- poncing around the block and kicking everybody in the shins.

I don't know, I'm finding great things on the internet- albums long lost or only owned by collector scum-, even CD reissues which are long out of print, but at my cringing little collectors core I hear the vinyl crackle in the headphones and I just want to hold that album, to smell its musty left-in-a-barn/shed/attic odour and to clean its little grooves with a q-tip and some isopropanol detergent before setting the stylus down into its rumbling walls and let the music issue forth. Because in the end, it's really all about the music, the vibrations, the plates cut to press the records.

I could go on but it might get a bit perverse.

The Sacred Guitar & Violin Music Free Jam Wham Bam Righteous and Forthright No-Nonsense Boogie of The Modern Aztecs or: How to Dance like the Birds.

So here we are, winter still has its cold grip on the hip and the weak alike, but the sky is full and glorious blue and I'm rooting and tooting in the Goodwill store, looking to find me some fuzzy warbles to make it seem less like the frozen tundra here that it is. Digging, you know, down on my hands and knees going "Dionne Warwick, Dionne Warwick, Randy Travis, Randy Travis, Mason & Profit" and, every so often coming up for air and taking some seriously deep breaths cos its getting stifling in there.

The shop is big - football pitch big - and there's a guy standing over by the broken vcr's and midi systems trying every one out and writing stuff down in a notepad. There's an electric typewriter you won't be able to lift, and even if you do you probably won't find a ribbon for it. The clothing is colour coded and there are no jumpers any more but it looks pretty.

Above the records, which are on the lowest shelf so you have to get down on your knees, are cd's - loads of them. In absolutely no order whatsoever and, to make it worse there are CD Roms in there, and other pc games and crap that fell out of a sunday paper. Opposite these are the DVD's, all priced at $5 in spite of many of them being dollar store public domain movies that you can download from the internet for free and totally legally.

Anyway, the vinyl sludge gives way to a stack of Folkways records, mostly from Africa or the middle east. The first couple are so badly scratched that I send them skimming out over the racks of rainbow clothing, whistling past the ears of deaf pensioners trailing oxygen tanks and digging for cigarettes or their heart monitors from their bags to be embedded in the far wall like a series of post-modernist ducks.

The first thing of interest is a belly dancing record - its more of a Persian classical music lp but I'm guessing the selling point was a long forgotten craze in America for suburban middleclass boredoms to shake their hips and serve hummus on friday lunchtimes to other, equally bored suburbanites. But hey! It's the beginning of a stack. Now we've got music from Morrocco, Music from the Ouled Nail and, ultimately before we slip back into mediocrity and Polka albums, The Sacred Guitar & Violin Music of the Modern Aztecs. Its orange, pretty close to Mint as you're likely to ever see and has a big red, felt-tip pen cross in one corner - bound at one time to send it to the dump bin in a store catering for lovers of ABBA, Billy Joel, Badfinger and the occasional doodlings of some long-forgotten punk/folk/reggae band that never sold as many records as they thought. This was just littering up the racks, and, as CD's would be on their way in soon anyhow it didn't really matter that they were dumping stuff that never sold. Maybe one person bought this record - I know that someone did because it was part of a collection - unless the local radio station was clearing out the unplayed. That happens a lot here, there are many records in my shelves that once graced the local community radio's vault, but I'm digressing.

Man and instruments, somewhere in south America (actually Puyecaco, Municipal of Ixhuatlan de Madero, Veracruz) and recorded during 1972-73 and issued in 1977. It's still available from Folkways on one of their custom CD's or as a download so I'm guessing this was quite a find. it didn't take very long for the album to become one of my favourites, I mean its really that good. Somewhere between Cajun/Zydeco and the twee worldbeat pop nonsense of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra. To begin with, the first few seconds are tuning up and then it launches into one of the most glorious, scraping, thruming, see-sawing dance tunes you're ever likely to hear. This really is celebratory music for social gatherings, for days of wining and dining and sniffing the roses. Or for drinking the wine and dancing like nobody is watching before collapsing into the rose bushes. The beat is slightly off but the song never falters - you can hear people talking, perhaps calling out prayers or taking requests whilst the bottle and maybe the hat, are passed around.

Sacred Guitar & Violin Music is music for circles - circles of friends and of strangers and of circles to give thanks for our friends and strangers. It is the never ending heart beating beneath the skin of the earth and it is the sound of birds swarming in the evening sky. I could trip out and say its music for the birds and bee's - or perhaps more honestly it's for a version of the Wicker Man where it all turns out right in the end.

The different tracks are all similar in their meandering and scraping. The second track kicks off by dropping the tempo but the sensation of langour still remains from the first, it is a changing of gears and this time the sounds of voices are more invasive but still the music winds on and on, like a folk dance extending into the small hours, gradually the beat reaches a point where all involved are in some sort of trance. The violin takes on the sound of Cales Viola on All Tomorrows Parties from the first Velvet Underground lp - maybe that was the Modern Aztecs favourite album - until it winds down and the loud cluckering of chickens is heard before a series of chopping thuds silences the bird sounds suggesting either a sacrificial ritual or lunch. I don't know, whatever was on the descriptive notes once included in the sleeve now escapes me because it is lost.

This is ritual folk music but it drifts into drone and you'd be entirely forgiven for thinking it a weird jazz album if you happened to walk in on the middle, but to be honest I always have a blast playing this. Recordings for folkways always leave the impression in my mind of a middle aged couple with a Nagra and some microphones sitting on a log in some dusty village, perhaps sipping champagne chilled in a stream and almost invariably White. Of course, listening is an entirely subjective experience.

These are some notes I found online, possibly the original liner notes, but who knows anymore?

"The Aztecs are one of Mexico’s largest Indian

groups, numbering over 1,000,000 and they are

spread over many parts of contemporary Mexico.

One area they inhabited was the southern and

southwestern fringe of the Huasteca - an ancient

and independent kingdom in eastern Mexico

located along the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of

the Panuce River. The region is also inhabited by

the Huastecs, the Otomi and the Tepehua Indians.

This recording was made during 1972 and 1973 in

the Village of Puyecaco, Municipio of Ixhuatlan de

Madero, Veracruz. The songs recorded include

Xochipitsauak, perhaps the most widely known

piece of sacred music in the entire Huasteca; a

series of sacred music that accompanies the short

ritual carried out at each house during the winter

solstice fertility ceremony and the Dance of the

Tlamatiketl where the height of the winter solstice

fertility ritual has been reached. Also three

Ayakachmitotia’ rattle dances (Nopalli’, Koatl and

Ehtokani’) that are the typical musical background

for the ritual dancing performed for their fertility

diety Tonantsi’ during the winter solstice ceremony

called Tlaketelilis."

I felt kind of guilty as I was reading (re-reading) Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung and Bangs castigates those of us who don't play White Light/White Heat every day, and who's copies are pristeen and near mint. I have to admit that my copy is pretty blemish free, its a recent reissue which I swapped from the old remastered cd, which in turn had replaced the cassette I'd bought in a dump bin somewhere for a couple of quid. The cassette cover was white with a strangely blurred image of toy soldiers. I'm going to run downstairs in a bit and see if I still own it because its really weird. Anyway, I brushed off Lesters grumbling and spun the record, headphones on, feet up. Its not that I don't play it enough- I just haven't played it recently. I still love it, the production sound and original mastering is awful (I'm guessing the remaster is only on the cd) but that has always been a part of its charm. If you didn't know it, the disconcertingly Smell the Glove-like black mirror sleeve does in fact contain a black on black image of a skull and crossbone tattoo.

Strangely this is a perfect representation of what you will find contained within - sludgy, dark music that fills your head with musical shadows. It's so dense that the drums are all but squeezed to the far left and right of the mix as Reed and Cale wrestle for dominance in the mix. It sounds like a conventional drum kit Mo is thumping but it's hard to tell.

There's something refreshing about this album, like a dose of mouthwash for your ears. As far as perfect pop product goes this is a million miles away from any other album of its time. Due to the back and forth of the instruments in the mix it feels as if they were actually fighting over the knobs and sliders in the control room. Is there a Mono mix? I think that would be almost unbearable but something I should investigate further.

A guy mails himself to Wisconsin to the girl who thought she'd left him behind and he gets his head split open. Thats The Gift - a rambling sprawling spoken word/jam that takes up 40% of side one. The VU are in the right channel, Cale is in the Left reading a drole tale of love by Reed that shouldn't really work but does. By this point in their career they are so far off the map you need GPS to find 'em, and it gets better.

Jumping to side two we have I heard her Call my Name which is no wave 10 years early. As a song it almost makes no sense, the mix is so overloaded that almost everything but the ludicrous, atonal guitar solo gets squeezed like fingers in a meat grinder with Reed gurning through gritted, speed decaying teeth churning the handle making mincemeat of everyone else. And as if that weren't enough you're about to get hit with Sister Ray - 17 minutes of delerium inducing riffing that sounds like somebody fed weird drugs to a garage band and taped their eyes shut. Drag queen prostitutes and sailors loom large in Reeds heroin soaked lyrics as the band live up to the promises of Booker Tease (the instrumental from the Right channel of The Gift back on side one) and unleashes the never ending grind with three chords and Cales hammering organ solos. The bass plops in and out, as if they're back to fighting again in the control room and then it all speeds up and just goes batshit.

The band have often been quoted as saying the live version they played never made it onto this album, that it was bigger, badder, better and so forth, but really what happens on the stage never happens in the studio. That White Light was ever actually recorded in a studio and made it onto album is something you can be grateful for every time you play it. Which hopefully will be more than just a couple of times. Their first album is often criticised as being unlistenable, but really, that is a comment best reserved for this one.

Jesus died for somebody, but not for Patti.

Oh alright, I'll do this one. Patti Smith started out somewhere at some time in a city, she had a buddy who took pictures, there's a book about them that she wrote. I haven't read it, although I probably will at some point. Patti has my respect. As a writer, as a musician, as a person. I know there's critics out there screaming "Fraud!" and "Sell out!" and all those things that angry people do from time to time, but Patti's alright. Anybody with the conviction to take what they do and make it into something of the calibre of The Patti Smith Groups "Horses" long player gets carte blanche in my book.

Lou Reed & Metallica made a record together? People hate it? Thats fine. Lou not only had the balls to release Metal Machine Music during a decade he can't remember - he also released Coney Island Baby (one of the finest albums of the 1970's) and, in spite of the animosity between them now, formed The Velvet Underground with some other guys. But back to Patti Smith.

Horses takes Smiths poetry, her knack for theatrical showmanship and throws them in the dryer with the bare bones elements of Rock & Roll, a packet of cigarettes and enough spare change to buy a small drink at the bar before show time.

The album opens with the now-legendary line "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine" which sets you up, right there and then. Patti's pissed, she's got a guitar and some guys in the band that play guitar. They rip in "Gloria" which has long since become a bit of a rock standard, hell, even before, it was a standard garage tune. Turning it into a six minute epic took some doing but, by this time you'd better be hooked, or else there's no hope of you getting the rest of it. Their secret is that little seed of rock and roll planted somewhere along the way. The songs start out almost like the music for some kind of a procession, a funeral march for the dear deaf departed, for rock music as it was in 1975..

After Gloria with its crazy wind up, and after Redondo Beach (yeah, it wasn't the Clash who found reggae and stuck it on a punk album..) come the glorious mess of Birdland. A true Smith poem of images and emotions. A dreamy trip to the stars. Its laying on your back and staring up into the night sky in summer. It's a memory and a dream. Just listen to it, gives me goose pimples every time. Free Money closes side one, and, listening to this after hearing other peoples versions you get the feeling that they somehow missed the point. Ahhh, but isn't that the joy of poetry?

You know, my first experience of Patti Smith was on a Sounds of the Seventies show on tv many years ago. I'm not old enough to remember this stuff from the first time around, but I'm old enough that it still means something to me, that first vibrant clash of guitars that signalled the end of the old order and the birth of something new. But I digress. I picked up a copy of Horses a while back, its pretty beat up, there's a fair bit of crackle on the vinyl and no doubt, a fair bit of dirt in the grooves but what really struck me about the record was that somebody loved this record enough that they wrote their name on the cover, reminding me of the time when vinyl wasn't such a desirable commodity it was, as CD's are now, just another format that you stick in a machine to get music out of.