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.