We are in Kansas still

One of the retrospective embarrassments I have with Rip It Up and Start Again is The Embarrassment  - the non-appearance of the Kansas (post?)punk group and their terrific 1980 debut single "Sex Drive". 

But during the original postpunk era, I'm not sure I'd ever even come across the group.  Their name and their music did not reach our side of the pond. 

Not sure how they actually swam into my ken but eventually they did a few years ago. I became quite addicted to "Sex Drive". 

Particularly enjoy the unusual drumming from Brent Giessmann, which has a curious flappy yet powerful quality that really drives "Drive" along. Its placing in the mix adds to the unusualness, like the drum kit is on a promontory of the stage jutting into the audience, so it's right up in your face.

I read someone somewhere describing this song as pure American punk with nothing English about it at all. 

Ah, now I remember - it was while researching Still In A Dream, the grunge chapter. I was reading an early edition of Sub Pop when it was a fanzine. So it must have been Bruce Pavitt. He was going through that transition common in underground US music, from utter Anglophile Noo Wavism to full-throated Anglophobia. Hence describing The Embarrassment as "all-American rock, nothing to do with effete Anglo crap".

However to my ears the guitar on "Sex Drive" sounds distinctly early Banshees. As though at least one copy of Join Hands had reached a Lawrence, Kansas record store. 

B-side "Patio Drive" also superb. 

Apparently, the Embarrassment genre-tagged themselves as "Blister Pop", which is neat.

A valuable corrective supplement to  Rip It Up arrives with the publication of No Choice but Action: The Kansas Postpunk Revolution by Darren DeFrain and Francis X. Connor. It's out now on University of Kansas Press.

Release Rationale: 

The Embarrassment. Get Smart!. The Moving Van Goghs. Micronotz. Truck Stop Love. These weren’t outliers. They were the beating heart of a vibrant, self-sustaining cultural ecosystem pulsing through Lawrence, Manhattan, Topeka, and Wichita. With no industry infrastructure to lean on, musicians built their own: basements turned into venues, cassette culture fueled DIY distribution, photocopied zines became lifelines, and word-of-mouth grew into a network strong enough to launch bands onto national stages. Additionally, Black Site has produced an essential audio companion album that includes twenty-four tracks of bands featured in the book. No Choice but Action challenges the coastal narratives by positioning the Midwest as a creative epicenter, not a cultural afterthought.

At a moment when conversations about how creator economy and independent artist culture thrives, this book offers fresh insight, rigorous scholarship, and a narrative accessible to both scholars and general readers.

There is also an album accompanying the book, released this very day by Black Site. 

You can hear the comp here: https://ncba.bandcamp.com/album/no-choice-but-action

release rationale;

Kansas postpunk from 1978 to 1994 wasn’t just music—it was a lifeline, a defiance of the ordinary, and a community built from raw energy and unapologetic passion. In small towns and underground venues across the state, bands created a sound and a movement that refused to go unnoticed. For decades, the stories of those bands—their late-night gigs, road trips, DIY recordings, and the bonds they forged—lived only in the memories of those who were there.

The "No Choice but Action" book started as a way to capture that spirit before it faded. It began with interviews, old fliers, photographs, and cassette recordings unearthed from basements and boxes. As the stories came together, what emerged wasn’t merely a history book—it was a testament to the grit and creativity that defined an era. The book became a love letter to the Kansas punk scene, an attempt to preserve the voices of those who lived it.

But something was missing. As much as the words told the story, it was the music that brought it all to life. The idea of pairing the book with a vinyl record felt inevitable. Postpunk isn’t just read—it’s felt. The compilation you’re holding is more than an accompaniment to the book. It’s a revival of the sound and attitude that made Kansas punk unforgettable. 

We extend our heartfelt thanks to all the musicians, producers, and archivists featured on this album for their contributions to the Kansas punk rock scene. Your music not only defined a generation but also continues to inspire new audiences today.

We also acknowledge the support of Wichita State University, whose commitment to academic and cultural research provided the foundation for this endeavor, and more specifically, Joshua Smith, Gloria Esparza, Shaybree Haynes, Lucas Gill, and Joshua Cary for their assistance in the production of this album.

Finally, to the fans of punk rock—past, present, and future—thank you for keeping the spirit of this music alive. This album is a tribute to the DIY ethos, raw energy, and unrelenting creativity that defined Kansas punk rock.

We hope it serves as a time capsule, an invitation for further discussion, and a source of inspiration for generations to come.

Goodness, there was a whole documentary about the Embarrassment. But you'll have to watch it on YouTube as its age-blocked.

Ah, the guitarist Bill Goffrier went on to be in Big Dipper,  who I do remember from the Still In A Dream era. Quite liked the releases they had on Homestead but not as much as some other things on the label.   

Now it's Siberia (slight return) / proto-Plunderphonics

 

Music by Daphne Oram - it is actually a varispeeded version of Sandy Nelson's "Teen Beat"

So she invented Plunderphonics  ahead of schedule - i.e. John Oswald's approach where your collage is sourced entirely from a single other work.  

Indeed before he got hold of a sampler,  Oswald used a variable speed turntable on Dolly Parton's version of "The Great Pretender"

(Actually there are some other composers who did the musique concrete piece based on a single pop cultural source thing quite early  - James Tenney might have pipped Oram there...

This is later I think but pre-Oswald

Then there was this from 1969 -  don't know if it's based on a single Laura Nyro or fragments across her discography 

Earlier "now it's Siberia" post. Based on the best thing I have seen on TV all year -  and like "Snow", it's from 1963 - a report on the Big Freeze that brought Great Britain to a standstill, looking back from only a few months after. 

Geoffrey Jones made another film about trains:1975's "Locomotion". This time the score was  radiophonic music composed by Donald Fraser and played by Steeleye Span of all people. 

Mordant Music reissued the music many years ago with remixes

BFI blurb about the film and the music:

In 1974 Geoffrey Jones was asked to submit proposals for a film to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and, having already been commissioned by Edgar Anstey to report in detail on the whole of BR’s film archive, he jumped at the chance. Anstey asked for three treatments of different durations. A 15 minute version was chosen, since the film was to be part of a travelling exhibition and a greater length would have meant unacceptable queues.

Again, a pilot film was made using library footage, much of it from one of BTF’s earlier productions Giants of Steam, cut to a music track that Geoffrey had arranged himself and electronically processed. A successful screening to a panel of BR officials clinched the support needed to get the film off the ground. Locomotion features over 400 separate images woven together with a strong continual accelerando arranged by Donal Fraser and performed by members of Steeleye Span. It combines traditional instrumental and compositional techniques with state-of-the-art, electronic synthesis. There then followed a period of hiatus until Geoffrey was appointed producer/director at the Thorn/EMI Video Productions Ltd. The company only lasted a few years, but during this time he made a pilot film, Season’s Project, with Donald Fraser and the English Chamber Orchestra still yet to be completed. In 2003 Geoffrey Jones received a grant from the Arts Council of Wales, enabling him to create A Chair-a-Plane Kwela and A Chair-a-Plane Flamenco from material he had shot nearly 50 years earlier. He refers to these two resulting films as ‘notes in the use of digital editing’. Geoffrey Jones has opened our eyes to the rhythm of film.

Actually Jones did yet another film on this subject, Rail - and this was in between Snow and Locomotion. It came out in 1967 and is said to also involve Daphne Oram's music, although it doesn't sound very electronic to me. 

But he wasn't completely mono-thematic

Watt the hell!

The spirit of peak-nuddy Sounds rematerializes in the current issue of The Wire with this "relaxed" shot of cover star Mike Watt at home in the seeming starkers.

If you peer closely then it becomes clear that short shorts or at least boxers are on -  but the angling seems almost deliberately designed to create the opposite first-glance impression. 

 

Hello,

We have re-evaluated the post titled "New Wave nuddy (slight unsightly return)" against Community Guidelines (https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy). Upon review, the post has been reinstated. You may access the post at https://hardlybaked2.blogspot.com/2025/09/new-wave-nuddy-slight-unsightly-return.html .

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Tellus a story

Death Is Not The End takes avant-garde LPs originally released by a New York artist-owned label and reissues them as cassettes....  Earth Libraries takes avant-garde cassettes originally released by a New York artist-owned label and reissues them as vinyl LPs.... 

TELLUS: The Audio Cassette Magazine Anthology Vol. 1 is two metallic silver vinyl discs and 36 tracks of selections from the long-running series of multi-artist tapes compiled and issued by the downtown Manhattan imprint Tellus from 1983 onwards. 

It's coming out on November 13.

Release rationale: 

"... Tellus transformed the humble audio cassette into a magazine, commissioning and publishing new works by musicians, composers, visual artists, poets, writers, choreographers, and performers who were reshaping the boundaries of contemporary art. Each issue invited listeners into a world where no wave, industrial music, spoken word, Fluxus performance, electroacoustic composition, downtown pop, conceptual art, and avant-garde experimentation could coexist on equal footing.

... The thirty-track collection has been newly mastered from the original Tellus cassette masters, marking the first time these recordings have been officially available on streaming services in their original form. Earth Libraries further celebrates Tellus' enduring legacy with a limited-edition deluxe double LP, created in close collaboration with Tellus founders Joseph Nechvatal, Carol Parkinson, and Claudia Gould....  Housed in deluxe packaging, the release includes a booklet featuring new liner notes by Thurston Moore, original artist biographies, and an 11" × 17" reproduction of an original Tellus promotional poster. 

"The story of Tellus begins, fittingly, at the Rum Runner Bar on Canal Street. There, in 1983, visual artist Joseph Nechvatal, curator Claudia Gould, and composer Carol Parkinson conceived an entirely new kind of publication. Portable cassette players were transforming how people experienced music, and the trio saw an opportunity to use the cassette itself as a curatorial medium—one capable of circulating work that traditional record labels, galleries, and magazines simply couldn't accommodate. Early recordings by Sonic Youth and Liquid Liquid sit alongside works by James Tenney, George Brecht, Takehisa Kosugi, Carol Parkinson, Y Pants, Live Skull, Shelley Hirsch, Lenny Pickett, Paul Dresher, Gregory Whitehead, and dozens of other artists whose work helped define one of the most fertile creative communities of the era.

"I would say it came out of and feeds into non-conformity," recalls Nechvatal. "This is music and art that has no place in the popular market."

Rather than viewing that as a limitation, Tellus embraced it as its mission.

"We just wanted an alternative," says Parkinson. "And we knew there were other people out there that wanted an alternative."

Produced through Harvestworks, the pioneering New York nonprofit dedicated to supporting artists working with sound and emerging technologies, Tellus became much more than an experimental music magazine. It functioned as an audio exhibition space, a publishing platform, a historical archive, and an international network connecting artists working across disciplines. At a time when access to recording equipment remained limited and independent distribution was difficult, Harvestworks provided artists with the resources and community necessary to realize ambitious sonic work, while Tellus ensured those works reached audiences willing to venture beyond conventional music.

Tellus emerged from one of the most vibrant cultural moments in New York history. Throughout the early and mid-1980s, Lower Manhattan's affordable lofts, storefront galleries, rehearsal spaces, and artist-run venues fostered unprecedented collaboration between musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, writers, architects, and visual artists. Painters formed bands. Composers built installations. Performance artists experimented with synthesizers. Genre became increasingly irrelevant and Tellus documented this world as it unfolded....

Just as important as the sounds themselves were the publication's visual identities. Each cassette arrived with newly commissioned artwork by some of the most significant contemporary artists of the period. Covers by Cindy Sherman, David Wojnarowicz, Walter Robinson, Jane Dickson, James Nares, and others reinforced Tellus' belief that sound belonged within the broader conversation of contemporary art. Rather than separating music from visual practice, the magazine dissolved those distinction entirely, creating a publication where every issue functioned simultaneously as an exhibition, a listening experience, and an archival document....

Alongside the anthology, Earth Libraries has produced a new short documentary exploring the remarkable story behind Tellus and the community that brought it to life. Featuring new interviews with founders Joseph Nechvatal, Carol Parkinson, and Claudia Gould, alongside artists and collaborators who helped define the magazine's groundbreaking vision, the film traces Tellus from its origins in downtown New York's fertile art scene to its lasting influence on experimental music and contemporary art. Through firsthand reflections and rare archival material, the documentary reveals how a small group of artists transformed the audio cassette into one of the most innovative publishing platforms of the 1980s. The film will screen exclusively at record stores, galleries, museums, and cultural venues across the country in advance of the anthology's November 13 release before becoming available online following the album's release.

Pre-order here

It’s a fascinating document of a long-ago moment of cross-town musical traffic.

Among the treats on Vol. 1 is a piece by Sonic Youth titled "Scream".

In the liner notes, Thurston Moore recalls how he and Lee Ranaldo made the piece while Sonic Youth were in the middle of their first tour of Europe:

"We had discovered, one fine June day, a magical tunnel of sound in the modest town of Rolle, Switzerland.... This tunnel reverberated every utterance and ululation into a wondrous echo. Lee and I couldn’t believe our sonic luck – we began to hum, hoot, shout, and howl, with various pitched roars, exploring and challenging the dynamics of the space, giddy to its sonorous scape as they enveloped our vibratory receptors. One of us had fortuitously recorded this impromptu improvisation on our cassette recorder which we then began to introduce into our live performances. In some ways, “Scream”, as we titled the track, was my favorite “song” our band ever created."  Upon their return to NYC, they found that they'd been invited to contribute to the first release on the new cassette label: "an audio magazine of sorts" focused on the reciprocal bleed-through "between the strictly experimental practices" at artspaces like The Kitchen and the noisier edges of post-postpunk rock festering in grungier less art-coded venues. 

Another track on the Anthology that caught my eye is "Moonlight Ride", a 1985 track originally contributed to Tellus #10: All Guitars! by Bond Bergland. 

Formerly of San Francisco industrial extremists Factrix, now transplanted to the Lower East Side, Bergland must have been in the process of forming Saqqara Dogs - a completely different proposition to Factrix, cosmic rock with tribal rhythms as the launch pad for Bond's skyscraping guitar.  

Saqqara Dogs were favorites of my set at Melody Maker.  I think Factrix-fan Jon Savage originally tipped us off about their mini-LP World Crunch.  Bond and then-partner Ruby Ray (a photographer who created the psychedelic visuals for their shows) generously let me stay at their apartment in Alphabet City on my very first visit to Manhattan in the cold early months of 1987.  

As I relate in Still In A Dream, this was going in at the deep end for a New York neophyte. They lived in what I think was a converted former body shop (it had a roll-up metal door) and was located, if memory serves, on 2nd Street between C and D.  In early '87, the vibe was much closer to the No Wave era than the gentrified area it had became by the 2000s. 

 

Saqqara Dogs make a cameo in the book itself, as my kindly hosts, but their music appears in the 50 Lost Treasures fanzine: 

Saqqara Dogs – World Crunch (1986)

Formed from the ashes of San Francisco industrial group Factrix, Saqqara Dogs could not have roamed further from their start point: World Crunch is unabashed cosmic rock, veering up out of the squalor of the Lower East Side to caress the sky. Bond Bergland’s sustained drones of celestial guitar levitate over a neo-tribal pulse of percussion and Chapman Stick bass. The nine-minute “Greenwich Mean Time” is as awe-inspiring as the Aurora Borealis. 

Bond also had a fine solo album out around this time  - I particularly love the song "Found Wonder"

The Shit Songs By _______ (a series: 1 of ?? - The Doors)

Every great band has shit songs.  

It's mystifying - you would think greatness would be like a tap, you could just turn it on and out it comes. 

You would think also that being in such proximity to greatness - having produced it - the group or artist would have the ability to distinguish achieved genius from slack shite.  But no, apparently not! 

It's not even like these great groups sheepishly poop it out hoping we won't notice or we'll forgive them. They often seem genuinely deceived as to what their own great material is. Viz, Morrissey and Marr's belief that Strangeways, Here We Come is their best album!. (And yes we'll be getting to the Smiths in due course).

I mean, why - if you've done great -  would you ever come to the table with less than "Eleanor Rigby" / "There Is Light That Never Goes Out"/"The End"/"Gimme Shelter"?  

Well, I guess there's the money, and the record company breathing down your neck, and the impatient, hungry, none-too-discerning fans to please. But also, the artist's judgement seems to wane. Morrissey genuinely thinks "Shakespeare's Sister" is a great tune! He also invariably think his latest album is the best thing he's ever done. 

For the debut edition, an inventory of The Doors's excrescences, their excrement.

Some groups are just level-pegging reliable suppliers of whatever it is they have to offer (I doubt if an inventory of Rockpile would yield a substantial tally of shitsong, but nor would there be a heap of greatsong either). But The Doors are a perfect example - perhaps even the ultimate example - of a group where there is a huuuuuuuuge disparity between peaks and plops. A yawning gulf.

I invite you to point out where I am mistaken ("that one is good, cloth ears!") and which specks of sorry shite I have mistaken for glistening gems and thus omitted from the list below

But comments such as "all of them", "every song" etc are not welcome. This exercise is for people who love, or at least appreciate, the band while remaining aware of the Doors flaws. 

Oh yes - obviously I do not count the post-Jim albums as Doors albums. The Doors= the band fronted by Jim Morrison. An American Prayer exists in an ontologically ambiguous zone (is it part of the canon of hauntology?). I like the whole album anyway, I think it's almost shitsong-free. Whereas Other Voices and Full Circle are end to end shitsong. 

Also I've not included the live albums, even though that's where (Absolutely Live) you could find the best - and for a really long time, the only - version of "The Celebration of the Lizard", Not that I would count it as a shit-song, or shit-song-suite more accurately, anyway.   I love it. 

The Doors - A Shitsong Inventory, Album by Album

The Doors

Twentieth Century Fox

Back Door Man

I Looked At You

 

Strange Days

Unhappy Girl

 

Waiting For The Sun

Summertime’s Almost Gone

Wintertime Love

We Could Be So Good Together

Yes, the River Knows

Five to One

 

The Soft Parade 

Tell All the People

Easy Ride

Wishful Sinful

Morrison Hotel 

 

Waiting for the Sun

You Make Me Real

Land Ho!

Queen of the Highway

Maggie M'Gill

LA Woman

Been Down So Long

Crawling King Snake

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

By this calculus, Waiting for The Sun and Morrison Hotel are equal-first worst. 

But then Morrison Hotel has "Maggie M'Gill", their all-time shittest song, so I would give the thumbs-down edge to Morrison Hotel. 

Mystifyingly "Maggie M'Gill" appeared on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine, the double album of greatest hits + deep cuts. Really stunk up would otherwise be a pretty great (if chronologically jumbled )selection, with a cool gatefold cover to boot. 

Actually I am mistaken..."Maggie M'Gill" is a shitsong, but the shittestsong ever (and it's also mystifyingly included on Weird Scenes) that was recorded by The Doors during Jim's lifetime is "You Need Meat (Don't Go No Further"). That was sung by Ray Manzarek and first appeared as the B-side of "Love Her Madly". And it's really rank. I wonder what the Willie Dixon original is like. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I had to reacquaint myself with LA Woman to do this and I have to say, I'm thinking it might be their most overrated album.  Despite the so-so-high heights like 'LA Woman" itself, "Texas Radio and the Big Beat", "Riders on the Storm" and "Love Her Madly", there ain't arf a lotta slothful trudging blues on there, and brisker stuff that is like Booker T and the MGs with poesy on top.  But people like the narrative of "sudden twilight surge of mojo just before the End", I guess.  

In an earlier assessment, I had it like this: 

... the band’s journey from the bold entrance of The Doors (their best album, if suffering slightly from over-exposure) through Strange Days (their darkest and most psychedelic album), onto Waiting For The Sun (their most confused and least satisfying), The Soft Parade (their funniest and most under-rated) and the alleged return-to-bluesy form of Morrison Hotel (their dreariest and most over-rated, while still containing plenty of gems) before winding up with LA Woman (their most accomplished and poignant). 

movement culture people / the roads of creation

 

Bob Marley and the Wailers with the mighty "Exodus" 

I have always heard the lyric as "movement culture people" which I prefer to what I have just established is the actual lyric "movement of Jah people"

"movement culture people" expands outwards to include Neu! and all sorts, whereas "movement of Jah people" narrows to a religious meaning

Under "movement culture people", you could also file another song on this rather cool episode of Top of the Pops from 1977 -   "Roadrunner" 

albeit not a mimed performance by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers but a daft but enjoyable dance routine from Pan's People, or is it Legs and Co

The song got to #11 in the UK charts - amazing. But then "Marquee Moon" was a UK hit single too, it's in the chart rundown at the start of this episode in fact.

Richman has quite a case of adenoids, but it just adds to the gawky aura of amateurism.

But wait, there is another connection between the Wailers and Modern Lovers beyond the utopian motion vision  (and the word in common - "roads of creation" in "Exodus")

For later in that same year JR & and ML would have an even bigger UK hit with the trifle "Egyptian Reggae", an instrumental. #5 in the hit parade.

Again danced with some proto-Bangles nonsense by the resident troupe at TOTP

Here's JR himself doing the sideways dance thing

Egypt - well that's where Moses is leading the chosen people out of. As the song says

(Movement of Jah people) Send us another brother Moses

(Movement of Jah people) From across the Red Sea

The very first time I heard "Exodus" was not the original but a junglized version played at a 1994 festival in Clissold Park in Stoke Newington  by deejays from Exodus, the Luton rave collective.

I'd always assumed that the track was made by someone associated with Exodus  - but doesn't necessarily seem to be so, instead it's a kind of anthem-of-opportunity

Another "Exodus"-bassed track, this time the mode of deliverance is airplane

Bouba Sacko

 

A ridiculously under-recorded guitarist from Mali

I heard Bouba Sacko on this comp

Went looking and was surprised how little there was to be found

Most of it as a sideman or accompanist to a star singer

E.g. he's on this 

Either that or he's in a group (or duo) called Bajarou, whose one album has a little bit too much of that '90s sound (canned reverb) to it (and an offputting album title 'n' all- Big String Theory)

Whereas this (one more time!) almost could be off the first Velvet Underground album

I can't work out if Sokona Sacko is the female singer or the other guitarist

Here's a little film about Bouba

A different Sacko - Ousmane