Saturday, April 22, 2023

at the precise nexus point....

...of Prog, Glam and New Wave, you find Split Enz






Grotesque and risible! 

Except there is one brief moment, from about 2.20 onwards, where their desire to be Roxy very nearly happens - the sax gets gaseous and the faint whiff of "2HB" and "Amazona" reaches our nostrils - but then it dissipates almost instantly, the sax shifts into a thin-bodied jocosity, like The Piranhas or a dozen other pubby New Wavers

("Desire to be Roxy" - just noticed that "Sweet Dreams" is from 1976's Second Thoughts, produced by no less than  Phil Manzanera  - I wonder how much he had to do with the eruptive-bit-in-"Amazona" quality to that brief exciting moment in the song?)














By the third album, Dizrythmia, released August 1977, Split Enz are fully, archetypally New Wave, but the late-glam dress-up-box thing lingers 


Those jackets are nearly cool though, almost like a hand-painted suit that Tristan Tzara might have worn at the Cabaret Voltaire




 

A December 1976 review of Split Enz live, from NME





















"My favorite bit was Noel Crombie's spoons solo" !



Fully transitioned to Noo Wave (so in another sense, rewinding the clock to the pre-psych mid-Sixties - suits, neat hair). But still a bit garish and over-glossed.



Now there were a bunch of groups at this exact midpoint of the '70s who had this "let's get dressed up" late glam thing going on, but in a fatally "let's not take ourselves seriously" way. Generally, they looked a right mess, as if a fancy dress party in its last plastered throes had somehow wandered onto a stage.

Deaf School  - just like the Enz, hovering on the cusp between Old Wave and New Wave, with aspects of pastiche and winking irony that are sorta kinda pomo.










































Also caught between late glam and New Wave, hovering on the cusp of bigness for a single year (1976), Doctors of Madness

 


As with Deaf School, not much prog in the equation here - unless we count the violin. 






Aussie neighbours to Split Enz, Skyhooks were coming from the same  rock-as-theatre place - this video pushes the "it's showtime"  vibe with its dressing room with lights all round the mirror frame mise-en-scene








And then like Split Enz, they strip down a bit musically and sartorially in hopes of hitching a ride on New Wave



Another Aussie - Duffo - a Bowie damaged feller  but here hitching a ride on punk (yet also looking like a laughing - or laughable - gnome).










   























Andrew Parker directs my attention to another Aussie bunch - The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band. Strangely, just seeing their name, I could already see-hear them - and they look and sound almost exactly as I imagined!


Bang on the nail in terms of what I am talking about - and again, under the daft campy surface, there is serious musical chops on display. As with some other groups in this list, the music is not so much proggy as more in line with American roots-eclectic sophisto-rock, that area that includes The Band, Little Feat, Dr John, Ry Cooder, The Wild Tchoupitoulas...   If not for the silly clothes, voices and lyrics, you could imagine them joining the Last Waltz line-up.

 Another late glam troupe were Sailor, here brazenly imitating Roxy circa "Virginia Plain" and getting a couple of chart places higher (#2 to Roxy's #4) 


The voice and the piano bit  on "Glass of Champagne" are trademark infringement level infractions


And then just a little later in the decade  Big In Japan  - influenced by Deaf School, also heavily Bowie-damaged in the case of Jayne Casey and Holly Johnson, this troupe split into a number of postpunk / New Wave / careers of greater eminence


Also check out this embedding-disabled performance on What's On.

And then - later, mid-80s, quite out of synch with pop temporality, but still "at the precise nexus point" - the Cardiacs


Some would argue there's psychedelia in there as well as prog and New Wave.

Kooky but disturbed


This '82 Stonehenge free festival is probably similar to what greeted my aghast ears a few years later when me and my companions wandered unawares onto Port Meadow where a free festival was taking place, resulting in my first-time sighting-hearing of the Cardiacs. Although I didn't know the name of the group -  indeed it was years later that I realised "that was them!!". Hideous flashback ensued.  This video is really just audio, so only one dimension of the frightmare is captured - the herky-jerky psycho-clown sound.  



Every member looks like the stolid military-history obsessed one in Peep Show. Well, except for the girl with the sax.

Toy World  (title of debut tape) is a good trope for the vibe - clockwork non-sense. 





Back to the mid-70s historical cusp, I remember Punishment of Luxury well from when I first  started listening to late-night Radio 1: the deejays were enamored of the B-side to "Puppet Life", a herky-jerky tune called "Jellyfish".  Punilux included fringe theatre people and were obviously proggers and/or Bowie-damaged mime artist types. 



As the presenter on this TV show (clad appropriately in an 'ironic, this is showbiz' glittery jacket) points out, Puniluxer Brian Bond was taught mime by Lindsay Kemp - just like David Bowie and Kate Bush were. 





Reformed but still deformed



Steevee in comments suggests Toronto New Wavers The Dishes



Conceivably Ze Whiz Kidz (Tomata du Plenty - later of The Tupperwares and then the Screamers), a Seattle "comedy glam troupe", belong here -  albeit progless 



Max Webster


Singer went solo with a New Wave remodelling


How could I forget? Be-Bop Deluxe - they go from glam-tinged prog to New Wave-adjusted glamprop across several years in the exact midsection of the 1970s. Well I say "prog" but it's actually more like pomp rock - a more refined Queen without the front-man effrontery. 






Here it's 1978 and Nelson & Co are trying manfully to adjust the New Wave mandated tightness ("New Precision" indeed) but still keep the guitar heroics. 


Rebranded as Red Noise, with quasi-militaristic outfits and herky-jerky riffage, melodies that shriek and jut angularly,  nasty Noo Wave sax - an agile style jumper, that Bill. Soon he'd be onto synthpop. 


I guess Sensational Alex  Harvey Band count as being on the nexus point of prog, glam, and New Wave - the musicians had been Tear Gas, a Zappa-phile prog outfit.... then they happily went theatrical with Harvey as their charismatic frontman, but he  had a menace - and street delinquent preoccupations - that anticipated punk (even if the music itself never did)








 


















program from May 1976 Manchester Free Trade Hall - note reference to "punk" in the Cast List

























Can't forget SAHB's buddies The Tubes


A common denominator with a lot of these groups is that the band could really play - under the fancy dress and stage stunts, and regardless of the punkoid  'sick humor' / 'bad taste' themes, there is a suspicious (and distressing) level of chops on display

Oingo Boingo were originally a highly theatrical proggish ensemble called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo


Then they become quite literally the worst group that has ever existed. The internal struggle between proggoid desires and New Wave / commercial-aspiring constraints is quite hideous to hear-see.


Amazed to see a lead review of a Danny Elfman project in the Wire in the last year or so.


No glam element with this next one, as far as I'm aware - but certainly existing at some kind of nexus between prog and New Wave: Poli Styrene Jass Band

(although maybe there were theatrics in the live performances = apparently they had some narrative set pieces on stage, and involved actors as well as musicians later on).  - 



Unusually the prog element here is clearly Canterbury Sound - Kevin Ayers, Soft Machine, Hatfield and the North, Caravan, Egg ... with possibly some Euro-prog / late-psych (Supersister)

Poli Styrene Jass Band (note the odd anticipation of Poly Styrene) eventually became The Styrenes, but via another alter-ego, Styrene Money

















(via Cardrossmaniac2)



I feel there are more "nexus point" examples of this syndrome -  hyper-theatrical / overdressed late-glam / late-prog outfits who either have proto-New Wave aspects or manage to transition fairly seamlessly.  (Toyah - an actress, so has a head start... Sadista Mika Band... The Kursaal Flyers).

There are also New Pop era examples - Howard Jones, fairly clearly (the mime artist dude in chains whose only job in the group is visual is the giveaway). Also Nik Kershaw -  not so much image-wise as musically.  

The general tendency to visual excess in promo videos is where a lot of these tendencies seep back.









Monday, April 17, 2023

"That Voice" - the return !

The past month has seen the unexpected return to activity of Dorothy Moskowitz, as in The United States of America, with a new album titled Under the Endless Sky and credited to Dorothy Moskowitz and The United States of Alchemy.


Moskowitz is one of the original perpetrators of "That Voice", a topic that some of the more elderly readers of this blog cluster may remember getting chewed over collectively before

A quick recap: That Voice is a style of pure-toned and piercing female singing that dates to the late 1960s; a mode that owes almost nothing to blues or soul, does owe something to folk, but perhaps owes more to show tunes. That Voice is  belting, but the belt is psychedelicized. Often there's a witchy aura. Think Grace Slick, above all in "White Rabbit" and "Somebody To Love";  think the unseen singer Lynn Carey on the Beyond the Valley of the Dolls soundtrack; think Mariska Veeres of Shocking Blue for at least the duration of "Love Buzz"; think (less witchy than ethereal) Michal Shapiro of Elephant's Memory for at least the duration of "Old Man Willow". Not forgetting Edna Bejarano of The Rattles, who actually had a hit with a song called "The Witch". Latterday exponents would include poor dear Trish Keenan of Broadcast. And possibly Jane Weaver.   

Moskowitz's definitive That Voice showcase is "The Garden of Earthly Delights" off the one-and-only United States of America album. For that tune alone I am rather intrigued to hear the new record.


However what I am really here for today is someone I never got to round to dealing with properly in the previous bloggeration about That Voice. 

Judy Henske!

The baleful black bob! The mouth belting at full blast!

She is most renowned of course for 1969's Farewell Aldebaran, her collaboration with Jerry Yester. 

Henske's singing has that pure-toned, cuts-right-through-you-like-a-lance quality.  

Crime writer Andrew Vachss was a fan and in one of his books wrote: "If Linda Ronstadt's a torch singer, Henske's a flame thrower." 

But to my mind, the effect is less fiery and more ice queeny - steely and imperious. 

This one, "Rapture", is almost proto-Siouxsie, with a touch of flange or phase on the vocal adding to the astringent stridency.


Lyrics to the album written by Henske in a state of high fever, apparently - hence the torrid, imagistic quality.

"Three Ravens" got a lot of play on John Peel's Top Gear, it is said.


The title track and album closer is full-blown synthedelia, with Moog (Paul Beaver is among the cast involved)and there's electronic processing of the voice, although this song actually has Yester singing the lead vocal, I believe. 


Thing is, all well and good in theory (and I've friends who are total Aldebaran cultists). But in truth that tune is pretty unpleasant to listen to. Grating and overbearing.  A tinfoil-on-the-teeth effect on the old cochlea. 

"Rapture" aside, I'm not digging much of the album. 

Then there's her earlier solo career. 



That one is sort of Janis Joplin meets Ethel Merman 



Whereas the above sort of combines the give-me-fever dramatics of a Peggy Lee with Cher's deep-voiced, oddly wooden quality (meaning not so much inflexible and inexpressive but that it sounds like the voice is literally made out of wood).


Love That Look, not so keen on That Voice, or at least This Iteration of That Voice




Back to Dorothy Moskowitz ... I've been listening to the long opening title track of this new, wholly unexpected album while assembling this post.... and it's really rather good, has a sort of higgledy-piggledy, motley sprawl to the sound reminiscent of Let's Eat Grandma's first album...  But Time has taken its toll on That Voice, and one thing about That Voice is that there is no rasp to it. 

^^^^^^^^

Tying the discussion back to another witchy singer recently discussed here...




Sunday, April 16, 2023

"an inexhaustible well" (Bowles x 3)


Three appearances of the same Paul Bowles's text about the blink-and-you'll-miss-it transience of our earthly span.


Scenes from the Second Storey and Enemy of the Sun were both released in the same year, 1992. I guess the movie of The Sheltering Sky had come out in 1990. 

This next appearance was 25 years later, on Sakamoto's Async



Freakily a member of God Machine  - the bassist Jimmy Fernandez - died unexpectedly young, cutting short the group's existence after just two albums. 

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

The God Machine - a much hyped band of my era that somehow I never heard

I think my feeling was that after God and Godflesh, this lot were pushing it a bit on the nomenclature front. Reading the rave reviews, I detected a similar redundancy to the sound and thematics - like they'd set up shop in a rather narrow terrain between Prong and Loop. I did not seek them out, and for some reason, no one thought to send it to me, even though it would appear to have been "right up my street" at that time. 


Monday, April 10, 2023

Tabortastic and Flintlockfabulous

 

A delightful clip of a young June Tabor performing the trad. arr ditty "While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping" - a song about poaching. From the show Fanfare, which was built around the boy band Flintlock, who'd become popular on 1970s kids TV through appearances on You Must Be Joking and Pauline's Quirkes

What I like about this clip, alongside the performance, is the way that the six young lads plus older male presenter respectfully ask Tabor about her vocal craft (how she gets the "decorators" in with all those twiddly bits and ornaments) and the provenance of the song (Dorset, early 20th Century but probably the song is much older) and seem riveted by what she has to say. There's a funny bit about her practicising in the loo, for the acoustics and privacy, and to not drive her mum mad. 

The whole program from which the rendition of "Gamekeepers" comes is below,  complete with June joining in a mass performance of "Yellow Submarine" near the end of the show (from 21.48). Look out for June in a nautical hat at a rakish angle. 


Some more folk-rock on British TV - Steeleye Span (during the period when Martin Carthy was in the band) on an ATV show called Music Room, in 1970.  Carthy in particular looks newborn luminous. You got to love the presenter's trendy get-up.  They're so earnestly middle class and conscientious it's touching. 


June Tabor's first released recording would be with Steeleye's Maddy Prior under the name Silly Sisters


This, her debut proper, is much better


More top Tabor tuneage.... 

Two separate songs about shepherdess maidens in the heather bonny enough to be queens - but quite different in mood. 

 



Have been unable to get the song above, "The Scarecrow" (originally written by Lal Waterson and recorded on the album Bright Phoebus) out of my heads for days now. 

Haunting rendition of "The King of Rome" at around 24 minutes into Ken Russell's doc on the English Folk Song  - plus interview with Tabor. Thematically it's reminiscent of another Ken's work - Kes by Ken Loach.  Relatively recently written, no trad. arr job,  "The King of Rome" is a true-story story-song about a racing pigeon and heroic-ascent-by-proxy for the earthbound working class man. 


I've blogged about this program before, of course - inventoried its peculiar delights. And before that even! This blog, or blog-cluster, has been going so long, I guess it's hardly surprising that I would circle back to past obsessions and talismans. 

Back to June..

Above is another performance of "While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping", from an outdoor concert in Koln, 1990.

And here's one from the Joolz Holland show 























These boots are made for folking. 


Thursday, April 6, 2023

Hemel Hempstead as Winnerden Flats as Tambury


 












 

Quatermass 2 was filmed in Hemel Hempstead as it was being built (effectively a new town, populated with London overflow, glommed onto the side of an existing, much smaller and more charming town - which thereafter became known as Old Hemel). In the movie it doubles for the fictional town of Winnerden Flats. 



The new Hemel now dwarfs its older namesake, like a carbuncle on a buttock that swells to several times the size of its host body. And this Hemel Hempstead is a pretty dreary-looking place.  I remember the NF selling pamphlets on the streets there, back in the early '80s, when they were toying with Northern Ireland as a wedge issue.  Hemel is one railway stop along from my hometown Berkhamsted  (in the old days, Hemel was so small, it didn't even have a railway station - the stop was Boxmoor). Or you could make a not overly taxing bike ride to get there. Mostly I'd be going there for want of somewhere to go, in those boredom-aching days of youth that gaped with emptiness to fill. The town's attractions were limited to a larger, slightly more widely stocked W.H. Smiths than the one in Berko; a large indoor swimming pool; and... that's about it. Like Watford, it could also serve as a stage for pranks devised by me and my brothers. 









While looking up Quatermass and Hemel Hempstead, I stumbled on this eerie phonetic coincidence: there's are two streets in Hemel called Quartermass  - Quartermass Road and Quartermass Close - and they are named after the victim of a grisly 1896 murder: 12-year-old Katharine Mabel Quartermass.

Here's the full story at Hemel Today


Old Hemel










Just out of view, on the right side of this photo, is a little side road called Cherry Bounce - a term for a street that I have never seen anywhere else. 




In this next pic, to the left and out of sight - behind the camera - is one of the best Indian restaurants in the country. the Cochin. Worth a detour. 





















Scenes from the Ricky Gervais comedy After Life were filmed right by the Old Town Hall (now a theatre, I believe) and other places in the environs, giving Hemel Hempstead another fictional alter-ego, Tambury. 




The things you find on the internet!

https://implausablealternatehistory.fandom.com/wiki/Hemel_Hempstead_(1962:_The_Apocalypse)


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