DAY 394.
Sex Pistols.................................Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols   (1977)






      This album has to be one of the most listened to album/cassette/Cd/download I've ever had the good fortune to listen to, an often abused phrase, but not in this case "a classic" is the least praise I can bestow on this album.

As I have mentioned earlier in this journey, I loved punk music but never really got into the fashion, would go as far as the black leather and black jeans and vest,but fuck putting rips in them or the sticky up hair, and to be honest my old mum would've had kittens if she seen me ripping my clothes intentionally, a good Catholic woman her favourite saying would be " think of the poor black babies in Africa" this would cover everything from not finishing my tea, to "you spent how much on a cheesecloth shirt?  it's that thin you can spit peas through it, think what they could do in Africa with some of that money, if you'd only got a decent shirt, instead of thinking you're "Carnegie" and buying the maist expensive one." She did have her principles "even if you're poor, there's no need to make a show of yourself, you can still be clean and tidy, and ha'e a little pride in yourself" then again she lived through WW2, so had a pretty good perspective on things in my humbles.



Anyways back to the album, the first time I played this honestly the hairs on my arms stood up, and playing it again now has had exactly the same effect, absolutely no change despite it being 40 years old, just an onslaught of sneering vocals and pulsating adrenaline pumping music. This was my number one choice of "get me going" fodder to listen to before playing futba ( found out years later, Stuart Pearce, used to listen to this before Forrest games, fuckin' copycat cunt)


Every track is an absolute gem, but if you had to twist my erm my favourite would be "No Feelings"  and that intro to "Pretty Vacant" takes some beating, this album comes with the highest recommendation I could possibly give, if by chance you haven't listened to this, please youtube it at the very least, I can't see you being disappointed, having bought this in every possible form, but not owning a copy at all today, this album will be bought asap, and added to my vinyl collection.




Bits & Bobs;



For a group who only released one proper album, the Sex Pistols made one hell of an impact. Their timing was perfect. The media had a field day and couldn’t keep those dirty little punks off the front pages of the papers. The good citizens of the British Isles were feeling patriotic; we were about to celebrate The Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II marking the 25th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne. But these little buggers came along to ruin the whole thing!




The Sex Pistols made their live debut at St Martin’s School Of Art in central London in November 1975, supporting a band called Bazooka Joe, which included Stuart Goddard (the future Adam Ant). We are told the Pistols’ performance lasted 10 minutes.



On 4 June 1976 the Sex Pistols appeared at The Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England. The now legendary night is regarded as a catalyst to the punk rock movement. In the audience was: Morrissey, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook (soon to form Joy Division), and Mark E Smith (The Fall).




Future Smiths singer Steve Morrissey later had a letter published in music magazine Record Mirror and Disc asking the editor why the paper had not included any stories on the Sex Pistols.




In October 1976, Sex Pistols signed to EMI records for £40,000 ($68,000). The contract was terminated three months later with the label stopping production of the “Anarchy In The UK” single and deleting it from its catalogue. EMI later issued a statement saying it felt unable to promote the Sex Pistols' records in view of the adverse publicity generated over the last few months.




On 1 December the Sex Pistols appeared on ITV's live early evening Today show (in place of Queen, who had pulled out following a trip to the dentist by Freddie Mercury). Taunted by interviewer Bill Grundy, who asked the band to say something outrageous, guitarist Steve Jones said, "You dirty bastard...you dirty fucker...what a fucking rotter!" This was just what the media wanted! Most of the British public were outraged and once again the Pistols were all over the front of the papers.



 
On 10 March 1977, at 7am in the morning and on a trestle table set up outside Buckingham Palace, the Sex Pistols signed to A&M Records. The contract lasted for six days. The Pistols were fired from A&M due to pressure from other label artists and its Los Angeles head office. Twenty-five thousand copies of “God Save the Queen” were pressed and the band made £75,000 ($127,500) from the deal. Knowing that someone had to put this record out, a brave Virgin Records came to the rescue and signed The Sex Pistols. And then at last on 27 May 1977, the Sex Pistols' single “God Save the Queen” was released in the UK.




It was banned by TV and radio; high street shops and pressing plant workers refused to handle the record. It sold 200,000 copies in one week and peaked at No. 2 on the UK charts behind Rod Stewart's “I Don't Want to Talk About It”. It did however reach No. 1 on the NME charts. There have been persistent rumours (never confirmed or denied) that it was actually the biggest-selling single in the UK at the time, and the British Phonographic Industry conspired to keep it off the No. 1 slot.




And just to rub salt into the “Jubilee” wounds, on 15 June the Sex Pistols held a party on a boat as it sailed down the River Thames in London, where they dropped anchor outside Houses of Parliament and performed “Anarchy In The UK” as loud as humanly possible, resulting in members from the party being arrested when the boat docked later that day.




 Sid Vicious is credited with inventing the "Pogo," where you bounce up and down to the music. This eventually led to moshing.

 
Sid's real name was John Simon Ritchie; he and John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) were part of a gang called The Johns. He got his new moniker when Rotten's Hamster Sid bit John Ritchie's finger; he yelped and said "Your Sid was vicious."


 
Sid Vicious died on February 2, 1979 of an overdose of heroin his mother had bought for him. It was likely an intentional suicide as Sid was extremely depressed about his role in the death of his girlfriend, groupie Nancy Spungen. The couple were the subject of the 1986 film Sid and Nancy.


 
After Johnny Rotten left The Sex Pistols he formed a new band, Public Image LTD (PiL) and reverted back to his original name, Lydon.


 
In 2004, John Lydon appeared on a British reality TV program set in an Australian jungle called I'm a Celebrity, get me outta here! He caused controversy by saying the C-word live on British TV.


 
In 2005, they were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In true punk rock form, they refused to attend the ceremony and sent a note to Rolling Stone magazine voicing their displeasure with the institution ("Next to the Sex Pistols, that Hall Of Fame is a piss stain"). Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner read the note in its entirety at the ceremony.


 
Johnny Rotten was known to wear a shirt that said "Pink Floyd sucks" as punk was rebelling not only against society, but also the complex progressive music which Pink Floyd were a perfect example of. David Gilmour (guitarist of Pink Floyd) has said that when he met Rotten that the Sex Pistol singer apologized for the stunt and admitted he was a fan of Pink Floyd.


 
They were known first as The Strand, then The Swankers before settling on The Sex Pistols.


 
Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols is the only studio album they released. All others were live albums, compilations or movie soundtracks.


 
In November 2007, The Sex Pistols reformed to play five nights at Brixton's Carling Academy and also gigs in Glasgow and Manchester. They also played on The Craig Fergurson Show and The Jay Leno Show.

Also in 2007, they rerecorded "Anarchy In The UK" and "Pretty Vacant" for Guitar Hero.


 
When the band was conceived, Steve Jones was the lead singer. He moved to guitar when original member Wally Nightingale left, which left an opening for a frontman. Rotten got the job when he auditioned for their manager Malcolm McLaren by lip-synching to the Alice Cooper song "I'm Eighteen."



 
Johnny Rotten has described the band as "musical vaudeville" and "evil burlesque," admitting that their image and stage shows are as important as their music. Alice Cooper was a big influence on him.


 
John Lydon revealed to the Scottish Daily Record that Mick Jagger paid for Sid Vicious' lawyers when Sid was under arrest for the murder of Nancy Spungeon in 1978. "I don't think Malcolm lifted a finger," mused Lydon. "For that I have a good liking of Mick Jagger."
Spungen was found dead from a stab wound in the room at New York’s Chelsea Hotel she and Vicious had shared during several days of drug abuse.


 Vicious was charged with murder but then died four months later from a heroin overdose.

 Now Lydon has revealed Jagger secretly stepped in to help Vicious while he and ex-Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren watched on.


 Lydon said: “Nancy Spungen was a hideous, awful person who killed herself because of the lifestyle and led to the destruction and subsequent death of Sid and the whole fiasco.


 “I tried to help Sid through all of that and feel a certain responsibility because I brought him into the Pistols thinking he could handle the pressure.


 “He couldn’t. The reason people take heroin is because they can’t handle pressure. Poor old Sid.


 “Her death is all entangled in mystery. It’s no real mystery, though. If you are going to get yourself involved in drugs and narcotics in that way accidents are going to happen.


 “Sid was a lost case. He was wrapped firmly in Malcolm’s shenanigans.


 “It became ludicrous trying to talk to him through the drug haze because all you would hear was, ‘I’m the real star around here’. Great. Carry on. We all know how that’s going to end. Unfortunately, that is where it ended. I miss him very much.


 “He was a great friend but when you are messing with heroin you’re not a human being. You change and you lose respect for yourself and everybody else.


 “The only good news is that I heard Mick Jagger got in there and brought lawyers into it on Sid’s behalf because I don’t think Malcolm lifted a finger. He just didn’t know what to do. For that, I have a good liking of Mick Jagger.


 “There was activity behind the scenes from Mick Jagger so I applaud him. He never used it to advance himself publicity-wise.”



Vicious was in a relationship punctuated by bouts of domestic violence and drug abuse with 70’s punk rock figure, Nancy Spungen. Not long into their relationship, Spungen was found dead in their hotel room’s bathtub from a single stab wound to the abdomen. Vicious was charged with the murder but never made it to trial due to his death from a heroin overdose.  (Many authors and filmmakers have speculated that Vicious may not have been the murderer, believing that a drug dealer who frequented their room may have actually been the culprit.)




Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten gave him the nickname Sid Vicious after his hamster Sid bit the-then-John-Ritchie. Ritchie proclaimed, “Sid is really vicious!” and a famous stage name was born.


 
Sex Pistols Manager Malcolm McLaren stated on one documentary that if he had met Vicious before hiring Johnny Rotton, he would have chosen Vicious to be the front man of the Pistols instead, stating that Vicious had “the most charisma of anyone in the band.”




Vicious’s abilities on bass guitar were sometimes questioned. In one interview, when asked why he instead of Vicious recorded the bass parts for their album “Never Mind the Bollocks”, former guitarist Steve Jones stated, “Sid was in a hospital with yellow jaundice and he couldn’t really play…not that he could play anyway.”





It is very possible that Vicious’s own mother, Anne, was responsible for the heroin overdose that led to his death. Years after his passing and soon before her death, Anne admitted to a journalist that she had purposely administered the fatal dose of heroin to her son. The question remains of whether Vicious wanted her to administer said dose.



Vicious is credited with inventing the Pogo move where you bounce up and down with the music.



 Before joining the Sex Pistols, Vicious was previously the drummer for punk bands Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Flowers of Romance.


 Vicious did time in an England remand centre (prison) after intending to throw a glass at a member of the band The Damned, but instead blinded a young girl when the glass shattered. After the incident the 100 club, where it occurred, went on to ban all punk acts at the club.



In 2006, the Sex Pistols were inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame with the inclusion of Sid Vicious. In typical punk rock fashion, the band rejected the honor with guitarist Steve Jones saying quote: “Once you want to be put into a museum, rock and roll is over.”
 John Lydon  talked about how being outspoken has been both a blessing and a curse. "I can end up my own worst enemy - just by speaking as I find," he said. "Sometimes, the truth hurts. But it needs to be told."


 
John Lydon and his wife Nora almost died in the December 21, 1988 Lockerbie bombing - they were booked on Pan Am Flight 103, which was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew. However, according to Lydon, "she didn't pack her case in time, so we cancelled."


 On October 8, 1976, EMI signed the Sex Pistols to a two-year contract. However the label got cold feet when the band caused a national scandal by swearing on-air during an early evening live broadcast of a program hosted by Bill Grundy. Richard Branson quickly advantage of the situation and signed the Pistols to Virgin. He recalled to NME:

"Having seen them live, I was determined to sign them even though they had already signed with EMI. I called the company's president and said, 'If you want to get rid of the Sex Pistols, I'm happy to step in.' He said, 'No, I'm very happy with them.'

Anyway, that night they went on The Bill Grundy Show and he called my home number and said, 'We'll hand over the contract at 6am tomorrow.' Malcolm McLaren, being very Machiavellian, signed the band with A&M the next day and got more money. But Sid Vicious threw up all over the A&M office [so the company changed its mind] and we finally got them in the afternoon. The Sex Pistols gave Virgin an edge."


 Steve Jones used to sneak backstage and steal equipment. He even made off with David Bowie’s gear at his band’s historic, final “Ziggy Stardust” gig in 1973.He believes that’s why the sound in D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary covering the show is so lousy. Regardless, Jones had no guilt over stealing his idol’s equipment.




Jones rates the relative sex drives of the Pistols membersAs usual, Jones got the most tail, followed by Paul Cook. He says Rotten had no interest whatsoever. Even when Viv Albertine of The Slits gave him a blow job, he just complained that she was doing it wrong.


 Jones had his own sexual encounter with Albertine. In her book,  she presented a sleazy image of Jones. He counters:After she declined Jones’ offer for her to suck him off, he offered to perform oral sex on her instead. He thinks that makes him not just a gentleman but “a feminist.”



Jones never made Glen Matlock eat his cum

 The author refutes the famous story in John Lydon’s book about him tricking Matlock into eating a sandwich which contained his “spunk.” In Jones’ version of the tale, he was just giving his band mate helpful masturbation techniques – showing him how to fashion wet bread into functioning like a woman’s private part. “It’s a service I like to provide,” he writes.


 “Holidays in the Sun”


 Johnny Rotten: We decided to have a holiday as band en masse and we grouped ourselves in the Channel Islands and they immediately rejected us. As Sex Pistols, we found ourselves banned just about everywhere. They wouldn’t let us stay at any hotel. We marched up and down the beaches looking for somewhere to stay and the whole thing became really pathetic. We bumped into the local gang and the top boy accommodated us for one evening and then we left.

 Steve and Paul went home, and me and Sid decided to go to Berlin, because it was the maddest place to go. Me and Sid were thinking, “Bloody hell, if we can’t get into somewhere as soft as the Channel Islands, let’s go find out what the Berlin Wall is about.” And that whole experience was thrilling for me, and that’s where “Holidays in the Sun” came from. It was great fun. It was us, from our side, looking over the wall and [the Germans] are pointing guns at us. We couldn’t get into East Berlin. They just took one look at us and went, “No.”
  Matlock: “Holidays” is a good song they wrote after I left. There was a song by the Jam called “In the City” [that it sounded like] and I know that Sid went down to the Speakeasy Club, which was the rock-star after hours club, and wound up Paul Weller, who is a mate of mine, about them having a song that’s very similar to the Jam song – and Paul bottled him. I’m on Paul’s side.

 “Bodies”


 Rotten: Pauline, in the song, was a very, very crazy disturbed person. You would probably call her a stalker these days, but in the early days we never had the term for it. She was just one of them annoying girls that wouldn’t take no for an answer. She was just turning up all the time and had an unpleasant attitude; she was clingy.


 The song is about abortion, and yes, it is a woman’s right [to choose] absolutely because she has to bear the child and all the issues thereinafter. Is it wise to bring an unwanted child into the world? No, I don’t think it is, but again that is just my opinion, because I always would leave it to the woman. Always. In that song I raise both sides of the agenda and actually put myself in there, too. If it wasn’t for the grace of God, my mother could have had an abortion and I wouldn’t be here.


 The “fuck this and fuck that” line wasn’t improvised; I wrote that down. That was just my anger at the end of it. That was my frustration of what on earth is the right answer, and it was my honest gut reaction: “Fuck this, fuck that/Fuck it all and fuck the fucking brat/I don’t want a baby that looks like that/I don’t want a baby that looks like that.” And then I’m crying as the baby, “Mommy, I’m not an animal/Daddy, I’m not an abortion.” It’s the duality of life, like, what’s the right decision? It’s very serious because it’s about the termination of a fellow human being, which I don’t take lightly.


 “No Feelings”



 Matlock: Musically, it was mainly Steve’s original idea. He was trying to be a bit New York Dolls–y, I suppose. The original bass line I played on it during the “No feelings” bit was my hats-off to Trevor Bolder from [David Bowie’s] Spiders From Mars in “Hang Onto Yourself.”  Rotten: I wrote “No Feelings” because my Dad was sponsoring a lot of orphans at the time, and one of the girls just became too attached to me. I had to tell her, “Look, I have no feelings. Just because my dad is letting you stay at his house for the weekend doesn’t mean you can marry me.” But there’s this sad truth of orphans, which I have always donated money to, and that’s that they grow up with a prison-like mentality. They’re not attached to anybody or anything, so they’re very desperate and very clingy to anything that they can translate very quickly into love, and it’s false love. It’s really desperation. I’m so wounded for them in that respect. In the song it may seem like I have no empathy, but it’s the exact opposite. It’s irony.


 “Liar”



 Rotten: Many, many people inspired “Liar,” starting with the manager [Malcolm McLaren]. We were just hapless young idiots really and we were really unprepared for the world of greed and adulthood that we were thrown into so quickly. Everyone had their piece of poisonous influence to whisper in your ear, and that could cause great division. So I just came around to the point where instead of allowing division, I would unleash my derision. But the song isn’t totally about Malcolm. I think we always knew that about him, and in an odd way, it was one of his most adorable features. Do you know when you really know someone, you kind of accept those kinds of things because you take everything with a pinch of salt? It’s the [people outside of the band] I am really aiming at: those who are trying to maneuver into us.


 Matlock: That was more of a free-for-all kind of a song. We all came up with parts. I remember John was stuck for a bit with the lyrics and I said, “Why don’t you use the word ‘suspension’?” He said, “What do you mean, ‘suspension’?” I said, “It’s like something when you’re at school, like, ‘You’re in suspension,’ but it also means you’re sort of just dangling there.” And he went, “Ah, I don’t want to do that,” and the next thing is, he’s got it in the song.


 “God Save the Queen”



 Matlock: I came up with the riff and main set of chord changes for this when we were starting to do the first proper recordings of “Anarchy.” We’d given our sound engineer, Dave Goodman, the go at being the producer, but it didn’t work out and we went on strike and we rang up Chris Thomas. There was a piano in the studio; I can’t play the piano, but I’ve fiddled around and I can play “Blueberry Hill” if you want to hear that. But I came up with this riff on it. I worked it out on the guitar and I said, “I’ve got a song.” And John had a set of lyrics.


 Rotten: I’d written this down as one solid piece. We did quite a bit with [producer] Chris Spedding before doing the album, and he taught me aspects of song structure and how to not ignore the music and just to stop ranting. Music was new to me. Even though I had bought records ever since I can remember, it’s quite different to be in the studio trying to keep in time with the tune and fit the words in.


 To me, the lyrics themselves were a fun thing. It was expressing my point of view on the Monarchy in general and on anybody that begs your obligation with no thought. That’s unacceptable to me. You have to earn the right to call on my friendship and my loyalty. And you have to have value-proven points in order for me to support you. That’s how it is.


 Matlock: And that song was originally called “No Future.” And when it came out, after I left the band, it occurred to somebody, maybe Malcolm that although the words were never changed, it was the Queen’s silver jubilee and the first line is “God save the Queen,” so why don’t we call it that. But on early set lists it was called “No Future.”


 Rotten: I think that the song was misunderstood as a personal attack [on the Monarchy]. It wasn’t. It’s absolutely anti the institution of monarchy, but not them as people. Oh, my God, they get my heartfelt sympathy; I feel they have been born into a birdcage. There is no way out because there is nothing to compare it to, other than the entrapment of rule and regulation.


When I sing, “They made you a moron,” it’s because being blind to obligation is moronic, isn’t it? And when I sang, “No future,” I meant that there was no future if [the Monarchy] were to accept that kind of thing. They are slowly but surely shape-shifting into a very nice middle-class family with 3.4 children. I love the pageantry. I associate that with football. I like that flag waving and all of it, ’cause it’s colorful and it’s exciting to want to feel that you belong to something. Even though you might not like the institution itself, it’s still intriguingly British. And that’s a wonderful thing and no one can take that away from me. I’m an Irishman who is intrinsically British.


 “Problems”



 Rotten: When I say, “The problem is you,” it’s really everyone, including myself. I think everyone is unhappy with yourself when you’re a teenager. That’s par for the course, and we’re all part of the brave front that, “Yeah, I’m well on top and confident,” but none of us are. That’s what being a teenager is, isn’t it? It’s learning that you’re now waltzing into the world of decision-making and you better well be prepared for it. And you try and fight that off as much as you can. It’s chaos.


 Problems were all the way through us as a band. I don’t know if we ever bothered to sit down and work out why we were a group. We not only appeared to the public as not liking each other, I think we genuinely didn’t. It was the longest year and a half I’ve ever lived. I think all of us feel that way. When we talk, it all feels like a solid decade was crunched into such a tiny space of time. It was mentally draining and exhausting.


 I know what kept me in the band, though: I had utter, complete respect for them as players. I knew we were all learning, but I really liked what everyone was learning. I was absolutely thrilled to be near Mr. Jones’ guitar. The stability of Paul’s drumming will always impress me. Poor old Sid couldn’t play. Lemmy once said it best, “Sid, you’re tone deaf.” Sid had all the poses down but not much else, but so what? Sometimes that is what we needed and that’s what we got. It’s my fault for bringing him in; it introduced a whole new bunch of problems. And well, we got a song out of it.


 “Seventeen”



 Matlock: This was an idea that we had been working on before John was in the band. It was originally Steve’s lyric, and then John adapted that.


 Rotten: Steve’s song called “Lonely Boy,” it’s kind of really basic, and I just grabbed hold of it and turned it into teenage angst. I titled it “Seventeen,” because that’s the age when everything hurts the most. You’re not quite an adult, you don’t want to be viewed as a young whippersnapper, and you’re not fully prepared for adulthood either. And all due reference to Alice Cooper’s “Eighteen,” [when I titled this “Seventeen”], I thought, “Well, Americans start late.” When I sang, “You’re only 29,” I was probably singing to myself. My mom and my dad always used to say, “Oh, you were born an old man, and since you joined that band, you seem to be becoming a child.” “How old do you think I was when I was born?” “45,” said my dad. So it’s a fair estimate that between 17, 18 and 45 would be 29.


 The rest of the lyrics were representing everybody around me, since these are not lonely-boy problems; this is what everybody faces, but nobody faces up to. A good book is when an author tells you the truth and you can tell because they are embarrassing themselves doing it. But facing up to that truth is so important to the readers because it helps them break out of their shells. So when I sang, “I don’t work, I just speed,” that was a sad, lovely, adorable part of my life. It’s sad because I didn’t have enough booze and speed [laughs]. I mean I had to give all that up really when I joined the band because you can’t afford to do that. You have to concentrate on the one thing now that’s the big issue.


 As far as the “lazy sod” part, the band really was a full-on 24/7 kind of situation. And then of course came the trying-to-tour and the banning. Every time a gig is canceled, it’s a major rejection because you go through all the fears and phobias of not wanting to let people down. And then some other people let you down by canceling it; that’s a stress.


 “Anarchy in the U.K.”



 Matlock: Around the summertime, we were rehearsing and once again I said, “Does anybody got any ideas?” And I had a go at Steve, ’cause I felt I was pushing the band along a bit, but that time he had something, which wasn’t much. And he said, “Why don’t you come up with something?” And I had half an idea for a big overture, and I just started playing that descending chord progression and everybody picked up on it and said, “Where’s it go next?” And I sort of geared it as we went along. John, it happened, had a bag of lyrics – just sheets of paper in a plastic bag – and he pulled something out and he said, “I’ve been waiting for you to come up with something because I’ve got this idea.” Everybody had been talking about this guy, Jamie Reid, who did our artwork, and he was a bit of an agitprop kind of guy about anarchy. And John had written these lyrics.


 Rotten: I have always thought that anarchy is mind games for the middle class. It’s a luxury. It can only be afforded in a democratic society, therefore kind of slightly fucking redundant. It also offers no answers and I hope in my songwriting I’m offering some kind of answer to a thing, rather than spitefully wanting to wreck everything for no reason at all, other than it doesn’t suit you. I’ve always got to bear in mind I’m part of a community called the human race and an even tighter community called culture. Why would we want to destroy these things willy-nilly?


 I didn’t realize how many professional anarchists were out there – and still are. Oh, my God, Marilyn Manson declared himself as an anarchist, this is how absurd it can get. A boy in makeup in a corset don’t cut it for me; Alice Cooper did, but that’s it. One of them is enough in my life.


 Matlock: We’d already recorded it in 1976, and that’s how my playing ended upon the album. I remember talking with Duff McKagan, who watched a gig once and came up and said, “Glen, I didn’t realize you play all that type of Motown stuff.” And on “Anarchy,” I’m trying to emulate James Jamerson.  Rotten: The phrase “I am an antichrist/I am an anarchist” really upset Glen Matlock a lot, and I couldn’t understand why he picked that. He was, I don’t know if “harsh critic” would be the words, but he was always looking for the softer touch. That’s what leads to the fractional-ism between Glen and me.


 Matlock: It’s not true that I didn’t like the lyrics. The only line that always made me wince was, “I am an antichrist/I am an anarchist” – they don’t rhyme, and it always gets me. Songs that don’t rhyme properly gets me somehow. It had nothing to do with the sentiment. But if you then want to go onto a whole sociopolitical argument about whether it is a good thing to have real anarchy in the U.K. and whether that’s ever going to happen is another matter. But I was quite proud to be onstage singing that song.


 Rotten: On the original demo, at the start of the song, I sang “Words of wisdom” before “right now” and I removed it because there is no point of overdoing it. I always thought if I over-aggrandized it, it wouldn’t mean much. When we were rehearsing we always tried to remove what was superfluous; we took out all the extra guitar flurries – Steve willingly did that most sensibly – and Paul would cut a song down to its simple roots. So with the lyrics, it’s always for an audience to decide. You can’t be dictating, like, “Hello, this is genius, here it comes.” [Laughs]. You’ll start off at 10.


 I prefer the preciseness of opening the song with, “Right now.” When we recorded the official version, getting that “Rrright now” was really hard to do. It took me time. They would be telling me to count the beats, and I didn’t know what the fuck they meant – what are beats? Paul would always be very helpful with me, but at the same time it was infuriating because I wouldn’t know the terminology.


 “Sub-Mission”



 Matlock: We used to rehearse at a venue called the Roundhouse. They had rehearsal rooms downstairs, and they was recording a classical concert that was going out live, and we was making too much noise. And they came down and asked us to turn down, but we paid our money so we wasn’t going to. So I’m sure somewhere in Zimbabwe or Rhodesia, you heard the early versions of the Sex Pistols going out underneath Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. So we started rehearsing that and, one day, Steve and Paul couldn’t be asked to turn up. So me and John waited and waited, and they didn’t turn up, so we went to the pub over the road and he said to me, “You seen Malcolm?” And I said, “Yeah, he said, ‘Why don’t you write a song called ‘Submission’?” And John said, “What? All about bondage and domination and all that old shite?” And I said, “Yeah, I guess so.” And one of us, I don’t remember which one of us, said “How about ‘Submarine Mission’?”  Rotten: Writing this song was one of the best times I have ever had with Glen. We really just wanted to get drunk and sneer at each other, but we got through that early phase and just wrote quite well. What Malcolm was asking for was some kind of submission from the pair of us, so I turned it into a submarine mission.


 Matlock: So John said, “I’m on a submarine mission for you, baby.” And I came up with, “I could see the way you were going.” Then he went, “I picked you up on my TV screen.” And I said, “I can feel your undercurrent flowing.” We just sat there over a pint trading lines and I went home that night and I worked out some chords to go over it and when we met up with the guys the next time, there was the song. It was fun.


 Rotten: “Sub-Mission” is the closest thing to a love song we did and that’s written by two people that didn’t like each other [laughs]. It’s too easy to write a nasty piece of animosity against each other. Both of us are capable of that, but why bother you know? Let’s take it to higher grounds, find something that we both like: a genuine love of human beings.


 “Pretty Vacant”



 Rotten: That’s another thing done that night with Glen. Glen had this idea of the band being like, as he put it, “Soho poofs,” I suppose very much like Oscar Wilde, which is where I thought he was coming from. We’re not talking like overtly gay overtures here or anything like that; it’s really just the style of dressing. And that’s never how I have seen myself. I couldn’t imagine Mr. Rotten in frills and lace. And so “Pretty Vacant,” the concept, turned into really just kind of a football chant. And it was adopted on the terraces by quite a few firms – firms being gangs of hooligans.


 Matlock: Malcolm McLaren had been going back and forth to the States to be involved in the rag trade and buy old Fifties clothes because he had a Teddy Boy shop, and I knew he ran into Sylvain Sylvain from the New York Dolls and went backstage. Malcolm came back with fliers for the shows and he brought back set lists, but none of these bands had made records at that stage. One said “Blank Generation,” and that got me thinking about how there was nothing going on in London, and there was a real air of despondency and desperation, so I came out with the idea of “Pretty Vacant.”  I had the set of chord changes and the lyric but I was short of a riff. I knew it needed a melodic thing, and I heard something on a record by a band called Abba and it inspired the riff I needed, and I said, “Guys, I’ve got it.” I mentioned the Abba influence in an interview once and the bass player from Abba somehow got my address and started sending me Christmas cards for about 10 years.


 John sang the lyrics, but we played so loud in the rehearsal that I didn’t know for months that he changed the lyrics in the second verse – “No cheap comments, because we know what we feel.” We couldn’t bloody hear him. That song was our statement somehow.


 Rotten: There is an irony in that song because we weren’t very pretty, and we were far from vacant. Again I need to repeat myself to explain these songs correctly. I never considered myself pretty or vacant. Maybe I should, would have had an easier life. I’d be dead wrong, but it would have been really easy. No, you can’t get sucked up into the system, can’t allow that. And I sang it “Pretty Va-cunt” as a sneaky one on my behalf.


 “New York”



 Rotten: That’s a reference to the New York Dolls. I don’t think of it as vicious; it’s absolutely bang on from Babylon. “I’m looking for a kiss.” They’re mates of mine, and nobody has ever raised a complaint and why would they? It’s not a personal attack. You have to understand at the time in England, glam rock was old hat by this point. We were overrun with Sweet, T. Rex – David Bowie got out of it rather well – but there were many, many bands like that in tight pants and lipstick. It was enough all right, already.


 The bands in New York all seemed to be a little bit older and to have a little bit more of mommy’s money in it, to me, rather than having to squeak by [with] all manner of ferrety streetwise methods. They were a little spoiled, and maybe I was little jealous of the luxury zone that they could all propagate amongst each other and prop each other up. And using ties like Rimbaud poetry to connect, I thought it was all very fake.  I mean, I read that [Rimbaud] stuff when I first went to New York and thought, “This isn’t good enough.” It just isn’t. It doesn’t have that tough edge of life’s experiences in it. And there it is and that was the difference really between the English scene and the American punk scene. The American scene was a bit hoity-toity, a bit privileged and a bit snooty about its art. “Fuck art, let’s dance” would be more my methodology.


 Matlock: Musically, “New York” was originally my idea. I know you had a program in America called Secret Agent [with the opening theme “Secret Agent Man”] but in England [where it was called Danger Man] it had a different theme tune. And I was trying to write a rock version of something like that. So my original set of chord changes was like that on the bass but then John came out with the taking-the-mickey-out-of-the–New York Dolls lyric and it just came together. It’s not one of my favorite songs, to be honest.


 Rotten: The word “faggots” in the song is not about the New York Dolls because they most certainly were not. It’s out to an audience that just wants to misinterpret everything. And you have to bear in mind that faggots in England, at the time, I remember this – I had seen an advert for it in London – it was a Northern dish: faggots and gravy. And they were trying to introduce it to Southern England with this hideous advert. I can’t remember the company, but it was a product that would never wash well with a Londoner. It might not come off that way in the song, but that is exactly where I took the references from and I do that a lot. Whatever the scenario around me is, I will absorb. When in Rome.


 “EMI (Unlimited Edition)”



 Rotten: EMI wanted to sign us to show what a grand, varied label they were, but they really were not. This song was fun to write. It was actually mostly done in the studio because the groove was there, and it was relentless. It was a lovely hypnotic trance-like state to get into. They just wanted to be famous and for us to make a lot of money for them and that was it. And that was a real bit of disappointment with this lot coming out of the hippie generation, shall we say, and they were so commercially wrapped up inside profit that it led to their ultimate decline. That’s why we’d have T-shirts like, “Never trust a hippie.” It was well aimed [laughs].





The Dundee Connections and Stories. ( with thanks to Retro Dundee, a great site well worth a visit)


 SEX PISTOLS DUNDEE T-SHIRT 

This t-shirt design was made to mark the occasion of the Sex Pistols gig at the Caird Hall on 1st December 1976.The show, ultimately, didn't take place, but the date is still significant in the history of the band.The reason for this Dundee date being a non-event was that just before the Sex Pistols set off on their December "Anarchy" tour which included this particular gig, they had to quickly re-arrange their plans at the last minute to enable them to appear on the "Today" tv programme that was broadcast live on 1st December 76. This of course was the infamous performance with Bill Grundy which became headlines in all the papers the next day. As a consequence of all this publicity, the Pistols were "banned" from most of the Anarchy tour venues, including Dundee's rescheduled gig for later in December.Had the band played their Caird Hall show originally as planned, the Sex Pistols story would have been something else..!!On the back of the t-shirt it shows the original Dundee date that never was.The Sex Pistols did play in Dundee a couple of months earlier at Tech College (the Bowling Alley) so at least they did manage to do their stuff in town before the ban!!

SEX PISTOLS v FRANKIE VAUGHAN - 1976 
  Dundee had the choice of contrasting entertainment this particular evening, and just a few steps away from each other.


On one corner of Marketgait, The Sex Pistols were trying to grab the limelight whilst having bottles thrown at them from the crowd.



On the other corner of Marketgait, Frankie Vaughan was given the moonlight and had gals throw themselves at him.



Despite the obvious conflict of music styles on offer, they did cross paths at one point.



Pistol, Glen Matlock, has documented the time when The Sex Pistols booked into their Dundee hotel, and corny crooner, Frankie, was in the same dining room as the punks at breakfast time.



There's also a local story has it that Johnny Rotten and co were seen trying to get into the Frankie Vaughan gig that very evening, but needless to say, never got passed the door!



The Sex Pistols gig took place at the Tech College Students Union (aka the Bowling Alley), and the Frankie Vaughan gig was at the Barracuda nightclub.



The ad at the top showing the Sex Pistols gig was published in NME, however, this was the wrong date - the one here being for Wednesday 22 September 1976.


That factual date of the gig was Tuesday 12 October 1976.



There was no advert in the local press for the Pistols event on the night, but Frankie's show was advertised locally on 12 October 1976, and as you can see on the ad, he was doing cabaret for a few nights there.


Glenn Matlock tells this story "One night in early 1976, guitarist Steve Jones got himself settled in our roadie’s Ford Transit van with the equipment and set off up the A1 whilst Johnny Rotten, Paul Cook and myself headed towards Kings Cross Station to catch the sleeper train to the English border and beyond. My memory of the journey is hazy, probably because there was beer involved, but I do remember waking the following morning as the train trundled over the Tay bridge and into Dundee. Finding our hotel to be of a superior standard than we were then accustomed to, we threw our bags into our rooms and the three of us reconvened in the River View Restaurant for a slap-up kipper breakfast. We were most surprised to find that our table adjoined that of crooner Frankie Vaughn escorted by a Bevvy of Beauties, which is what I think the term was then, and who seemed to have certainly given Frankie the moonlight.



What he did with it – well he certainly beamed all the way through the meal.




We played that evening in a student union gaff and, while lightly attended, after a few numbers, pretty soon a barrage of glasses and bottles started hitting the stage belying the numbers in the sparse crowd. As the lobbees ran out of ammunition, the onslaught abated and a hush descended on the club.A little shaken and in need of a stiffener, we waited a suitable amount of time then tentatively peered around the door.Seeing the coast was clear, we made it to the bar and attempted to get some in.  Two long-haired student types in tie-dyed shirts and flares sidled over to us.Affable enough, they offered us all a drink but were a little troubled and upset that we hadn’t reemerged to play the rest of the set.  Well you guys were slinging glass at us and we hadn’t really come all this way to each lose an eye we explained.But we had read that you like that in your fans they retorted. Power of the press eh?



The Sex Pistols signed to EMI on the the 8th of October 1976, and looking at their tour list from October of that year;

1.10.76 Didsbury College, Manchester
2.10.76 Priory Ballroom, Scunthorpe – CANCELLED
12.10.76 Technical College, Dundee, Scotland, UK
13.10.76 Lafayette Club, Wolverhampton
14.10.76 Mr Digby’s, Birkenhead
15.10.76 Eric’s, Liverpool
20.10.76 Bogarts, Birmingham
21.10.76 Queensway Hall, Dunstable


The "Bowling Alley" must have been their first gig after signing, god I wish I had seen them live.


By the way sorry if this has been to long winded, it's just their are so many stories about the Pistols that I find intriguing, and I've only scratched the surface, so if anybody has any other stories please fire in.I don't know a lot, but I know what I like!

Last edited by arabchanter (13/9/2018 9:22 am)

DAY 395.
Pere Ubu................................................The Modern Dance   (1978)











Gotta be honest wasn't looking forward to this,but have been pleasantly surprised for the most part, I say for the most part as "Sentimental Journey" at 6:05 was a trip I wish I hadn't started, and one I will never embark on again.There are some really good tracks such as, "Non-Alignment Pact," "The Modern Dance" and the best track for me "Chinese Radiation, but there were some stinkers also."

The album is quite interesting and one I will revisit a few more times, obviously minus "Sentimental Journey," but at the moment this will only be on a download as I can't see me ever buying this on vinyl, but who knows? 

This album wont be going into my collection.



Bits & Bobs;


Pere Ubu - Papa TurdExperimental rock band from Cleveland, Ohio.

The band name is taken from a play that French poet and playwright Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) wrote together with a few schoolmates and that was staged in Paris in 1896.

The play is called Ubu Roi and the character the band is named after is Père Ubu (with a grave accent).


January 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of Pere Ubu’s debut album, The Modern Dance.  Sole constant and leader, David Thomas, would likely dismiss a milestone such as that as not accounting for much in the scheme of things.  Perhaps it doesn’t, but taking a hard left from the New York punk scene of the day, Cleveland based Pere Ubu have made a career of “letting their freak flag fly” and not following the trend of the day if they were ever even aware of what the trend may have been. 


 Formed from the breakup of Rocket from the Tombs with original members Thomas and guitarist Peter Laughner the band persists to this day releasing their strongest album in decades, 20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo, just last year (presumably their first 20 years were spent outside the silo).  Unfortunately, the band had to halt its current tour due to concerns over Thomas’ health just a few days after fellow aging iconoclast Mark E. Smith of The Fall was forced to do the same (sadly during the drafting of this review, Smith passed away after a long illness).  The fact that both of these bands, with only their leaders being a constant, persisted in some form over  many decades speaks to the validity of the strategy of “kicking against the pricks” as it were, never going where they were told.  Not political and certainly not topical Thomas’ Pere Ubu exists, as The Fall did for Smith, to put out whatever his current art may be and it’s likely to be challenging.



 The Modern Dance was recorded after Laughner had already died at age 24 due to drug and alcohol induced organ failure.  So, never really a band with a traditional core, Thomas assembled their classic line-up that appeared on the album.  Most notably Tom Herman on guitar and Allen Ravenstine on synthesizers/effects have their stamp all over this album, while Tony Maimone on bass and Scott Krauss on drums paved the foundation.  Full of glitchy quirks, at its heart the album has the base of a fuzzed out garage/surf core, albeit a bit more industrialized Lake Erie style surf rock.  


 The first side of the album is more “traditional” in the sense of verses and choruses and use of guitars, but it’s hardly typical.  The opening set of songs are even love songs in a sense, though one sided in that the protagonists are more in search of a girlfriend vs having one in hand.  The cleverly titled ‘Non-Alignment Pact’ starts with synth pings and a bass run before a monstrous guitar line breaks from the left channel and we are on our way.  The song is a rush of power that in places devolves into Thomas’ bird whistles and gibberish in a sense that lyrics are interchangeable with sounds or howled emotions.  The plaintive lyric “I wanna make a deal with you girl, and get it signed by the heads of state” shows Thomas’ wit right from the start as if he will get his girl pinned down by binding agreement.  He goes on to warble and coo a long list of girl’s names from Peggy to Barbara Ann as if any of them will fit the bill just fine.  But mostly the strength of the song is in its raw energy the band bravely marching forward regardless of all of Thomas’ asides.  The title track that follows starts as a bouncy shuffle but is unsettled by metal on glass or metal on metal percussion that disintegrates to tortured guitar solos, static bursts, atonal sax and again Thomas’ bleats, whinnies and warbles but all to a crazed beat that works.  Here Thomas is more observer of the hapless romantic of the song who is described as “our poor boy” who “believes in chance” and will “never get the modern dance” - a little hard truth coming through.  In addition to the aforementioned, a chant of “Merdre, merdre!” persists in the song - French for shit, it only serves as reference to the play for which the band was named.  More nuttiness for nuttinesses sake!  ‘Laughing’ turns song structure inside out with verses that consist of modulating synths, tuneless sax, and bass with vocals only breaking out in the choruses where Thomas chants “My baby says!!!” as if he finally got his girl.  ‘Street Waves’ rocks hard and sounds like a bridge between the opening tracks while ‘Chinese Radiation’ closes the side on a more somber note - a tale of boy meets girl in Maoist China. 


 If the first side was breaking new ground in the rock format, the second side is where things get much more experimental and completely out of the framework.  The first song, and the only one written by Laughner, ‘Life Stinks’ is a skronky little piece of negativity where Thomas and Ravenstine become unhinged.  With Thomas screaming “I need a drink, I can’t think, I like the Kinks” and Ravenstine throwing all sorts of cacophony in the mix.  It’s  a brief but cautionary blast that had to have been recorded just on the heels of Laughner’s passing.  ‘Real World’ has a staticky vibe with Thomas again out in la la land singing and wailing whatever comes to mind and making up the word “technoramic” as some blend of Technicolor and panoramic and declaring all his musings “girl talk”.  Ravenstine and Maimone anchor this one with the bass making circles trying to box the song into something more structured to little avail.  The high and lonesome ‘Over My Head’ with its great meandering solo (foretelling mid-period Tom Waits with Marc Ribot) gives way to the most challenging track, ‘Sentimental Journey’.  The song is anything but sentimental, starting with creepy breathing that gives way to more out of tune sax playing and haywire synths, all to be outdone by dozens of broken bottles along the way.  The broken bottle rhythms well ahead of Joy Division’s ‘I Remember Nothing’ on Unknown Pleasures, but whether they would have heard Modern Dance I don’t know.  If you can make it through ‘Sentimental Journey’ the album does close on the perky and tongue in cheek ‘Humor Me’.  With handclaps and a tossed off Jamaican accent on the phrase “It’s the ballastics, mon” its one of the more tuneful songs and also contains a good summation of the approach you need to take to Pere Ubu.  Thomas exclaims “What a big world, but a world to be drowned in.  It’s a joke man!”  You can get lost in the album if you let yourself, but don’t think too much about it - Thomas just lets himself go as should the listener.  It’s just a joke after all.


 The band has released more than 20 albums in the past four decades and that’s with an extended hiatus in the 80s.  The band never has stuck with one direction too long and in their earliest iteration things got more challenging rather quickly.  Coming back later in the 80s with The Tenement Year and Cloudland which were much more approachable - with the latter even spawning a charting single in ‘Waiting for Mary’.  I regrettably lost track for a while after Ray Gun Suitcase, but was admittedly impressed with last year’s 20 Years where Thomas sounds as fresh as 1975 and his assembled band just as solid as their beginnings, theremin and all.  The new album also served as a reminder of Thomas’ brilliance and the depth of the untrained art he created from the very beginning.  The Modern Dance holds up remarkably well for its age and precisely because of its quirks, spurts, fizzles, and bursts - it never gets dull and the surf/garage underpinnings create a familiarity to go with the strangeness.  I hope there is more to come from Thomas and company to add to his singular legacy and in the meantime wish him good health.



Pere Ubu coined the term Avant-garage to define his music, also to reflect interest in both experimental avant-garde music and raw, direct blues-influenced garage rock. Their music has been called art-punk and post-punk. Their songs imagined 1950s and 1960s garage rock and surf music archetypes as seen in a distorting funhouse mirror, emphasising the music’s angst, loneliness and lyrical paranoia. Sometimes sounding like a demented nursery rhyme sing-along, this already bizarre blend was overlaid with Ravenstine’s ominous EML synthesizer effects and tape looped sounds of mundane conversation, ringing telephones or steam whistles. Their propulsive rhythmic pulse was similar to Krautrock, but Thomas’s yelping, howling, desperate singing was and still is peculiar when compared to most other rock and roll singers.



Pere Ubu have supported Pixies, They Might Be Giants and Gang of Four, who are ‘three strong, self-confident bands’ according to frontman David Thomas. The thing about Pere Ubu is that with the exception of Thomas the line-up has constantly changed and that makes them a concept more than a band. That probably means they can continue forever, renewing and rolling over to the next generation. When you bear in mind that their style was really post punk before punk even hit us then this has got to be one of the Post Punk reference points.


Like all things Ubu, The Modern Dance is a record heavily indebted to its surroundings, with the band lost in their own post-industrial fever dream of decay set in a parallel universe Cleveland that offers no escape. But at the same time, this record is a send up, a noir cabaret that celebrates the shitheap the band grew up in, thereby transcending it. Always several steps ahead of their contemporaries, Pere Ubu would consolidate their vision with Dub Housing, (which at the time of writing this reviewer had still not received from amazon, goddammit!), but this record was where it began. The Modern Dance pulls no punches; it’s a frightening, dissonant, chaotic, delirious record, but with beating heart and soul and ear-to-ear grin like few others. Like David Thomas says on “Humor Me” – “Its just a joke, mon!!”
      

Pistols album: always thought Steve Jones was a great guitarist, and Paul Cook is decent on the drums. But I was never fully into the Sex Pistols, unlike many of my contemporaries. Liked punk music, but felt I was a wee bit too old to embrace it.................. although I was a big fan of The Stranglers.

But that is a great album, standing the test of time.

Pere Ubu: nothing special, I sort of liked it, that's it.

japanarab wrote:

ac, are you ex-player? Just noticed a couple of times reading your reviews that you mentioned playing.

No,only local stuff,amateur/juvenile/junior.
 

DAY 401.
Pere Ubu......................................................Dub Housing   (1978)











Having defined their own hard-rock proto-punk style, Pere Ubu had a goldmine they could have tapped for a few more years at least. Instead, brilliantly contrary, they created a whole new sound that, while still distinctevely Ibu, showed them to be miles ahead of most of their peers.With it's eerie two-colour cover (high-rise residential towering over an old industrial building............surely a reference to the album title, if it only made sense!) and song titles that referenced films, music and catchphrases of days gone by, this was music of honesty and warmth that was simultaneously creepy and exciting.


The title is an allusion to the visual echoes of rows of identical concrete public housing units in Baltimore,presumably reminiscent of the echo and reverberation that characterize dub. On a 1979 concert bootleg recording, during the song "Sentimental Journey," David Thomas ad-libs the line "I live in a dub house!" The photograph on the cover shows the apartment building at 3206 Prospect Avenue near downtown Cleveland in which members of the band lived when this album was recorded.



Try and do the double tonight, Blondie and that Brazilian bird.

Last edited by arabchanter (14/9/2018 10:37 am)

DAY 397.
Blondie.......................................................Parallel Lines   (1978)











The first time I ever heard of Blondie was on a Friday night at the students union (the Bowlin' Alley,) me and some mates used to go to the Scout, have a few beers and see if we could get someone to sign us in, this particular Friday night I heard "Denis" getting blasted out and found out it was by a band called Blondie, I went and bought the single the next day and when I found out what she looked like I was kinda smitten. Now I'm no really that keen on blondes, maybe because most of the blondes I met, their collars and cuffs didn't match if you get my drift, but thon Debbie Harry and pardon me for using an old un pc saying, but "Man, I'd use her shite fir toothpaste"



Moving along swiftly, Parallel Lines is a great album with that many great songs it could easy be a greatest hits. What I like about Blondie's music is straight from the intros you're joining in, you can't help but start singing, well I can't anyway.


Anyways, a crackin' album, hittin' you straight between the eyes from the off with a great cover of "The Nerves," "Hanging On The Telephone" here's the original, see what you think?






"One Way Or Another" is one of my favourite Blondie tunes as is "Heart Of Glass"but I really enjoyed the album as a whole, the only track I never quite liked was "Picture This" but out of the bands massive repertoire, one aint too bad I suppose, this album will be going into my collection


Just going back to "Denis" I never new that was also a cover, I hope you don't mind me going back to the bowlin' alley?
Does the opening remind anyone of "Peggy Sue?"






and the original "Denise"









Bits & Bobs;

Before founding Blondie with her then-boyfriend and musical collaborator Chris Stein, Debbie Harry spent time in New York City cutting her chops the way you’d expect a punk starlet would. She frequented downtown haunts with Andy Warhol and his gang of pop miscreants, and she was a beautician, a Playboy Bunny, and a barmaid at the infamous Max’s Kansas City, the rock bistro where she would eventually take the stage as one of their most influential headliners. And all this was before she founded the glam-rock girl band, the Stilettos.


 The Stilettos weren’t the most talented, or the most exciting, band in New York City in the early 1970s, but the impression they made on the scene did provide a pivotal jumping off point for Harry. Chris Stein saw the band perform early on and was invited to play bass for them. He’d eventually go on to create Blondie with Harry after the Stilettos dissolved in 1974 and still plays guitar for the band to this day.Blondie’s sound was built on driving, compulsive beats[/url] and [url=https://soundfly.com/series/demystifying-synths?utm_source=Flypaper&utm_campaign=Flypaper-ad-system&utm_medium=in-body-ad]spacey synthesizer keyboards[/url], with Harry’s dreamy, almost uninflected, vocals drifting over it all. Stein and Harry found a [url=http://flypaper.soundfly.com/write/rhythm-section-locking-in-with-bass-and-drums/]rhythm section in drummer Clem Burke and bassist Gary Valentine, who knew one another from their New Jersey school days. With the addition of Jimmy Destri on keyboards, the original lineup was complete (James).


 Blondie began playing at all sorts of Lower East Side venues and dives but eventually made CBGB[/url] their home. After gigging for about two years, they were discovered by Richard Gottehrer, eventual founder of [url=http://www.theorchard.com/about/history/]the Orchard, an independent music and video distribution company.


 Blondie’s first record, the single “X Offender,”[/url] backed with [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRCJ6C6Bcm4]“In the Sun,”[/url] was co-produced by Gottehrer. It didn’t sell very well but provoked a lot of interest, at least enough to warrant a [url=http://flypaper.soundfly.com/discover/what-makes-a-great-debut-album-these-5-classics-can-teach-us-everything/]debut full-length album[/url]. “He was really instrumental in breaking us,” says Harry about Gottehrer. “We [url=http://flypaper.soundfly.com/hustle/independent-radio-promotion-guide-why-radio-still-matters/]got a lot of airplay at a time when New Wave music was totally untouched, and a lot of it had to do with Richard’s name on the product” (James).


 Blondie was an explosive live band with one of the most visually striking frontwomen of all time, but it wasn’t until they began to work on Parallel Lines that they really achieved pop perfection. Harry’s melodies were “frequently lugubrious” and “much too involved with a Warholian despair that took the form of nonstop deadpan cheekiness.” This cool demeanor was definitive of the New Wave sound to the core, and Clem Burke’s drumming was counted on to carry the band beyond mere art rock, but their early songs tended to miss that “jolt” of pop with really memorable hooks that Debbie Harry was obviously capable of delivering (Tucker).


 Parallel Lines, on the other hand, is a perfect pop album. That isn’t purely my own opinion; the pantheon of rock critics in the last 40 years have used it as a benchmark, a high-water mark, of ’70s pop. The record somehow perfectly blends a punk-rock edge with hooky pop melodies. It’s 12 songs, or 39 minutes, of pure sonic bliss. It’s one of those lightning in a bottle records that leaves audiences scratching their heads asking, “How did this even happen?”


 With Parallel Lines, the band drops the brooding artiness of its previous two records, Blondie (1976) and Plastic Letters (1978), and they start to develop themselves into a legitimately ambitious pop-rock group. Hooks and memorable melodies became very important to the band. Listen to “Hanging on the Telephone” or “Heart of Glass,” and you’ll be humming the choruses to those songs for weeks.


 Creative differences led them to seek out a new alternative to their current label, Private Stock[/url], and so they finally landed a deal with [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysalis_Records]Chrysalis Records.



 In addition to financial issues with the label, the band commented multiple times over the years that there simply “wasn’t enough cash.” They also had major issues with how the label handled their image, as evidenced by the release of the famous poster of Harry in a trashy-sexy, black-beaded, see-through top. “The group was afraid that it was being packaged behind an image of Debbie as a turn-on for dirty old men. Debbie detested the poster; the group was angry,” reported journalist Jamie James in 1979.


 As a fashion trendsetter and sex-symbol, it was inevitable that writers would focus on her looks rather than her immense talent. Her wide, angular face with its innocent pout, which gave the air of both worldly glamor and naïveté, was a predictable template for fetishization. As far as their fans went, it was hard to tell if people were infatuated with Blondie’s music or with the looks of their lead singer.

 During the lead up to recording and releasing Parallel Lines, however, Harry started to transform. She was no longer the sexy zombie, and she wouldn’t take any more abuse without displaying clear contempt for her abusers. It’s hard to say what the cause was, but she had just separated from her old label, she’d begun a relationship with band cofounder Chris Stein, and Mike Chapman was selected to produce their new record. Regardless of the reason, her newfound confidence as a fearless lead comes through in the music they laid down in that session.



 Her gritty delivery of “I’m gonna getcha” (in “One Way or Another”) and the sardonic dismissal throughout “Just Go Away” are witty flourishes that, in the course of this exhilarating LP, have come to seem genuinely brave (James).


 Unfortunately, Parallel Lines also represents the apex of both Blondie’s and producer Mike Chapman’s respective careers. Chapman was brought in to buff out some of the rough edges and polish up Blondie’s sound. Chapman was familiar with glam, reggae, New Wave, and many other genres that made him a perfect fit to produce Blondie’s record. He’d produced and written songs for Sweet, Suzi Quatro, Mud, Pat Benatar, and the Knack. His credentials were long and, and he often worked with bands whose visual styles were synonymous with glam.


 Manager Terry Ellis gave Chapman a very clear mission: turn Blondie’s songs into bonafide hits. “On Parallel Lines, I was given the responsibility by Terry Ellis to put this band at the top of the charts. He knew they could achieve that and I knew it, too, but I also knew that, given how they were when I began working with them, it might never happen” (Buskin).


 This was the first record Chapman worked on without writing any of the songs. “I wasn’t being used as a songwriter, but as a song manipulator and song construction consultant/technician,” Chapman says, “there was a lot of stuff that needed to be put together, because as loose as the band were, their songs were even looser. Of course, being that I’d started out as someone who wasn’t really into albums but into writing singles, I had done a complete turnaround, and I was loving every minute of it” (Buskin).


 Blondie’s biggest hurdle was their lack of technical proficiency. Even though Chapman loved their first two albums, he was brutally honest about their ability to play.


 He described them as “musically the worst band I ever worked with.” He asserts that Frankie Infante was “the only great musician among them… He’s an amazing guitarist,” but Chapman was less than impressed with the others. “Jimmy Destri was a pretty good songwriter, but he wasn’t a great keyboard player. What he did, he did well, and I didn’t ever try to push him beyond that because I knew there wasn’t anything beyond that. Chris Stein was always so stoned, and although Clem Burke had all the right ideas, he had no sense of timing. I mean, he had a lot of ability, but I always felt he was trying too hard, and that’s what I used to tell him.”


 Harry’s voice was surely beautiful — she had always been a “great vocal stylist with a beautifully identifiable voice” — but coaxing that voice out of her was the issue. Chapman continues:
 “I love Debbie and I learned a lot from her about the psychology of recording vocals. Up until her I had been pretty barbaric in my approach to vocalists, like, ‘Get out there and sing!’ Once I encountered Debbie, I learned how to soft-shoe it a little more. The vocals I got out of her I really had to fight for psychologically, and when I listen to them now I remember those sessions very clearly. They were tough times, with a lot of tears, a lot of disappearing into the bathroom for hours. She’s a very emotional person and those songs meant a lot to her. When she was on — bang, it all happened really quickly. She’d never had to work hard in the recording studio prior to meeting me. She’d go in and do one pass and that was it.”
 And it was amazing.



Despite the chaos and fragility, they had created a masterpiece. In Mike Chapman’s words, “That’s the magic of Parallel Lines. Every track is perfect from top to bottom… it’s hard to find a flaw in it, and there aren’t many records during your career that you can say that about.”


 People in New York and beyond already loved Blondie, but Parallel Lines pushed them deep into the mainstream. Each of these 12 short, pungent tunes builds to its own little epiphany of pop, from girl-group sass (“Pretty Baby”) to Rolling Stones seediness (“Just Go Away”). On “Sunday Girl,” you sense the smile that Harry never exposes in her publicity shots, and the song is a triumph of saucer-eyed hard rock (Tucker).


 The band also helped propel the beginnings of disco music by marrying robotic dance beats with a deluge of emotion and feeling. “Heart of Glass,” Blondie’s most popular song by far, is a true mating of Kraftwerk and Donna Summer. Harry embraces her steely aloofness and transcendence of romantic stereotypes to become a true feminist icon on her own terms. At its core, that’s what makes Parallel Lines so enduringly moving.


 Rock critic Robert recently stated that, “Parallel Lines was a perfect album in 1978 and hasn’t gained a pound since — every song memorable, distinct, well-shaped and over before you get antsy.” The album endures, and if you’re not familiar with it, then I must implore you to check it out. It’s a masterpiece.


Hear, Hear, I couldn't agree more with Mr Christgau.



Born Angela Tremble on July 1st, 1945 in Miami, Florida, Deborah Ann Harry was adopted by Catherine and Richard Smith Harry, when she was three-months-old.



Although contrary to her public persona, Debbie Harry was a cheerleader and sang in the church choir during high school.



Currently, "Heart of Glass" is ranked #56 on the UK's official list of biggest selling singles of all-time with sales of 1.28 million copies.


Blondie's original bassist Fred Smith left the band in 1975 to take Richard Hell's place in New York rock band Television.


Debbie Harry was scriptwriter Hampton Fancher’s inspiration for the character Pris, in 1982’s dystopian science fiction drama, "Blade Runner."


Blondie's song "Rapture," off their 1980 album "Autoamerican," features an extended rap verse from Harry technically making it the first rap single to hit number one.


In 1999, Debbie Harry overthrew Cher to become the oldest woman (aged 53) to have a UK No 1 single with the song "Maria."


Blondie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

 
Originally, they had two back-up singers known only as "Jackie," "Julie," "Tish," and "Snooky" which they later shed.


 Before Blondie, Debbie Harry was in a folk band called Wind in the Willows, named after the children's book by Kenneth Grahame.


 Blondie's formation came from the fruitful New York neighborhood around CBGB in the 1970s, and so shared new-wave and punk roots with Patti Smith (briefly sharing guitarist Ivan Kral), Ramones, New York Dolls, and the Talking Heads.


 At the beginning of Blondie's success in 1977, producer Mike Chapman took the band under his wing. Chapman was quite experienced with punk-type female leads - he had previously worked with Suzi Quatro. With the smash-hit single "Heart Of Glass" the group had established themselves as a consumer-friendly pop-new-wave alternative band, with just enough of a punk tinge to be edgy. Under Chapman's care, the album Parallel Lines became their breakout success, selling 20 million copies worldwide.


 Debbie Harry has said that Marilyn Monroe was an influence on her style; however, her main intention was to invoke being blonde by itself, since it is associated with glamour, success, and desire.


  A number of pressures led to the breakup of Blondie by 1982. The media focused on Harry to the point where the rest of the group felt like they didn't exist (think No Doubt). Their popularity was starting to wane and they weren't seeing the money they were used to. Morale was low and bickering broke out. But the coup de grace was when guitarist Chris Stein was diagnosed with pemphigus, a rare autoimmune disease that causes huge blisters on the skin and mucus membranes. He managed to get cured after a long struggle.


 Blondie briefly re-formed in the late 1990s to early 2000s, and again in the late 2000s, with the original members Harry, Stein, and Burke. In 2008, they toured with Pat Benatar.


  Debbie Harry was a Playboy bunny at the New York City Playboy Club from 1968-1973.


 Chris Stein briefly played guitar in the 1960s in the short-lived garage band The Morticians, which later became the Baroque Pop quartet The Left Banke.




"One Way Or Another"


This song is about a stalker. The lyrics are very dark and go into detail about a guy with evil intentions, but the music is very light and catchy, which masked the meaning of the song. According to Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry, it was inspired by real events. She told Entertainment Weekly: "I was actually stalked by a nutjob, so it came out of a not-so-friendly personal event. I tried to inject a little levity into it to make it more lighthearted. It was a survival mechanism."


Harry says that the title and the idea for the song popped into her head during a rehearsal, and most of the song was hashed out on the spot.


  This song has appeared in a number of movies and TV shows, often to imply dogged determination, not stalking. Here's a partial list:

Movies:
Little Darlings (1980)
Donnie Brasco (1997)
Beverly Hills Ninja (1997)
The Rugrats Movie (1998)
Coyote Ugly (2000)
The Guru (2002 - performed by Sophie Ellis-Bextor)
Mean Girls (2004)
New York Minute (2004)
Seed of Chucky (2004)
Aquamarine (2006 - performed by Mandy Moore)
Ready Player One (2018)

TV Shows:
The A-Team (1985)
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (1998)
Queer as Folk (1999)
Dawson's Creek (2002)
The Simpsons (2004)
Veronica Mars (2005)
ER (2007)
Psych (2008)
Supernatural (2011)


  
With radio-friendly songs like this one, Blondie was one of the first Punk bands to have Pop success. They played clubs like CBGB's (stands for Country, BlueGrass, Blues) with bands like The Ramones and Television, but their songs were much lighter and led to mainstream acceptance. The Police and Talking Heads are other groups that came out of that scene.


 
  


 

Sorry forgot to post this earlier,been visiting my old mate who's no' so good, and it kinda slipped my mind.


DAY 402.
The Jam.............................................All Mod Cons   (1978)











Signed in February 1977, within 12 months The Jam were washed up. Their second LP, The Modern World, had been a disaster, and everybody involved acknowledged that Paul Weller's writing muse had disappeared. When their A&R man heard their new recordings, he bluntly told them to scrap it. They did, but the breathing space this created, and the pressure they were now under, forced Weller to take stock.............with astonishing results.


When the album arrived, the promise was realised, twelve three-minute vignettes delivered with a crisp, sharp modernist attitude, get in, do it, get out; no slack, no frills, no pretty stuff. And no sneering; Weller created characters, filled them in, made them breathe, then watched the modern world dump on them.

No' bad for a boy who was only 20!

DAY 399.
The Only Ones.............................................The Only Ones   (1978)











I've always loved "Another Girl, Another Planet" but to be honest I can't remember ever hearing anything else by this band, so looked forward to this opportunity to put that right. On first play it was a decent enough album, with some excellent musicians, but the vocals took a bit of getting used to, but if you listen to (and in my case read)  the lyrics of most of his songs they actually compliment each other perfectly.


This album just gets better with every play, as I alluded  earlier their is some great guitary bits on this platter, the intro to "Another Girl. Another Planet" has got be up there with the finest intros, and you can hear where The Libertines were influenced, and probably just me but I kept thinking of Pulp in some of the tracks.


Again, for me not a dud track on this one,"The Whole of the Law," "City of Fun," "No Peace for the Wicked" "Another Girl. Another Planet" were my personal favourites, but all the tracks were worth a listen.


Now, the subject matter in nearly all the songs is no' the happiest I've ever listened to, but when mixed together with all the other ingredients, it makes this offering a very enjoyable listen, this is another album that will be getting added to my vinyl collection.

There's something about this album that sounds so familiar, but I know I haven't listened to it before, if anybody else has any idea why the vocals and music seem familiar please let me know, is it them taking off someone, or conversely them being mimicked?





Bits & Bobs;




South London’s answer to TELEVISION, JOHNNY THUNDERS, LOU REED and others from the American new wave movement, The ONLY ONES were not around long enough to garner the respect they richly deserved. Fronted by the whiny and miserabilist songsmith Peter Perrett, the band left only three albums behind them, plus a bona fide contender for “one-that-got-away”: `Another Girl, Another Planet’.



Formed in August 1976, each band member had already staked their 15 minutes of fame in non-new wave acts: the aforementioned Peter Perrett (vocals/guitar) with the not-long-since defunct ENGLAND’S GLORY (who comprised pre-SQUEEZE bassist Harry Kakoulli, drummer Jon Newey and lead guitarist David Clarke), John Perry (lead guitar) with The Ratbites From Hell, Mike Kellie (drums) from psych/prog outfit SPOOKY TOOTH and, the oldest by a country mile, Alan Mair (bass) from mid-60s Glaswegians The Beatstalkers.



Initially managed by Kakoulli’s sister Zena, who also provided some backing vocals alongside fourth member Michael Kemp (keyboards), The ONLY ONES’ vinyl debut `Lovers Of Today’ (a deserved record of the week) was released on Zena and Peter’s own Vengeance independent, selling sufficient copies to attract the attentions of major label C.B.S.



The following April saw the release of their exhilarating and eclectic `Another Girl…’, one of several highlights from their eponymous parent album, THE ONLY ONES (1978) {*9}; its low-rent, faded glamour tales of life’s seedier side drawled out by the charismatic Perrett against an authentic but professional new wave backdrop. The record’s humble Top 60 position was a poor reflection of its quality, bearing in mind the number of two-bit amateurs clogging up the charts at the time. Lethargic opener `The Whole Of The Law’ had a maudlin and mushy appeal, while one could almost smell the dingy hotel rooms on the jazz-inflected `Breaking Down’. Add to these, the reckless abandon of `City Of Fun’, `The Beast’, `No Peace For The Wicked’ and `The Immortal Story’, and it seemed the burgeoning new wave movement had went up a gear.



With bountiful critical acclaim on their side, The ONLY ONES ploughed on, releasing a second instalment of Perrett’s doomed romanticism through 1979’s EVEN SERPENTS SHINE {*6}. Another impressive self-produced effort, the Top 50 album’s success was hindered by the snowballing tensions, both internally within the group itself and from their record company. Lyrically gelling but with no stand-out track(s) to re-boot sales from week to week, flop 45s `You’ve Got To Pay’ and `Out There In The Night’ had minor appeal, while Perrett’s voice was at times grating if a song didn’t quite fit hand in glove; exceptions to the rule were `Curtains For You’, `From Here To Eternity’ and `Miles From Nowhere’.



Perhaps as a result, a third set BABY’S GOT A GUN (1980) {*5} sounded flaccid and tired in comparison, although it did provide Perrett and Co with a long-overdue Top 40 placing. Produced by Colin Thurston and featuring a cover of Johnny Duncan’s country hit, `Fools’ (sung here by Peter alongside Pauline Murray of PENETRATION), the scuzzy edge of their debut was posted missing. `Me And My Shadow’ and `Deadly Nightshade’ sounded shockingly familiar to songs/lyrics from a time long since passed, while the anaemic `The Big Sleep’ and others just dragged on and on and on without much direction or hold.



Sales weren’t sufficient to please their paymasters, however, and, minus a deal, the group called it a day. While Perry formed Decline And Fall, Perrett tried to form a band with Gordon Edwards and Glenn Tilbrook; disillusioned he faded into a heroin-fuzzed, SYD BARRETT-like obscurity, only to re-emerge more than a decade on as PETER PERRETT IN THE ONE. An album, WOKE UP STICKY (1996) {*6}, appeared on Demon Records in summer ‘96 to some encouraging reviews. Squeakier and more fragile, the singer-songwriter displayed a bit of Britpop sensibility on a handful of cuts, including the title track, `Law Of The Jungle’ and a poignant cover of The KINKS’ `I’m Not Like Everybody Else’. Meanwhile, Perry was making in-roads again as a top session man for the likes of SISTERS OF MERCY, MARIANNE FAITHFULL, EVAN DANDO, MICHAEL NYMAN et al. The call for an ONLY ONES reunion was heard ever so louder as PAUL WESTERBERG, BLUR and The LIBERTINES shouted their praises.



Perrett had went into seclusion for long periods of time, only coming out of his shell when Alan Mair contacted him and the band in 2006, suggesting they should re-form on the back of a Vodafone advertisement pitching `Another Girl…’; it was not the first time it’d resurfaced, as the record had finally hit No.57 as a flip-side to The PSYCHEDELIC FURS’ movie theme `Pretty In Pink’. It looked positive for The ONLY ONES as they duly toured the country and played Later… With Jools Holland.






Take one Syd Barrett-alike singer in eyeliner and with a voice like an infinitely weary Larry the lamb (Peter Perrett), a balding, portly guitarist (John Perry) and add a rhythm section composed of two aging veterans (Alan Mair, ex-bass player with Scotland's Beatstalkers and Mike Kellie, drummer with Spooky Tooth). On paper it seems bizarre that The Only Ones were once counted amongst punk's vanguard. But this debut contains all the nihilistic thrills you'd expect from men half their age, while adding an extra layer of expertise.




And talk about setting out your stall: the debut single, 1976's Lovers Of Today, had outlined their manifesto of guitar-heavy parables of narcotically damaged, doomed affairs (''If we ever touched it would disturb the calm") and is included here along with its b-side, Peter And The Pets. But naming the first track on your debut after Aleister Crowley's most famous bon mot really showed that here was a bunch of elegantly wasted, but entirely literate, scoundrels.



 Of course it was the second single, Another Girl Another Planet, that sealed their reputations. Coming on like the musical equivalent of a drug rush, its semi-autobiographical taunt of "I look ill, but I don't care about it'' was a suitably ecstatic accompaniment to their mission : ie being seemingly hellbent on becoming as epicly destroyed as heroes like Barrett or Keith Richards.


 But the music - while able to emulate the scene growing up around them on speedier numbers like City Of Fun and Language Problem (''taking drugs is one thing we've got in common, it helps us overcome the language problem'') - could just as easily slip into jazz (Breaking Down), ooze out as medium-paced, lovelorn ballads (It's The Truth) or summon up epic statements describing the pitfalls of the lifestyle that they were dallying with (The Beast). It's this last track that first demonstrated how versatile a player John Perry was; his licks setting fire to the coda.



 It's tempting to see all this as somewhat self-parodic: a kind of evolutionary dead-end for rock. And it's unfortunate that if there's a modern equivalent - without an ounce of the talent - it's Pete Doherty (with whom Perrett guested a few years back), yet surely Morrissey, too, must have cottoned on to the hilarious self-pity of No Peace For the Wicked ('Why must I go through these deep emotional traumas?'').



 At this point the band were experienced and together enough to know that the best people to produce them was themselves, and this remaster shows what a great job they did too. Luckily they had one more great album in them (Even Serpents Shine)., but stars this bright always burn out quickly.





"Another Girl, Another Planet"

 
Written by guitarist and lead vocalist Peter Perrett, "Another Girl, Another Planet" is as good as it got for The Only Ones. Running to 3 minutes 2 seconds, this uptempo number was the second track on their eponymous debut album. It was released twice as a single in 1978, both times on the CBS label. The first time it was backed by "Special View", the second by "My Wife Says".


 
Although the song originally failed to chart, it has been re-released and covered more than once, and is surprisingly well known, although few would go as far as Andy Claps who in reviewing it for Allmusic said it is "that rare confluence of lyrical, instrumental, and vocal poetry that is so complete, so absolute, that it renders everything else - in, on, above, below, and around it - irrelevant while it plays."

The song did eventually chart after being re-released in 1992, peaking at #57 in the UK.


 
The Only Ones split in 1982 after being dropped by their label. They reformed in 2007 as a result of this song being used in a Vodafone advertising campaign.


 
Speaking about the writing of the song to Uncut August 2015, Peter Perrett recalled: "I can remember what caused me to write 'Another Girl, Another Planet.' It would have been about April '77 because we had it recorded by June. It was inspired by this girl from Yugoslavia. I didn't go out with her, but she was like a total space cadet, which when I was really young I found interesting. She was just a bit weird- she'd say crazy things, and it just got me thinking that every girl has something to offer.

It would have been written on my Guild acoustic. I think any good song should sound all right on acoustic guitar."


 
Some radio stations refused to play the song because of its supposed drug content. Perrett told Uncut: "I put in drug-related imagery, but it wasn't about drugs. At that time I was more addicted to sex and infatuation than I was to drugs."




Just a wee bit about Alan Mair, the Scottish bass player in the band;


Alan Mair grew up in the Glasgow area. He began playing guitar at about age 13 and gained experience in various bands during the 1960s.  In 1962, Mair and Eddie Campbell formed the Glasgow band The Beatstalkers. The line-up included Davie Lennox on vocals, Eddie Campbell on guitar, Mair on bass and 'Tudge' Williamson on drums (replaced by Jeff Allen). Later Ronnie Smith joined the group on rhythm guitar.


Under the management of Joe Gaffney, the band went on to become Scotland's "top group" at the time. They were called the "Scottish Beatles" by the local press because of the screaming and riots that occurred anywhere they made an appearance; although the band toured England and Europe many times, had a 6-week sell-out residency at the famous Narquee Club and performed on the TV show "Ready Steady Go!", they never achieved the same dizzy heights of success as they did in Scotland. The band signed a recording contract with Decca Records. Their records sold thousands of copies in Scotland, but with only two chart shops in Scotland their sales made no impact on the UK charts. They split in 1969 after their van was stolen with all their equipment in it.
After The Beatstalkers decided to call it a day in 1969 Mair began making leather clothes and hand made boots for rock bands the likes of Yes, Santana, The Tremolos, David Bowie, Uriah Heep and many more. A short time later in 1970 he opened shops in Kensington Market, Kings Road and High street Kensington selling handmade leather stacked heel boots which he was making in his own factory in Kentish Town. In 1971 he employed Freddie Mercury of the rock band Queen at his Kensington Market shop as his shop manager from 1971 until 1974. On one occasion after being at a party Freddie told Alan that everyone at the party, including the girls, had his boots on, and said “ I don’t know if you realise but you’re not considered hip unless you have on a pair of Alan Mair boots”



 After a five-year spell in the fashion world Mair was drawn back to the music business. He joined the "Al Matthews Band" who had a couple of hit records. They were a bunch of formidable players, all great musicians,.!!!! Al Matthews on vocals, who went on to play "Sergeant Apone" in Aliens. Raphael Ravenscroft on sax [Baker Street]. Sean Byrne on guitar. Theodore Thunder on drums [Leo Sayer]. Ric Parnell [2nd drummer] Atomic Rooster and played Mick Shrimpton in the movie “This is Spinal Tap”. Dave Rose on keyboards [Leo Sayer and Allan Price] and Lindsay Scott on violin [JSD band]. They toured constantly. Their first tour was supporting Levi Stubbs’s “Four Tops”.




When The Al Matthews band split Mair answered an advert in Melody Maker and went for an audition with Roger Chapman’s band “Streetwalkers” at Mano’s Studios in Lots Road. During a break he wandered into the studio next door and found himself watching The Only Ones rehearse. On leaving the studio Mike Kellie enquired who Alan was and found out he was a bass player. Without hearing him play Kellie said he felt a spiritual connection and that he was the bass player they were looking for. He joined The Only Ones in August 1976. They signed to CBS and recorded 3 studio albums, of which their first album “The Only Ones and “Even Serpents Shine” received critical acclaim. The Only Ones included lead vocalist Peter Perrett, guitarist John Perry and drummer and ex-Spooky Tooth member Mike Kellie. Their first single, "Lovers of Today", was self-released on the Vengeance record label, and a year later they signed to CBS. Their next single "Another Girl, Another Planet" became the band's best-known song. The band released The Only Ones in 1978, which was well received. The next year they released Even Serpents Shine, and a year later, they released their final studio album, Baby's Got a Gun. In the summer of 1980, they supported the Who on their tour of the United States. In 1982, the band officially disbanded. In subsequent years, The Only Ones gained a cult following, and compilation albums now outnumber their official studio albums.

DAY 401.
Pere Ubu......................................................Dub Housing   (1978)











This wont take long, similar to the last Pere Ubu album I listened to, no too bad in patches, the good tracks were really good but the shite ones were really extremely shitey. The half decent ones in my humbles were, "Navvy," "(Pa) Ubu Dance Party," and "Blow Daddy-O," my favourite though was "Caligari's Mirror."


I now feel it's my duty to put a health warning on listening to "Thriller!" four and a half minutes of f'k'n earache, it sounds like a record being played at the wrang speed with radio interference thrown in to the mix, just in case you couldn't be that fucked of with the former, avoid at all costs!


I might download a few of the tracks off this album, but this album wont be going in my vinyl collection.




Bits & Bobs;


ALBUM REVIEW: Pere Ubu – Dub Housing



 If you’re a fan of late 1970’s post-punk (The Fall, Television, Talking Heads, Gang of Four, etc.) as I am, an essential album for your collection has to be Pere Ubu’s 1978 release Dub Housing.


 Reissued by Cooking Vinyl in 2008, the 10-track Dub Housing features the Cleveland, Ohio-based “avant-garage” band embracing an arty and even jarring mix of 60’s garage rock and 70’s experimental rock. Ultimately the quintet creates a sound that is uniquely all their own (Pavement would embrace this style a little over a decade later).


 The follow-up to their debut The Modern Dance, Dub Housing was seen at the time – and today – as a masterpiece of post-punk. A slice o’ vinyl that Cleveland should be proud of – just as they are proud of American Splendor’s Harvey Pekar.


 “Took a bus, walked around / Took a bus, walked around …” Singer David Thomas blurts on the angular, Rocky Horror weirdness of “Caligari’s Mirror.” Pere Ubu puts the “house” in “funhouse” with this one.


 Starting off with “Navvy,” this is anti-artist pop for the Pepsi generation. Thomas gloomily exclaims “Boy, that sounds swell!” over the loose, rhythmic piece. “On the Surface,” the second tracks, blends well, following “Navvy.” Sythnesizer madman Allen Ravenstine plucks away playfully as bassist Tony Maimone gets funky. They refuse to be forced into a paint-by-numbers method of creating music.


 The title track is clearly influenced by the dub reggae sounds that were exploding at the time. Drummer Scott Krauss clearly is holding back, but then lays into his snare with vim and vigor, while shaking the maracas oh-so-lightly, as Thomas plinks jazzily on the piano.

 And then you get a real gem – “Ubu Dance Party.” It nearly descends into parody, and even dips a toe in – but then who cares, right?


 In fact, while the neighborhood squares might hear Dub Housing and run away screaming, you smile and chuckle to yourself, just as Savid, Tom, Tony, Allen and Scott must have been in that Cleveland public housing unit that they lived in, like the Monkees did, getting into wacky situations, avoiding the landlord, romping on the Lake Erie beaches or putting up with Tony “always getting the girl” at the end of the show.


 Ahhh … Dub Housing. An album whose time has come … again. After all, Pere Ubu is as popular as they've ever been, as evidenced by Ubu Sings Ubu and the work of French playwright Alfred Jarry and his pataphysical, Dada-esque mashup of Shakespeare's Hamlet and MacBeth and King Lear. And the band is still recording all these years later.




Pere Ubu, Dub Housing




For a long time, I always thought the world at large would catch up with Pere Ubu, and the band would at last take its rightful place among the most interesting, intelligent, and innovative bands of the late 20th century. When “Waiting For Mary” (from Cloudland)managed some scant airplay and the video turned up in light rotation on MTV in 1989 I thought the time might have arrived for this criminally neglected band.



 Four decades have passed since the release of Dub Housing in 1978, which is certainly the most accessible album from their classic period, and arguably the best. The brief commercial flirtation of 1989 never did translate into sales or long-term notoriety, and it seems unlikely they’ll ever turn up at a Rock n Roll Hall of Fame induction, although if the Hall were really about rock, that’s precisely where they ought to be. They’re from the same hometown, after all.



 No, like so many other good bands with brilliant albums, Pere Ubu and Dub Housing are likely to continue receding into history, known only to record/CD/mp3 junkies, students of the punk/new wave era, and aging clubgoers. And sometime, say in another 50 years or so, they’ll be as lost and forgotten as A-ha.



 Which is a crying shame; during their peak, which ran roughly from 1976-1982, there was absolutely nobody working the same side of the street as them; their sophomore album, Dub Housing, remains an excellent avenue by which to discover them.



 Dub Housing often gets lumped in with the punk albums of the era, but it definitely isn’t punk, which suggests abrasive two chord songs and hardcore politics. It has also been called “new wave” which is also wrong, conjuring up the synth-pop of the Cars or something. It probably could be called art-rock, although that gives the wrong impression too; there’s nothing here that remotely sounds like Yes or King Crimson.



 What Dub Housing is is the sound of decline and decay, represented musically as only a band from the heart of the rustbelt (1970’s Cleveland) could hear it. But no, it isn’t industrial music either; it’s something eternally different.



 The album opens with “Navvy”, which is built on taut, spare guitar, bass, and drums instumentation while lead singer David Thomas wails “I’ve got these arms and legs that flip flop flip flop” which is repeated until it is finally answered with “That sounds swell!” and the song detours into a sax dominated lull; in some ways the entire Pere Ubu philosophy can be summed up in this track. Unlike punk and industrial bands, Pere Ubu’s music retained an oddly touching humanism. While they certainly played up the ironies and ridiculous contradictions of the human experience, they also retained an odd bemusement about their own existence.

 If you’re willing to let Thomas’ yelps and shrieks work they way they’re supposed to, and listen closely to the remarkable instrumental play, “Navvy” ought to grab you; from there, there isn’t a wasted cut.



 So songs like “Caligari’s Mirror” and “Drinking Wine Spodyody” follow their own strange internal logic; the former is a woozy, drunken, delirious track with a joyous chorus dedicated to boozing sailors; the latter is strung on a tight bass and weird asymmetrical guitar, with almost random sounding keyboard chords and one of Thomas’ best ever-vocals; it seems to be a song of romantic rejection taken into the realm of psychodrama; as music it is propulsive despite all the loose limbs jutting out at all angles. Thomas’ vocal, which almost crosses the line into sobbing while still retaining its dignity, is remarkable. “Thriller!” suggests the industrial backdrop that is ever present with this band; heavy echo, distorted guitar, ghostly sound effects of moans, screams, wails, PA announcements, a bent rhythm. “On The Surface” built around an almost Farfisa-sounding keyboard riff is almost danceable. “I Will Wait” is the closest to a conventional rocker, featuring angular guitar, but even there they stack the deck with bizarre tempo shifts and outre lyrics. Codex, the closer, is a creepy song of longing embedded into another industrial soundscape; “I think about you all the time” never sounded creepier.





Equal to Thomas’ vocals are the band, which on this album included Tom Herman on guitar and Allen Ravenstine on keyboards; the albums on which the three appear together are Ubu’s best. Bassist Tim Wright and drummer Scott Krauss make one of rock’s more peculiar rhythm sections; at no time do they merely keep the beat; seldom did a Pere Ubu song end on the same beat it came in on.



 I discovered this album several years late myself, at about 2AM on a particularly lonely night, and was completely mesmerized by it, touching off a frantic month of catching up with the rest of the band’s output. I’d hazard to say that the right newcomers will be spellbound even today; not only did nobody do what Ubu did in their heyday, nobody has attempted it ever since.



 Pere Ubu followed up Dub Housing with New Picnic Time in 1979, but personnel changes began to erode the band and its vision, and by 1982 the band seemed adrift and broke up. They reformed in 1988 with most of the classic lineup aboard, and since then have released a dozen albums. None of their later albums approach their first three in vision or consistency, but all but the most perfunctory offer enough thrills to keep them interesting.



 If you never got around to Dub Housing, give it a spin. The mountain of Pere Ubu albums makes an initial exploration seem daunting, but once you let Dub Housing express its vision, everything else starts to make a lot more sense.



 

The Man-Machine : somehow, in later years, I acquired the German version of this album, which I've always enjoyed a wee bit more, maybe because I know what the words (roughly) mean, but also because I like the guttural  sound of German. X-Mal Deutschland and Laibach, who often use German on their vocals, were among my favourite bands of the early 'eighties, but I didn't have a clue what they were singing about.

The cover is brilliant too, red and black, the band looking very German, some folk rejecting the band as fascist due to this, when in reality it was a design based on Russian communist poster art.

Was never a big Blondie fan, they were 'too trendy' for my pretences, but secretly enjoyed their singles.

Thought of The Only Ones as a 'manufactured' punk group at the time, and largely ignored them, but listening back, it's ok stuff, and I shouldn't have been put off by my snobbishness.

It's awfy quick for another Elvis album to make an appearance! But the first four Declan MacManus albums are great, then I think it all went to fuck when he broke in USA.

Some fine LPs recently, I've been out the loop for the last few days and just catching up.
 

DAY 405.
Big Star......................................Third/Sister Lovers   (1978)











The hugely influential Big Star's third and final album is often described as stark,bleak, and depressing. Admittedly, the band's upbeat Beatles/Byrds jangle nearly gets smothered by narcoleptic offerings like "Big Black Car2 and "Kangeroo," but it works.


Alex Chilton and the band sound like they pretty much don't give a damn anymore,the album is part love letter, part kiss-off.

DAY 406.
The Residents.............................................Duck Stab/Buster And Glen   (1978)











Atonal honking, nonsense poetry, cartoon voices, and fairground riffs, The Residents possess a singularly unhinged compositional talent that allows them to fuse the weirdest sounds into an even weirder whole. their members have always protected their identities by appearing in public in disguise, and while they have been tentatively identified, you are going to have to look elsewhere to break that spell. As conceptualists and willful obscurants, they have rarely been bettered.