bl@ckhead

a curiosity only...

by deed of absurdist dissension, and conspicuously excluded from the 1984 Polydor release of Ian Dury & the Music Students' "4,000 Weeks Holiday", the executive decision to derail the project as the result of craven faint-heartedness prompted two years of bitter sparring between Dury and his financiers. Fearing legal action from the estate of Enid Blyton, or merely reluctant to yield to contractual mutiny, the label insisted on maintaining its censorial stance.

Dury was incensed and unrepentant.

Superficially a 'critique' on children's television, Dury's invective seems driven primarily as the result of childhood exclusion - as the consequence of disability - and his later experience as observer infuriated not only by what he saw as Blyton's inherent class and race division, but by the condescending remit of government licensed broadcasting in general.

The chasm between perceived ideal and reality.

Do I think he hit the nail on the head ?

Maybe. Not really. The BBC, virtually single handedly, wove my own security blanket as one of thousands of children regularly 'watched' by the box in the corner. A blanket with as many holes in it as unshakable convictions. It served both as genial babysitter and an eye into disturbing complexities revealed with little or no sentimentality.

Its impartiality in reporting current affairs. Its obligation to historical accuracy.

I am possibly as indebted to the BBC as any indoctrinated child of Stalin or Mao, but I don't believe the proliferation of political correctness over the past two to three decades has served that model well.

Do I think Polydor was wholly unjustified imposing nonsensical limitations on its contracted artist ?

Absolutely. Fuckin' A. I think Ian Dury - architect of "Spasticus Autisticus" (banned by the BBC in 1981); confrontational pearly king - was rightly pissed at seeing a bunch of suits hop from one foot to the other and urinate over each other like chastened whippets while he tore at the muzzle. In fact, it was probably Polydor's tacit refusal to throw its weight behind anything explicitly controversial after "Spasticus Autisticus" gathered condemnation during the International Year of Disabled Persons which prompted Dury's intransigence with regard to "4,000 Weeks Holiday" in the first instance. Beyond that, he was almost certainly fueled by resentment at the music industry's wholly successful bid to typecast him as curmudgeonly eccentric and rogue.

The cosiest liberals who initially championed him as a model of social inclusion were quick to distance themselves when his awkward utterances deviated from their own self-serving script.

Is it offensive ?

Only in so far as marionettes have cause to suffer indignation.

And wait. If one chooses to employ that same invective now, say, to channel contempt on the worst excesses of 'reality' programming - as in the X Factor - I suggest his casual barbed dart has almost certainly passed its flight test.

Fuck off, Jedward. Fuck off, Louis Walsh.

graphic by barney bubbles, 1981.

▼ IAN DURY & THE MUSIC STUDENTS: FUCK OFF NODDY (UNRELEASED) from "4,000 Weeks Holiday" LP (Polydor) 1984 (UK)

anchor snapper

ANC 1021.

Lifted from their 1975 LP, "Elastique" - also released on the UK independent Anchor label - "Why Did You Do It ?" remains as taut and inviting a proposition as a 38" peach in a g-string.

Brassy white funk delivered without irony or criminal remorse. The last gasp of live circuit desperadoes drowning in Johnny Walker watered down with flat Cola served in plastic cups.

A hangover in a goldfish bowl doubling as a dressing room.

Fronted by Elmer Gantry - one time vocalist and guitarist in Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera as early as 1967, and session singer with the Alan Parsons Project on the track "Psychobabble" - it was his decision to team up with newcomer, 'Kirby' which directly led to their modestly securing a UK Top 20 hit. Buoyed by Steve Emery on bass and Jim Russell on drums, Stretch stepped into the studio and promptly laid down a number of Gantry and Kirby compositions. Produced by an aspiring Martin Rushent, a tide of journeymen horn players - including Mike Bailey and Ron Carthy - were brought in to further augment the mix. An inspired development.

The resulting 45, penned by Kirby, garnered more than its share of radio play and lingered in the UK charts for nine weeks without actually troubling the Top 10. It should have gone much higher, but them's the breaks; worn knicker elastic or not.

With no small thanks to 'Scarab' for reminding me why this originally was one of the very first songs posted on SibLINGSHOT ON THE BLEACHERS.

Hold the cocaine and stretch limousine. Keep the champagne on ice. "Why Did You Do It ?" was sadly a flash in the pan.

▼ STRETCH: WHY DID YOU DO IT ? from "Why Did You Do It ? b/w Write Me A Note" 45 (Anchor) 1975 (UK)

(i don't wanna go down to) the basement

not a rerun of the basement tapes, but an ear full of soot in the ink well.

brass necked plagiarism, above, by ib.

If you happen to be in the vicinity of Nashville, Tennessee this coming Sunday, December 13th, do not neglect to pay a visit to The Basement, 1604 8th Avenue South. Mixing up the medicine, while those not in the know aimlessly wander the pavement above, will be a promisingly engaging assembly - see above - featuring bleachers' regulars, Max and the Wild Things. Follow the link below for ticket details and availability, and if you come up short grab the man in coon-skip cap on the door and tell him SibLINGSHOT sent you. Or at least nudged you in the ribs.

What price a heady concoction with genuine pharmaceutical value ? Here, kitty.

official poster, above, by monkey ink design.

YOU GOT YOUR
+
a packet of three coming to the basement.

+
By way of an On The Bleachers only bonus, here is the Welcome to 1979
studio recording of "Without a Sound", originally featured in July in all its ragged glory;
live at The Basement from a previous appearance. With added horns.

MAX & THE WILD THINGS: WITHOUT A SOUND
from "The Grass Is Always Greener" EP (WT1979) 2009 (US)

MAX AND THE WILD THING @ THE BASEMENT, DEC. 13TH 2009, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

cornerman

tick... tock... tick...

Like my Polish grandfather, I find
myself preoccupied with watches.
Wristwatches, to be precise;
pocket watches, too. Silver oysters.

Clocks, on the other hand... twice
strike me with deeper forebodings.
The bronchial tick and tock, and dust,
the pendulum swing. The chime.

I have never been much of a one, all
round, for keeping time. Punching in.
Well-oiled or not. Sober or shiftless.

And even though I do my best to
keep up to date, from time to time,
I miss those Swiss mechanisms
once so fashionable and ubiquitous;
the delusion that somehow my
actions make an impact on the smooth
running through one day to the next.

My grandfather may once have held
ambitions to become a watchmaker,
I do not know. After the war he worked
the trams for a spell, sticking to the rails.
A year or so of this. He found his niche
behind a bar serving time-served men
on leave from the glow of welded rivets.

Setting down half gills and pitching out
drunks. Pulling pints and punches under
the huge brewery clock in his corner.

a pinball in a machine, rusty james

Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton's "Rumblefish" - expanded in 1975 from her original short story first published in 'Nimrod: 1968', the University of Tulsa's literary journal - succeeded where its bigger budget sibling, "The Outsiders", so obviously failed. Shot entirely in the monochrome of REM sleep, save for those few frames with superimposed colour on captive fighting fish, the film through its parts achieves more than its end result.

A knowing homage to the French New Wave with its echoes of surrealism and the Expressionist cinema of F.W. Murnau and Robert Weine; in addition to the more familiar cinematographic borrowings of Orson Welles, "Citizen Kane" and "Night of the Hunter", in particular.

As a teen drama in much the same mold as "West Side Story", the finished article is a quiet triumph of superior casting - including Dennis Hopper - and atmosphere over narrative content, retaining the choreographed performance of a stage adaptation within a few nicely observed set pieces. Not so much a straight reworking of "Romeo and Juliet" as an epilogue of sorts where all the marginal characters have succumbed to less noble motives or dramatic ends. Concise and defined where "The Outsiders" is embarrassingly slight. And hysterical.









That's not to conclude that in totality it does not suffer from its own overblown dénouement. Those melodramatic flourishes, though, are largely forgivable. Despite this, it was resoundingly rubbished when it it premiered at the New York Film Festival.

Warner Brothers, reluctant to distribute "The Outsiders", passed on "Rumblefish" entirely. Paramount Studios, in turn, were shaken by how much the final edit deviated from the commercial norm.

The soundtrack by Stewart Copeland has worn better, maybe, in the quarter of a century since its original release.

Coppola was insistent that the score be experimental in tone. Recording ambient street noise in Tulsa - where both "The Outsiders" and its successor were filmed - Copeland later mixed the results over and under a battery of instrumentation, layering sequenced parts in synch with video footage and dialogue with the use of a Musync, the cutting edge of studio technology in the early to mid eighties.

Jesus. If I can forgive this film its minor conceits, I am prepared to forgive Stewart Copeland his role in The Police.

Buell Neidlinger: double bass;
Art Krahble and Lory Westin: french horn;
Mel Martin: saxophone;
Pavel Strings: strings;
Stan Friedman: trumpet.

Engineered by Bill Belknap; Jonney Jeronymides;
Kathy Morton; Richard Beggs; Robin Yeager.
Musync engineered by Robert Randles.

▼ STEWART COPELAND: BROTHERS ON WHEELS from "Rumblefish (Original Soundtrack)" LP (A&M) 1983 (US)

▼ STEWART COPELAND: FATHER ON THE STAIRS from "Rumblefish (Original Soundtrack)"
▼ STEWART COPELAND: MOTORBOY'S FATE from "Rumblefish (Original Soundtrack)" LP (A&M) 1983

the lime in limerick

Back by popular demand. Well. In a manner of speaking.

The following Learism - in the loosest sense - was originally posted last Friday and subsequently withdrawn by the taste police:

I could'a bin a sex pistol,
but I wasn't invited;
I could'a bin a contender,
but I wasn't from Detroit;
I could'a bin a banjo player,
but someone clipped my strings;
I could'a got out my f@ckin' bed
in the morning, but, then again,
I'm a genuinely lazy sod.

Suck my sock. Winston's dead
and I'm still sleeping.

Give me a motherf@ckin' moment.
I'm trippin' on the stairs.

zzzzz.

By way of an afterword, you may or may not remember that I mentioned some time back that my wife and I hatched a plot to paint the communal landing in our decaying apartment block.

Not just the plot, you understand, but the vaguely tiresome physical undertaking.

While not to everybody's taste, perhaps, we were subsequently approached by the authority in charge of maintenance - the very same body, in fact, which refused to furnish me with paint some five years previously - and lukewarmly thanked. As opposed to being threatened with eviction.

Well. I was expecting to be reprimanded at the very least.

What I was not prepared for, however, was their using our - accidental - colour scheme as a template and employing a team of twenty painters and decorators to 'refurbish' all twenty-three floors in the very same institutional hues. Including the back stairwell, I hasten to add.

Result. Although I gather a number of tenants are less than enamored.

Here's 2 by 4. Neither of which made it onto on EMI's "Entertainment!" in their original form.

There is no five year plan.

▼ GANG OF FOUR: ARMALITE RIFLE from "Damaged Goods" EP (Fast Product) 1978 (UK)
▼ GANG OF FOUR: DAMAGED GOODS from "Damaged Goods" EP (Fast Product) 1978 (UK)

fry and ham

And the curious thing is, I wasn't frying up 'Braveheart' beef slices over yesterday's post. I wasn't even particularly fond of that movie.

Out to lunch, is as accurate an assessment as any. Or old ham.

Chalk it down as an excuse to serve up some reconstituted Jamie Reid.

the lazy earl of wessex

Annotated as an "outtake"on the 2002 repackage, I can hear nothing here differing significantly from their definitive LP version.

The most recent accession, of course, to the Dukedom of Wessex is none other than 'our' Prince Edward; a tiresome brat harboring melodramatic delusions of grandeur. A dribbling imbecile racing from one knockout to the next. No Tad 'behemoth', he. More a sneering conduit of waste. The antithesis of Darwinism. As a Pictish heathen with a dash of Ghengis Khash running through my veins, I feel no allegiance whatsoever to the House of Windsor. And scarcely more to Holyrood. We'll suffer no whiff of borgeois monarchism here.

No small amount of atrocious snivelling.

We bring with us the ghosts of lepers and saints to staunch our mortal wounds.

▼ SEX PISTOLS: SEVENTEEN (Wessex Studios, NMTB Outtake) from "Box Set" 3 x CD (Virgin) 1977 / 2002 (UK)

bleak house music

Last night's attempt at poetry stank, quite frankly.
I woke up this morning and pulled the chain.
Not being one to flush the baby with the bath water,
I was loathe to disengage for the want of crying.

Spilt milk; gluey sex; oil pastels; empty bottles.
Bleeding containers of takeaway food. Sour spoils.

Ah well. I am inured enough to weekend ill tidings.
Salvation armies march on their stomachs. There is
a circle of concientious objectors stamping on mine:
pantomime sergeants; Presbyterian whingers.

Abandon your instruments of hope all ye who enter.
There's not a dry eye or house around here for miles.

blood oranges

in the court of the crimson orange.


In December 1436, on the occasion of his infant son's initiation into the Order of the Dragon - founded by the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, and modeled on the Order of Saint George - emissaries of Vlad II, Dracul, were discharged over the Western Carpathians from Wallachia on a mission to secure a great gift.

Five years earlier - just prior to the birth of his second son and eventual heir - Vlad II, in concert with a select number of princes and vassals, had been summoned to the city of Nuremberg. Sigismund's primary motivation was self-protection; by eliciting a statutory oath of allegiance to the Cross, the royal house sought strategic defense against potential invasion by the Turks. Vlad Dracul's position was to impose control on those outlying mountain passes between Transylvania and Wallachia.

In return, Sigismund pledged to support Vlad's blood claim to the throne. An ambition fully realized by 1436.

"The original Order comprised twenty-four members of the nobility, including such notable figures as King Alfonso of Aragon and Naples, and Stefan Lazarevic of Serbia."

The insignia of the Order, appropriately, was a a coiled dragon with the red cross of Saint George seared into its back. The blood of the Cross sealed in the blood of battle: blood begetting blood.

Dracul, then - derived from the Latin 'draco' - and the Order of the Dragon was adopted as the family crest. Coins were struck under Vlad II's reign bearing the emblem of a winged dragon. By the end of his heir's reign, however - that of Vlad III, or Vlad Ţepeş (the Impaler) - the name 'Dracul' was synonymous with barbarity and the devil.

Dracul-a - son of the dragon - ascended the throne stained by a thirst to avenge the Order and restore the House of Basarab from which he was descended.

A mere six years into his reign, Dracul was deposed by factions in league with Hungary and was compelled to turn to the Ottoman court for assistance. Reneging on his oath to the Order of the Dragon, Vlad II paid tribute to the Sultan in return for military support and went so far as to send his two younger sons into exile as a token of his loyalty. While his brother, Radu forged a lasting alliance with the Sultan's heir, Mehmed, and flourished in this distant corner, Vlad III felt only disgrace at his father's betrayal and defied all efforts to groom him as a devoted subject.

Imprisoned much of the time and roundly chastised, the young prince brooded and plotted.

in 1447, at the age of sixteen, Vlad learned of his father's death at the hands of boyars in league with the Hungarian regent, John Hunyadi, the self-proclaimed 'White Knight'. His elder brother, the heir apparent, was blinded with hot irons and buried alive in Târgovişte, on the right bank of the Ialomiţa in what is presently southern Romania.

What ensued from there directly as an attempt to expand Ottoman influence by imposing Vlad III on the Wallachian throne is well documented. Dracula was impervious to all efforts to manipulate him from afar.

His contempt for the Sultan ran so deep that he gladly entered into an alliance with his father's assassin to reinstate the old Order. By 1456, Wallachia lay all but ravaged by decades of constant war. Agriculture was ailing, his subjects on the brink of starvation, and crime was endemic. Even as the Ottomans advanced through Constantinople into mainland Europe, Vlad Dracula declared war on the Boyars and refused tribute to the despised Sultan, Mehmed. Desperate to impose stability on the riven economy he inherited, the methods employed were at once necessarily cruel and a product of an all consuming wrath.

Thousands were impaled. Entire forests laid bare as his kingdom burned in a crucible of his own forging. Once clear skies roiled with smoke.


And the Christmas gift for a dragon heir ?

Blood oranges from Italy. A small, tart fruit of crimson flesh; withered on the vine.

Were it not for more recent events in Kosovo and Belgrade, Serbia and Bosnia, it might simply read as some dark elusive fairytale. Personal crusades and genocide.

oranges is not the lonely fruit

What is it with oranges ?

Anthony Burgess and 'A Clockwork Orange'; Jeanette Winterson's 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit'; Mark E. Smith's 'I Am Kurious Oranj'.

Save it for evengelists high on fuzzy felted sadism. Bursting segments of citrus heresy.

Orange is Ludwig ripening in the sun. Jaundiced droogs and rapists. Pez dispensers and marching bands; orange is the colour of bigotry.

Well. Tangerine is a different matter, a connotation lacking in orange; a hint of marzipan and the exotic. Open your lips to speak of tangerine and one is carpeted away on an Arabic odyssey. An oud or its distant cousin. Tangerine sparkles with Christmas. Of cleavage and all the trimmings.

And then there are clementines. Blood red and faintly obseidian, whispering of Marrekech. The suspicion of inherited wealth. Paul Bowles and Bill Burroughs asleep in the garden.

It is a thin family line. The intermarriage between one fruit and and another. High yeller and damson orange.

I am a pallid Celt with Slavic leanings. Iberian appetites. Wan would be too polite.

silver tongues and crosses

Recorded in the studio and live at Filmore East and West - with el capitán, Dino Valente conspicuously in or out of the frame and serving a two year stretch for marijuana possession - "Happy Trails" is a saturnine tour de force of worming guitar and flowering intent.

Kings of the Bay Area, "Maiden of the Cancer Moon" is second guitarist Gary Duncan's crowning achievement; building seamlessly into the epic, "Calvary", which is given its definitive 'reading' live in the studio coming up on acid, laid bare at Golden State Recorders, San Francisco on November 19th, 1968.

Reap it and weep.

This is communion with more concrete seals than wafers or fish on the tongue.

John Cippolina: guitar;

Gary Duncan: guitar;
Greg Elmore: drums;
David Freiberg: bass.

▼ QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE: MAIDEN OF THE CANCER MOON from "Happy Trails" LP (Capitol) 1969 (US)
▼ QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE: CALVARY (LIVE 19/11/68) from "Happy Trails" LP (Capitol) 1969 (US)

TA-DA!

Four minutes, give or take, of transcendental triumph or trash. Take your pick.

This is where I pause and wish my wife many happy returns. Pounding on the keyboard while she sulks in the kitchen; not because I forgot her birthday - I didn't - but because it is Sunday and I am pounding on the keyboard.

There is precious little to say on this LP, save that Third Bardo also covered their "My Rainbow Life" and production is credited to Rusty Evans. Oh. And the sleevenotes, compiled by David Rubinson, make for some entertaining reading.

▼ PSYCHEDELIC PSOUL: ROSE OF SMILING FACES from "Psychedelic Psoul" LP (Columbia) 1967 (US)

spilt milk in rubber city

A mere two years after Booji Boy stiffed in their native US, and an overseas deal with Stiff Records soured in the UK, Ohioans Devo signed on the line with major league hitters, Warner Bros. The rest - as some say - was almost history.

Produced in Cologne, Germany, by Brian Eno on the recommendation - in part - of chums Bowie and Pop, "Q: Are We Not Men ? A: We Are Devo", the resulting album, eschewed the pummeling Geiger guitar mystery of Clevelanders, Pere Ubu in favor of instant self-gratification. Fiscally motivated, or just commercially astute, "Come Back Jonee" more than amply demonstrated that Devo shared no midwestern manifesto with those neighboring pioneers of "The Modern Dance " and "Dub Housing". Slick, disposable. As kitschy as David Lynch on the Autobahn.

Bob Casale: rhythm guitar, additional keyboards, backing vocals;

Gerald V. Casale: bass guitar, additional keyboards, lead vocals;
Bob Mothersbaugh: lead guitar, backing vocals;
Mark Mothersbaugh: keyboards, occasional guitar, lead vocals;
Alan Myers: drums.

Produced by Brian Eno and Chuck Statler.
Engineed by Patrick Gleeson and Conrad (Connie) Plank.

▼ DEVO: COME BACK JONEE from "Come Back Jonee b/w Social Fools" 45 (Warner Bros. / Virgin) 1978 (US)

tits, clips, whips and chains

john cooper clarke strikes a ridiculously cool pose, 1977.



inner sleeve, "suspended sentence" ep. TOSH 103.

This, as the BBC was once quick to retort, is little more than a lachrymose repeat.

John Cooper Clarke first released an EP on the Manchester based label Rabid Records in 1977, backed by a coterie of musicians named the Curious Yellows. Produced by Martin Zero for the "Criminal Gramaphone Company" - with artwork by Kirk Van Gough Studios - "The Innocents" EP first seized my ear like a fish hook whipping off the indecently turned cheek of a small boy on a weekend fishing trip. Casting off. A sinking feeling as feathers and lure sail out from the end of the pier and the line snaps.

☚ this is what happens when you pogo round your bedroom without due care and attention.

In equal measures punk poet and stand-up comedian, Clarke had few peers. In hindsight, he probably did more to ignite an enduring fascination with words than a classroom full of yellowing paperbacks. His modest three minute observations often packed more of a visceral punch than a Ken Loach film. And where Loach sometimes stumbled under a banner of self-righteous indignation, Clarke exhibited a lightness of touch more imperfectly aligned with the origami unfoldings of Mike Leigh. Not so much delicate as human and robust. Engagingly open ended.

As a result, I suspect, of HBO's clever placement of "Evidently Chickentown" over the closing credits to an episode from the final series of "The Sopranos", Clarke has enjoyed something of a renaissance of late. Deservedly so.

▼ JOHN COOPER CLARKE & THE CURIOUS YELLOWS: PSYCLE SLUTS (PARTS ONE & TWO) from "Innocents" EP (Rabid) 1977 (UK) [R]
▼ JOHN COOPER CLARKE & THE INVISIBLE GIRLS: THIRTY SIX HOURS from "Snap, Crackle & Bop" LP (CBS) 1980 (UK) [R]
▼ JOHN COOPER CLARKE & THE INVISIBLE GIRLS: SLEEPWALK from "Snap, Crackle & Bop" LP (CBS) 1980 (UK) [R]

PURCHASE WORD OF MOUTH: THE BEST OF JOHN COOPER CLARKE
JCC PREVIOUSLY ON ART DECADE
JOHN COOPER CLARKE: OFFICIAL WEBSITE

degenerative valve disease

ATV's fifth single release proper on Depftford Fun City - not including their "Love Lies Limp" flexi distributed free through issue #12 of fanzine, Sniffin' Glue, the last - "The Force is Blind" parts company with all time-served apprentices with the notable exception of Dennis Burns, but continues in the experimental vein carried over from the fractured mess of "The Image Has Cracked" onto "Vibing Up the Senile Man (Part One)" and their split live LP with Gong veterans, Here & Now.

More of the same messy fare. Dislocated and abrasive.

A chilly post-punk vibe genuflecting puddled bus shelters and urine spattered underpasses. Industrial ghettos navigated on crutches from South London to Manchester and beyond; the corrosive soundtrack of half lives played out in sips. Endless cups of milky tea. Dogs, hot or cold. Benefit cheques and betting slips.

Dennis Burns: bass, synthesizer;
Dave George: guitar, chimes;

Anno: vocals (a-side);
Wally Bril: organ (b-side);
Mark Perry: vocals, knocks, violin.

▼ ALTERNATIVE TV: THE FORCE IS BLIND from "The Force Is Blind b/w Lost In Room" 45 (Deptford Fun City) 1979 (UK)
▼ ALTERNATIVE TV: LOST IN ROOM from "The Force Is Blind b/w Lost In Room" 45 (Deptford Fun City) 1979 (UK)