Two Jewels from Head Heritage

I have already waxed lyrical about Julian Cope's fantastic website, Head Heritage (http://www.headheritage.com/), and its stunningly comprehensive series of album reviews, band features and political columns dedicated to edifying and illuminating the minds of any "Heads" (or potential ones) that come across it. If you love obscure, psychedelic or loud music, this is the site for you. Hell, if you like just about any music, this is the site for you, and nary a day goes by without me logging on to check out what's been updated.

What I wasn't aware of until recently, is that Head Heritage is also a label, releasing some fascinating and obscure records that mostly fit into Cope's oddly shamanistic/celtic/punkish worldview, and that basically you can only get through the website. In some cases, these albums are so rare that you haven't a chance in hell of finding them on Amazon. In fact, the two below aren't even liste on http://www.rateyourmusic.com/. As far as the (not even that) mainstream is concerned, these albums barely exist.

So, thank God for Head Heritage. As such, it stands not just as a great musical encyclopedia and information site, but as a veritable bastion against the corporate world that seems destined to try and rob as much creativity and freedom from the artists as possible. You can just tell by listening to these two albums, that they were made in total freedom, nay, abandonment, and they represent the kind of experimental attitudes and sonic adventurousness that is so lacking in most of modern pop and rock. These two records channel something primeval, natural, instinctive, bereft of studio tinckering and arrogant sloganeering. Maybe see them as the "anti-Muse", or the "anti-Coldplay". No artifice. Just music. Pure.

1) Urthona - I Refute it Thus (2008)

I have been getting deeper and deeper into Drone music in the last year. After first having my mind blown by Cluster 71, the great, planet-sized electro-drone masterpiece by Krautrock duo Cluster, I quickly found myself craving more. Drone was the new great psychedelic music, as far as I was concerned, and I was hooked. Soon I had moved on to Zeit by Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze's first two masterpieces (staying in Germany), The Taj Mahal Travellers (and their leader Takehisa Kosugi's monstruous voice-and-violin epic Catch-Wave), Sunn O))), Earth and The Dead C. Not forgetting Nurse With Wound and Metal Machine Music (for the noise side of Drone), Stars of the Lid or underground Dutch meister Machinefabriek, whose free-to-download opus Stuip/Staar is well worth checking out (http://www.machinefabriek.nu/).

Yet, if I thought I had seen it all as far as Drone was concerned, after venturing backwards to check out LaMonte Young, Steve Reich and Tony Conrad, I was wrong. I Refute It Thus stands as one of THE greatest Drone albums ever made.

It is shrouded in mystery, even by Head Heritage standards. It's hard to tell who is making this music. Is the man who's picture's on the front cover the sole purveyor of the insane sounds held within the CD's grooves (can we say grooves when talking of CDs?)? Is he really doing all that with just one guitar? We know Cope himself was involved in the creation, conceptualisation and of course release of this album, but it doesn't look like he appeared on it. So, how to describe it? How is it possible to pinpoint the nature of the supreme mind-melting rock that is contained inside I Refute It Thus?

Well, for starters, it's worth checking out the album's artwork: a man with a guitar stands in the distance, surrounded by massive monoliths, overlooking a vast, barren plain. Man and machine, standing buffeted by the winds of time, and in the shadow of nature's splendour. Like I said, this is an album only a friend of Julian Cope could make. It's like latter-day druid music, something old, and powerful. Yet, it also, fundamentally, rock. After all, it's made with a sodding guitar, and, as far as I can tell, not much else. But Urthona knows his way around his six-string, fuck me! Opener 'Urthona Cannot Be Destroyed' kicks off with a staccato burst of guitar noise, like Jimi Hendrix (circa 'Machine Gun') filtered through Lou Reed's amp and extremist approach. It shudders and stutters, before more guitar kicks in, a sort of keening wail that whistles out of the speakers and keeps screaming for the duration of the track's ten-plus minutes. And the crazy thing? It's not long enough. This the kind of guitar pyrotechnics that allowed Jorma Kaukonen, Hendrix and John Cippolina to freak out whole audiences by sound alone back in the sixties, yet for all that it never sounds retro. The absence of drums, keys or even bass (so I can tell) propel 'Urthona Cannot Be Destroyed' either into a post-modern industrial world, or a Moorcock-ian fantasy landscape. Maybe both! It's psychedelic yet hard, natural-sounding yet modern. Decades of history (hence the Whitman and Blake quotes in the package), nature and rock have been channelled into 10 minutes of pure guitar drone. Can there be a more awe-inspiring sound than this?

Well, if there can't, Urthona sure gives it a good shot before the album pans out. Each track is longer than the last. The second, 'The Bright Burst of Morning', has a more industrial-metal feel, echoing Throbbing Gristle at their loudest and most psychedelic, as well as American drone-metal lords Sunn O))) and Earth. The guitars are heavier (more cliched, maybe?), and the piece ambles along at a drak, funereal pace. Sudden sound effects pop up: a babbling brook, the wind, birds, but this one feels less successful than the first track. The third, however, is a beast, twenty-one minutes of droning feedback and long, empty moments where the sound recedes, leaving a microsecond of silence to gorge on before the guitars return, sometimes screaming, often growling, mostly "humming" (for want of a better word). After the pyrotechnics of the opener and the heavy natural/industrial crunch of the second track, 'Sun and Moon So Heavy' seems the perfect synthesis of everything Urthona has been distilling up until then: it's metallic, rock, guitar-driven. But this is also a folk album, of sorts: an album stepped in its natural setting (in this case, the wilds of Dartmoor), an album at one with the elements, transported by rock and tree and fallow. And by guitars. Like early Klaus Schulze, natural elements collide with the machines, and leaves something that will swallow you whole, transcending science, transcending machinery, transcending nature. The sound, I guess of a black night sky that you stare at for hours on end, wholly swallowed by its infinite size. Can I get an "Amen"?

2) Universal Panzies - Transcendental Floss (1998)

Perhaps even more weird are the Universal Panzies, a Newcastle-based group of neo-seers orbiting around the mesmeric personality of their leader, Christophe F, who, as far as I can gather, is a sort of wild, unpredictable underground rock guru with a penchant for cross-dressing and Krautrock (!).

Little more is known of Christophe F, other than the fact that he seems determined never to move away from his familiar North-East stomping ground, and that he has been plagued by ill health for a while, meaning he has had to toil away in almost complete obscurity. Yet, if there is one thing Transcendental Floss demonstrates, is that the man is as close as we have come to a real guitar hero in the last two decades. Fuck Mark Knopfler and his sedate, boring noodling, Christophe F is the real deal!

Take the insane opener, 'Krautrock-lovesong/Hallowedundgallowed'. It starts as a dull dirge, a few lines of feedback with F muttering mutely over the top, like a stoned-out Thurston Moore (or was it Kim Gordon) at the beginning of Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation. But then the rythm really kicks in, the kind of monolithic pounding of the tom toms and descending bass lines that characterised the best of Amon Duul II circa Yeti or Ash Ra Tempel at their peak. It's slow, the lyrics are unintelligible, the groove is insistent to the point of being numbing, and over it all, Christophe F flies on his guitar like few others! It could almost be "post-rock" (think Explosions in the Sky, only less restrained), but weirder, wilder and more fun by a country mile.

But, here's the killer: about half-way through, the song gets even better! The drummer and bassist kick into a superb motorik groove, easily as good as any Neu! or Harmonia ever managed, giving F full reign to rip out a continuous, almost-hypnotic solo that goes on for the best part of ten minutes. This is the kind of rock I thought we'd never hear in recent years: the song literally flails, seeming to careen along of its own accord, all pummelling toms, disjointed keyboard effects and forever that uncontrollable, unrelenting guitar. You can hear the references, yet somehow it still sounds fresh and new, as F puts his entire heart, soul and being into his guitar, turning the whole album, an ode to love lost, I should specify, into a rock 'n' roll requiem of sorts, a haunting serenade sung by that ripped-up axe and F's dull, plaintive voice.

Never is this more potent (except on the first track!) than on 'Star-bard and grounded', which adds wailing sax to the sumptuous mix. F sings more here, but mostly he still lets his guitar do the talking as his acolytes continue to bash out a relentless beat that speeds up or slows down as the mood takes them, yet never do they falter, never do they stumble. F just keeps thrashing out chord after chord, solo after solo, until you are left shuddering and shaking in its wake. It's music you can shake your arse to, music you can head-bang to, music you can meditate to, music you can trip to. It's krautrock, but filtered through metal, funk, trance, free-form and electronica. It's stunning, possessing more heart and soul than anything that the infinitely more popular Radioheads and Coldplays of this world were bashing out at the time.

These two albums are the defining indication that if you look to the sidelines, you can find some of the most exciting and innovative music ever made, even in these increasingly creatively sterile times. And you can actually purchase both on Head Heritage (though stocks are pretty limited, so hurry!), plus find Julian Cope's much more informative and extensive review of Transcendental Floss.

This is real music. Real because it is made by passionate people doing it for their muse, not for sales or profile-boosting. Real because it is immediate, instinctive, heartfelt. I defy you to listen to the guitar freakout of 'Urthona Cannot Be Destroyed' (how true!) or the blaring sax/guitar freeform funk freakout and not be stunned at the sheer power and beauty these two artists/bands/druids have managed to meld with such class and energy. Thank you Mr Cope! And thank you Urthona and Universal Panzies!

For any Americans out there...

The US elections are creeping up on us fast, with the voters of that great nation about to make a monumental decision that will not only shape their own future, but also that of the entire planet. As a concerned "World Citizen", I'm hoping they make the right choice.

The choice by John McCain to nominate Sarah Palin as his running-mate surprised me, mainly because I'd never heard of her. I duly did some research. I was impressed at her acceptance of her daughter's out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Pretty progressive, for a Republican. She's a woman. She's relatively young. She seemed smart. Could this finally be the election where debate moves away from psychotic religious extremism and actually focuses on real issues like the war on terror and the economy, rather than on a vague "culture war" and divisive "bleeding-hearted, terrorist-loving liberal commies versus true patriotic Americans"-style debate?

Sadly, the answer is no. By selecting Sarah Palin as potential future vice-president, McCain is doing just that: aiming for a simplistic divisiveness that will see Republicans appealing to Americans' sense of "moral values", patriotism and religious zeal, rather than actually debate the true issues that will ACTUALLY determine whether America stands as a true leader of the free world, or as an insular, narrow-minded bully determined to impose its lowbrow world-view on the rest of us.

Y'see, this is the real Sarah Palin: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/let-swing-voters-know-tha_b_124384.html. And she's one scary lady!

And here's the deal: she could quite reasonably find herself as President. After all, McCain is old, a cancer survivor. So, what if, should he be elected, he makes an unexpected early exit (certainly not something I would wish of anyone)? We could end up with Palin, a religious, moral and political extremist (if she was European, we would call her at best a nationalist, at worst a fascist) running the most powerful country in the world... Now there's a sobering thought.

So, I do urge any Americans out there to really think about what the Huffington Post's journalist is exposing in the above article. America is a beautiful, magnificent country. It needs a leader that mirrors that.

Great Underappreciated or Obscure Albums 4: PYGMALION by Slowdive (1995)

Slowdive are what I like to call a 'blank-look band'. Y'know, you're at a party with friends, sitting around with beers and too much pot, talking pretentiously about music, and someone asks what your favourite album of the nineties is (among other world-defining subjects). You say Pygmalion by Slowdive and your friends frown mildly and say 'what by who?'. Then someone puts on 'Karma Police' by Radiohead or some mindless sludge by Muse, all your friends all cry 'All right!' in unison and leap up to start swaying drunkenly in a dazed parody of dancing. And you're left to wonder how it is possible for these people not to know who Slowdive were.

Not that it's surprising. Slowdive belonged to that much-maligned musical current of the early nineties that was shoegazer. Like their contemporaries, they blended soaring, effects-drenched guitars with swirling keyboards and inaudible lyrics that created dream-like aural universes possibly best appreciated when going though a heroin come-down. The press hated them. They were called pretentious, charm-less poseurs. It's actually possible that much of this was backlash from My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, the album that defined shoegazer, but ultimately was it's undoing as Kevin Shields and co. needed 18 engineers and 250 000 pounds to make the album, just the kind of excess and perfectionism that was seen as totally anti-rock in the early nineties of grunge and brit-pop.

In truth, everything about shoegazer to me is the epitome of rock: it's nerdy, introverted, and so fucking loud! It's also the only genre of the day, apart from grunge to really tap into that particular vein of angst that characterised the youth of the day. What the grungers expressed via ragged guitars and unkempt rage, the shoegazers translated into mournful, melancholic guitar drowning out ghostly voices strangled by emotion. 15 years on, shoegazer sounds more relevant than anything that appeared in it's wake, as evidenced by the recent recrudescence of similar guitar noise and stoned-out vocals.

Slowdive were definitely no strangers to the singular middle-class pathos of the time, as evidenced on their seminal and genre-defining opus Souvlaki, from 1993. But the music press of the time savaged them each and every time. Sensing a change of trends towards the emerging brit-pop movement and it's beer-drenched, oafish, unimaginative Beatles rip-offs, label owner Alan McGee had grown disinterested in the likes of Slowdive. 1994 saw them forced to finance part of an American tour out of their own pocket. Realising they were about to be dropped by McGee, the band's two leaders Neil Halsted and Rachel Goswell decided to make an album as introverted and un-commercial as possible. They succeeded in producing a masterpiece.

Be warned, Pygmalion is oblique beyond description. Slowdive distilled the expansive aural atmospheres of Souvlaki to perfection. Immersing himself in techno music, Halstead incorporated the vocal, synth and guitar loops, double-tracking and digital effects of that genre, but you sure as shit can't dance to it! But it single-handedly gave a much-needed facelift to ambient pop, paving the way for Sigur Ros, Boards of Canada and Labradford, and freed up the band to create scintillating atmospheric soundscapes that were as disturbing and sombre as they were hypnotic and catchy.

My frustration at this album's anonymity knows no bounds, because from my very first listen of the very first track, 'Rutti', I was entranced. It sounds like an outtake from Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden, with it's hypnotic guitar, slight percussion and echo-drenched voice. But far from Mark Hollis' cries of hope and redemption, this is sparse, morose and deliberately sombre. It builds up layer-upon-layer of whispery sound, leaving the listener on a knife's edge, expecting an explosion of chorus and noise (à la Talk Talk). Instead, it just… doesn't. It continues to swirl, creating a trance-like atmosphere of veiled emotion and subdued paranoïa. It's the sound you get in your head at the end of a long night spent on too much music and too much coke. 'Rutti' sets the tone: there is no light, just dark, scattered noises and ghostly, haunted voices. Occasionally, rays of blinding sunlight pierce the veil of darkness and dust, as on the luminous 'Crazy for you', before we're dragged back into some psychic abyss or into a dark, sparsely furnished bed-sit somewhere in the London suburbs.

It all comes to a head on the deliriously beautiful 'Blue Skied an' Clear', the sort of song that most of us can only dream of writing. Like all of Pygmalion, it builds up slowly, trancelike, gloomy and obtuse. Then suddenly (as sudden as a quiet ripple of water, mind), it bursts into a surge of synthesizer, and Rachel Goswell can be heard chanting mournfully before Halstead joins in with a desolate, world-weary hymn to the lost cause that was the ecstasy generation. The whole song soars to the heavens, a heart-rending nocturne of the aimlessness of the nineties, the decade when we realized hippy values were dead for good, that our parents had become reactionaries and that there was really no way out. That's the crux of Pygmalion: with it's dance influences, druggy atmosphere and listlessness, it's the perfect incarnation of disaffected nineties youth, as powerful and as fatalistic as anything by Nirvana, Depeche Mode or Alice in Chains. It's the soundtrack to drugs, drink, emotional withdrawal and too much soulless money, and it's the only one that really captures those elements to perfection.

Not that anyone got that. The press hammered it, so the public ignored it. Pygmalion became Alan McGee's excuse to drop Slowdive, who promptly split, Halstead and Goswell going on to form Mojave 3. Luckily someone thought to take the time out to re-release this shimmering, cryptic masterpiece. It stands as one of the few albums that ever really "got" my generation, and encapsulated our spirit in 48 oh so short minutes. Thank you Slowdive!

Blue Skied an' Clear: The magic of Slowdive

Shoegaze was a brief, ephemeral and fascinating period in British rock that in my opinion has never been equalled. Born in the aftermath of post-punk, it melded super-saturated guitar noise with ghostly vocals and soaring melody lines, inspired by the punkish noise-pop of The Jesus and Mary Chain and the dreamy, ethereal sound of Cocteau Twins. Those two bands pioneered the use of noisy guitar in gentle (though not always), elegiac pop-rock, on monumental albums such as Psychocandy (by the former, 1985) and Head over Heels (by the Twins, 1983). By 1988, Irish band My Bloody Valentine had taken things to a new level, with their seminal Isn't Anything album. It was an artistic and critical triumph, as the screaming guitars and barely audible vocals of Bilinda Butcher and Kevin Shields, allied to heavy metal rythm patterns launched a new, totally original sound. And the critics quickly picked up on MBV's (and others') stage presence (or lack thereof), dubbing this new genre "shoegaze" in reference to the bands' tendency to stare fixedly at their effects pedals.

My Bloody Valentine went on to seal the genre's place in Rock history thanks to their 1991 masterpiece Loveless, but that opus took up so much time, energy and money that they have yet to follow it up. In their "absence", Slowdive became the main poster boys (and girl) of shoegaze, just in time to get the flack.


Slowdive are the perfect epitomy of shoegaze: nerdy, awkward, floppy-haired, middle-class Englishmen (and one woman), with a love of The Smiths and Cocteau Twins, who played delicate pop-rock graced with soaring, loud guitars and occasional melancholic keyboard effects. Their voices were often buried deep in the mix, obscured by their instruments, and on-stage they hid reolutely behind their long fringes, eyes glued to their feet. Their first album, Just for a Day, came out in 1991, just in time for the Loveless-inspired euphoria, when any band that sounded remotely like MBV was guaranteed a rave-up in the press and a place on Alan McGee's Creation label roster. was an excellent slab of powerful shoegaze, closer perhaps, however, to the more energetic style of Ride or Pale Saints than to MBV's almost cosmic lumber. As such, it doesn't really stand out among the more impressive shoegaze albums out there (Ride's Nowhere, Lush's Split, Chapterhouse's Whirlpool, and of course, Loveless).

It wasn't until 1993's magnificent Souvlaki that Slowdive would really find their voice and identity, and in some style. Put simply, it's the definitve shoegaze album, featuring all that made the genre so distinctive (and so magical), and the band's most immediate, arresting songs. It kicks off splendidly, with the single 'Alison'. A burst of guitar, insistent drums and bass, and soaring noise effects kick out of the speakers and launch the listener into the track, a weird tale of a woozy relationship centred around drugs, drinking and wearing ladies' clothes. 'Alison' is the perfect shoegaze anthem.
Shoegaze was the weird, awkward cousin of electronica: it was druggy, woozy and hedonistic, the music of middle-class nineties Britain, disinterested in politics or social issues (unlike their predecessors of the hippy, folk or punk ages, or their American grunge cousins). But where Depeche Mode and New Order and other dance kings had Britain's disaffected, spoiled youth dancing their way through the ecstasy years, the music of Slowdive and their noisy contemporaries seemed to be about the come-down. The chiming, sad guitars and shimmering effects seemed to evoke the first rays of sunshine pushing through the curtains at the end of a long, sleepless and drug-fueled night. You can imagine lonely highways, deserted streets, bleary eyes and the shuffling gait of people who've been out all night and are feeling down, lost and strangely melancholic. It's often some of the saddest music around, and it's no wonder Sofia Coppola and Gregg Araki decided to turn to shoegaze when compiling the soundtracks to their movies depicting lost souls in tired, indifferent modern landscapes. 'Alison', despite its (relatively) pacy tempo, holds all of this: the sadness, the wooziness, the casual indifference and the subtle layers of hope underneath. And that's just the first track.

The rest of the albim is of a similar quality. 'Machine Gun' goes a step further, with singer Rachel Goswell's voice drowned and inaudible underneath the majestic guitars and driving effects. 'Souvlaki Space Stations' takes a darker turn, whilst 'Sings' features the quiet atmospherics of ambient overlord Brian Eno himself, surely an indication of the album's quality. Meanwhile, on 'As the Sun Hits', the album's cornerstone, songwriter Neil Halstead delivers his greatest lyrics, with images of desolation, death and glaring morning sunlight (what did I tell you?). The songs creeps along slowly, almost mutely as Halstead intones numbly "Sweet thing I watch you/Burn so fast it scares me", before bursting into life, and screaming guitar noise, with the line "It matters where you are". Every time, this never fails to give me the shivers, as the locked guitars of Goswell, Halstead and Christian Savill reach for the heavens, their ghostly voices washed underneath, yet united in a strange, subdued and druggy version of Crosby, Stills and Nash's famed cristalline harmonies.

The album closed* with the delicate, heart-breaking ballad 'Dagger', played solo by Halstead, his voice crystal-clear and beautiful, accompanied by some of the saddest acoustic guitar chords ever laid to disk. The lyrics of loss and destructive love are a fittingly bleak conclusion to a dark, wistful and depressingly beautiful album, where gentle melancholy and quiet vocals are thrown up against the band's raging guitar noise and use of saturation to staggering effect. Souvlaki is unforgettable, and should have gone down in history as one of the great pop-rock albums of the nineties.

Unfortunately, by the time Souvlaki came out, the British press had decided it was time to move on. Shoegaze was given a similar short shrift as prog rock had been in the late seventies: it was "pretentious", "self-indulgent", "nombrilistic" and "boring". Brit pop was all the rage: out went the misery and darkness of the past decade (after all, shoegaze's doomy vibe owed a lot to the goth and post-punk waves of the 80s), and in came catchy, Beatles-inspired (stolen?) melodies, crystal-clear voices, pretty-boy singers with short hair and bags of ego, and a celebration of all things British, like football, beer and festivals. Druggy party aftermaths and ecstasy comedowns were not in keeping with this all-joyous vibe, and Slowdive could not compete with Blur's chirpy songs about houses in the "countr-aaaaaaaayyy" or boys that love boys that love girls that love girls that love boys; or with Oasis' arrogant sneer; or Suede's sexual ambiguity. Here were five Reading-ites wearing heavy sweaters and floppy hairdos, drwning out their voices in waves of moody guitar saturation. They were declared obsolete, Souvlaki was savaged by the British press, and pretty soon they were losing the backing of their label, Creation.

But Slowdive still had one great card up it's sleeve, one of the best, most beautiful "fuck-yous" addressed by a band to its record label. As two successive tours failed to re-ignite the shoegaze euphoria of '91, and with the band about to be dropped by Creation (rumour has it under the influence, nay, demands, of Oasis, as if I needed another reason to hate those James Blunts), Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell immersed themselves in dance and ambient music, and delivered their greatest album, and one of the most triumphant artistic statements of the nineties, Pygmalion, an album so un-commercial it beggars belief, and yet one which today sounds more modern, vital and immediate than 99% of most music produced since, in any genre. But more of that later. Pygmalion had the desired effect: the press hated it, the public ignored it and Creation told the band where to get off. Halsted, Goswell and drummer Ian McCutcheon founded Mojave 3 and became the darlings of the rock underground, sort of like modern-day David Sylvians.

In recent years, the music of Slowdive has slowly been rehabilitated, with heavy metal bands like Isis, Jesu and Nadja happily citing the band's influence on their own noise-scapes, and pop artists such as The Delays, Guillemots and Death In Vegas also taking their cue to deliver ghostly vocals behind walls of elegiac guitar saturation. Meanwhile, songs like 'Alison', 'Dagger' and 'Blue Skied an'Clear' (off Pygmalion) are gracing film soundtracks and all of Slowdive's albums have been re-released on CD. Rediscovering them now is like being let into a world you automatically feel you belong to, and they open your heart to deep and meaningful emotions, with a grace, yet also an edge, few other bands, even other shoegaze ones, can match. With shoegaze suddenly back into fashion, Slowdive will soon, I hope, be given the place deserve, that of producers of some of the most enduring, heart-warming and affecting music of the nineties. Sure, you can dance to 'Girls & Boys', but you can cry, laugh, dance, kiss, fuck and sleep to just about any Slowdive song, and it will always have some meaning for you. Or you can just put 'Dagger' on at 6am on a Saturday morning after a long night out, and watch the sun rise. I guarantee you will never hear a more beautiful sound.

A little light, but very true look at the British papers

Russell Howard is one of the UK's top young comedians, and here is his hilarious, but very true, take on the British press. I couldn't agree more!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq5_joo5l5I

Thanks Russell!

Great Underappreciated or Obscure Albums 3 - THE FITZGERALD by Richmond Fontaine (2005)

Jumping up the decades, here, I guess. I seem to have been gripped by "rehabilititus", and feel the need to give some bands/albums I love the credit they deserve. Slowdive is next on the list, I assure you!

With this review, I'm hoping to correct one of the worst musical oversights of the last few years. The truth is, Richmond Fontaine should be huge. They should be as big as Wilco. They should be bigger than the Kings of Leon or the White Stripes. We should be reading so much more about them than The Shins or Ryan Adams. But we're not. Instead, their music is restricted to a few very, very lucky souls. Such as me. And maybe now you as well.

RF hail from Oregon, and descend from a long line of bands that blended Rock music with folk and country. The first were Gene Clark, Gram Parsons and The Byrds. Then came Uncle Tupelo, followed by The Jayhawks and Whiskeytown. Who were in turn followed by thousands more, all churning out sweet –but perhaps overly familiar by now- songs of drink, loss, roads, love and, um, gravel. RF are not much different, to be honest, but they just do it with a sense of poetry and emotion that is pretty much unparalleled today.

Their previous opus, Post to Wire, was already pretty majestic, chock-full of gorgeously-produced songs about travelling the roads, lost and alone and blue. A vignette of modern-day American country life, it features the breathtaking turns of phrase and pained vocals of singer-songwriter Willy Vlautin, and the tight rhythm and strong musicianship of his band mates. But, if it has one defect, it’s that it’s a tad long, and seems to struggle to accommodate all its country, pop and rock sensitivities comfortably.

The Fitzgerald shares no such problems. It’s probably the most cohesive album to have been released in years, along with Antony and the Johnsons’ I am a bird now. The themes the guys explore are similar to those developed so well already on Post to Wire: financial strife, drinking, domestic violence, restlessness and death. Typical country/alt-rock fare, really! However, The Fitzgerald delves even further into these dark depths. When writing the songs for the album, Willy Vlautin locked himself in a crappy hotel in the dingiest part of downtown Reno, Nevada. Drawing on the experiences and stories of the bums, down-and-outs and lowlifes he met there, he delivered a masterpiece, a set of songs tackling the trials and tribulations of these lost souls with a stunning mixture of empathy and raw emotion.

The resulting album is therefore understandably raw and uncompromising. The opening song, ‘The Warehouse Life’, starts with a quaint portrayal of a narrator and his friend getting wasted in a bar and ends with the friend getting beaten up and robbed. ‘The Incident at Conklin Creek’ sees a man and his son discover the body of a murdered teenager in an old mineshaft. ‘Casino Lights’, set to delicate violin and deceptively jocular chords, is a tale of an abandoned child and an alcoholic uncle. All these songs are delivered in Vlautin’s deadpan, yet haunted, husky tenor. His voice is up-close, personal, like a drunken friend reciting tales of other friends who’ve gone astray. You can’t help but feel affected by these stories; the characters that people them are real, as tangible as anyone you’ve ever met. The whole of The Fitzgerald shares this sense of audio-verite, as Neil Young would put it, a sense of truth, of reality, of unrelenting honesty.

Of course, such dark and gritty lyrical matter is set to fittingly sparse musical arrangements. Unlike Post to Wire, The Fitzgerald is mostly acoustic, with guitars, upright bass and occasional drums accompanied here and there by piano, harmonica, lap steel and fiddle. There are just two rock numbers, both of them relatively forgettable, but more cohesive with the overall sound than on the band’s previous opus.

‘Disappeared’, meanwhile, the album’s cornerstone, is a desperately mournful tale of separation and despair, set to the most beautiful piano chords to appear on a recent pop record (outside of the afore-mentioned I am a bird now, of course). It’s almost overpowering in its sheer emotion, both sweeping and intimate. ‘Exit 194B’ is another masterpiece, a glorious country shuffle that connects the album through the characters (a bunch of young kids sharing a house - imagine flannel shirts, weed, floppy long hair and cheap booze) to the grunge and alt-rock genres. It ensures that, for all its discreet arrangements and country style, The Fitzgerald is as much a rock record as anything by Alice in Chains, Uncle Tupelo or Nirvana. It shares the same themes of loss, pain and salvation that permeated those bands’ better works, yet the intimate delivery is if possible even more arresting, even more in-your-face.

You’ve got the picture, The Fitzgerald is deeply emotional, grim and sombre, easily as dark and depressing as Neil Young ‘s Tonight’s the Night or Lou Reed’s Berlin, and as equally confessional. All three albums reveal artists opening their hearts and souls for the listener, revealing the darkest recesses of their lives and surroundings in the process. But, more so than Young’s deliriously drunken trawl and Reed’s macabre drug-fest, The Fitzgerald contains a ray of sunlight, whether it’s in ‘The Janitor’s’ tale of dogged survival, or the salvation recounted in ‘Laramie, Wyoming’. It’s no Hollywood happy end, but the last track, ‘Making it Back’, sees Vlautin sitting alone in a quiet bar in the dead of night, lucid, alive and determined to, well, “make it back”, even after all he’s seen. The quiet beauty and reflective grace of the album is intoxicating, and stays with you long after the last track has ended. Albums like The Fitzgerald are few and far-between these days. That makes it a rare treasure, but one I’m glad to share here!

Great Underappreciated or Obscure Albums 2 - TIN DRUM by Japan (1981)

Japan are one of those bands that suffer greatly from being lumped into a musical genre that not only is the constant target for derision by critics and the public alike, but that they didn't have much in common with in the first place. In Japan's case it's the New Romantics, that most insufferable of typically eighties ego-fests. Japan got labelled New Romantics after Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes cited them as a huge influence. It didn't help that the typically New Romantic big hair and make-up look had been lifted from Japan's lead singer, the great David Sylvian.

The fact is that Japan's seminal Quiet Life album, with its melancholic synths, supple, fretless bass and crooning vocals was indeed the blueprint for early eighties mournful, self-obsessed pop. But Japan always did everything better that their peers, and Quiet Life is more a tasteful mix of glam-rock posturing and electronic melancholia than actual synth-pop, and boasts some truly stunning lyrics, unlike anything Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet or Blancmange would ever achieve. 1981's Tin Drum would demonstrate to the entire world that Japan were leagues ahead and head and shoulders above nearly all their contemporaries. Hell, it's still ahead of the pace 26 years later.

It certainly doesn't sound like anything else released in 1981. And I just know that it's one of those albums that I'm gonna struggle to appraise correctly, and will probably end this review with a very lame "just buy it and see for yourself how amazing Tin Drum is". Still, you can't blame a man for trying!

In essence, Tin Drum is something of a concept album, albeit a rather disjointed one, centred around singer David Sylvian's reflections on communist China. It's ironic that a band called Japan, and whose music often borrowed aspects of that country's musical and visual styles should base its magnum opus on China. While some songs only touch gently on these themes, others are steeped in popular Chinese culture, from lyrics dealing with the Red Army and rice fields to the use of Asian instruments, voices and time structures on tracks like 'Talking Drum' and 'Still Life in Mobile Homes'. These themes ensure that, from the off, Tin Drum is steeped in a sort of Oriental mysticism and a profound sense of otherness that is just intoxicating. Even at my first listen, when I was thinking "OK, hang on, what the f#!ck is this?", this sense of being transported to another land, not quite China, certainly not Europe, but rather a sort of Eurasian nether land, fascinated me, and it still does several years later.

Tin Drum is Japan's lyrical and musical triumph. It's audacious from the off, as 'The Art of Parties' kicks things in gear with barnstorming saxophone, polyrhythmic percussion and, of course, Mick Karn's wobbly, instantly identifiable (and I do admit, hard to get used to) bass lines. The instruments are varied and exciting, piled on top of one another in a daring tornado of unexpected sounds that manages to be powerful without getting invasive. Then comes Sylvian's gorgeous voice. Liberated from his Bryan Ferry influences, he sounds confident, in command of his words, which is just as well, as these are some of his most fractured and elliptic lyrics yet. Songs like ‘Talking Drum’ set the context – China, or at least Asia, with traditional percussion (courtesy of Sylvian’s brother, the seriously talented and sexy Steve Jansen) and weird chanting, as well as lyrics relating to Chinese life. Yet on the lush instrumental ‘Canton’, icy synths and a driving pop-rock style yank things into the modern age (indeed, in the Oil on Canvas movie, this song was set to images of Chinese businessmen wandering through neon-lit streets). The Asian sound is still there, but it’s allied to a European sense of romance, and the juxtaposition of these two sensitivities -tradition and modernity; Chinese rural life and the Westernised city- is the crux of Tin Drum. The gorgeous ‘Still Life in Mobile Homes’ starts off as a thoughtful musing on the nomadic lifestyles of Chinese river people. It’s a disjointed rocker featuring Sylvian’s girlfriend Yuka Fuji chanting backed by jerky drums and Karn’s omnipresent outlandish bass. Suddenly, as the instrumental pile-up reaches breaking point, with everyone chiming or bashing or crooning away in unison, Sylvian crashes in with a titanic guitar solo that almost rips the song asunder as he wails about voices screaming from heaven. It comes across as a meteorite of technology, a screaming electric machine, yet the lyrics refer to themes of spirituality and God-like presences and the life inside these ‘mobile homes’. The clash of the modern and the traditional, the old and the new is stirring, and in many ways, Tin Drum is prescient in its portrayal of a post-Mao China struggling to consolidate its past and its new ambitions. As China gears itself up to take assault on the global market in 2007 while coming under scrutiny for Human Rights violation, songs like ‘Cantonese Boy’(with its marching rythms offset by futuristic synthesiser riffs) , ‘Still Life in Mobile Homes’ and ‘Visions of China’ (especially that one) sound more than a little prophetic.

However, the two tracks that stand out the most from Tin Drum are the epic ‘Sons of Pioneers’, and the single, ‘Ghosts’. The first is a deeply evocative song of travel. Sylvian conjures up images of Mao’s Long March, of green hills and barren deserts, of ranks of troops and lonely villages; and also of the desperate solitude of these pioneers. A master of melancholy, Sylvian delivers on ‘Sons of Pioneers’ a wondrous vision of a wandering soldier, as vivid as any novel or film. No wonder he later collaborated with Japanese star Ryuichi Sakamoto for the Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence soundtrack. In ‘Ghosts’, his European sensitivities kick in. It’s a more personal song, the heart-felt portrayal of a man plagued by shattering doubts, set to mournful synths, creepy xylophone and peculiar sound effects, and remains the band's most memorable track.

It’s also another deeply prophetic song, although not for the same reasons as the rest of the album. ‘Ghosts’ was the song that finally delivered Japan into the big time, as it became a top 5 hit in the UK. After so many failures, Japan finally seemed to be getting the success their talents deserved. Instead, even as they performed ‘Ghosts’ on Top of the Pops, they were already geared up for a split. Sylvian’s doubts appeared to have taken hold, and he no longer felt satisfied with the group format. In 1982, Japan disbanded, and David Sylvian embarked on a luminous solo career.

Never mind, because on Tin Drum, Japan attained musical perfection, one that few bands can compare with. It’s lush but fiery, mystical but strangely groovy, intellectual without being snobbish. It's a genre-defying album, the kind that elevates pop music to a similar level as its rock and jazz cousins. Every listen opens up new aural delights and reveals new insights into Sylvian’s peculiar lyrics. Once again, words just don’t do justice to the depth and range of this album, so all I can do is recommend you go and get yourself a copy and listen to it for yourself.

See, I knew I was going to do that!

Shock! Horror! A post in defence of Emerson, Lake and Palmer!!!

Great Underappreciated or Obscure Albums 1 - TARKUS by Emerson Lake and Palmer (1971)

I shouldn't really like this. In many ways, Tarkus is the antithesis of everything I feel Rock music should be. I'm a punk, industrial, glam, new wave and garage rock fan, and guys like ELP were who we hated. They're pretentious. Arrogant. Bombastic. Over-the-top. Corny. And Tarkus is definitely ALL of those as well. But fuck me, somehow it's a truly brilliant album!

Maybe it's because it was their first stab at something so ambitious. Later albums are not nearly so enjoyable. Tarkus represents one last stab at proper psychedelia, something completely out-there and with an unparalleled sense of reckless abandon. Of course, I'm referring to the 20-minute title track, possibly the defining prog-rock track. Born from Keith Emerson's fascination with a set of paintings (that woul later become the album's sublime cover art), Carl Palmer's desire to toy around with new time signatures, and Greg Lake's musings on war, 'Tarkus' is a mind-blowing ramble, featuring shifting tempos, baroque organ and moog lines, arcane vocals and scattered drums. Musically, like most of ELP's work and a lot of all prog, the main influence is classical music, namely Bach. But rather than the pompousness of 'Karn Evil 9' or 'Trilogy', this immediately brings to mind not the tiring meanderings of the other prog bands, but rather the epic, aventurous and enthralling experimentation of the best of 60s psychedelia. Keith Emerson's keyboards owe a lot to Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix's guitar-playing. You can even feel the spirit of Iron Butterfly and The Grateful Dead, although played at break-neck speed and ear-splitting volume. Even the lyrics are worthy of the West Coast scene of the time: angry condemnations of war and violence that you can almost imagine being sung by Grace Slick rather than Greg Lake (how cool would they have sounded if that were true? Lake's not a bad vocalist, but he does take himself a bit too seriously). 'Tarkus' is certainly a pretentious song, complete with silly cowbells, interminable organ jams and a pretty self-satisfied feel to it, but this is starry-eyed pretention, the boundless enthusiasm of a generation that still feels it can change the world. Which is certainly preferable at times to Pink Floyd's self-absorbed arrogance or John Anderson's self-indulgent, know-all lyrics. For just this moment, ELP come across as the enthusiastic, youthful punk-rockers of prog, albeit with virtuoso musicianship and massive egos.

'Tarkus' (the song) opens with the sucker-punch that is 'Eruption'. A wave of synth noise and tape loops, and then suddenly everything bursts, and Palmer and Emerson kick in, with pummeling drums and vibrant organ drives. In all honesty, it's best to listen to 'Tarkus' whilst gazing at the album's superb artwork. The warbling keys and rolling drums perfectly evoke the birth of Tarkus as the armadillo-machine emerges from a torrent of lava. It may have a hippy-trippy tone to it, but this music remains violent and scary, as befits the arrival of Tarkus, the monster machine. 'Eruption' segues staright into 'Stone of Years', a true Lake anti-war diatribe that perfectly sets the tone for the rest of the piece. As Emerson and Palmer pummel away, the former King Crimson singer laments the loss of innocence, and the build-up of hatred and violence that has been of staple of humanity since time immemorate. Whilst most prog bands were only interested in displaying their instrumental virtuosity, ELP took time out to turn an acerbic gaze on modern society, and Man's thirst for violence, and 'Stone of Ages' demonstrates this singular trait. There are no magical elves, mystical mantras and lyrical flights of fancy here. ELP aim to hit hard and angry, and whilst Lake is no Dylan, it's mission achieved on 'Tarkus'.
Likewise, 'Battlefield' displays the singer's impressive and passionate vocal range as he rails against war mongers across the world, and treats us to a stupendous guitar solo in the process. Meanwile, Keith Emerson returns to the images of the album's artwork, using his moog and his Hammond to give life to Tarkus' monstrous enemy, the Manticore. Between Lake's political posturing and Emerson's esoteric musical evocation, 'Tarkus' becomes a stirring anti-war messsage, a violent and at times troubling tale of conflict and loss. In the last movement, Tarkus, vanquished by the Manticore, flees to the water in a deluge of warbling synths and rabid percussion. It's a breath-taking conclusion to a stupendously ambitious song. Throughout, Lake rages like a leftist activist, Emerson unleashes a veritable torrent of twisting, shimmering sounds and Palmer pounds away behind, driving the whole fantastic piece forwards with an energy and verve that can only come from being young and fearless and on top of the world! Such boundless enthusiasm is infectious, and ranks the 'Tarkus' suite as one of the most powerful songs of the early seventies.

Apart from the 'pretentious' gimmick, the other criticism aimed at Tarkus is that the rest of the album is a lot weaker than that gorgeous opening salvo. While this is undoubtedly true (they could hadly get any better), I think it doesn't do justice to some of the other tracks. Far from lacking the focus of 'Tarkus', the second half pursues the anti-war stance with 'The Only Way (Hymn)' and its vicious condemnation of Nazism. 'Bitches Crystal' and 'A Time and a Place' are driving psychedelic rushes of energy, carrying forward the sense of outrage and fury from the opening track, with powerful jazz elements reminiscent of the best of early King Crimson. The two 'throw-away' tracks, 'Jeremy Bender' and 'Are You Ready, Eddy?' are the most maligned due to their light-hearted, humerous content. At the same time, ELP are constantly lambasted for taking themselves too seriously. Seems they can't win. These two tracks prove they can have a laugh, and also tapped into the nascent glam-rock and retro trends that were springing up about the time this album was made.

Of course, Tarkus will always be remembered for the title track, and will be used by ELP's (numerous) detractors as just more evidence of the band's vacuousness. But if you open your mind enough, you soon realise just how seminal and powerful Tarkus really is. It's an album that defines an era: the last great age of innocence of Rock, when everything seemed possible and when music seemed the greatest weapon against the evils of the world. Surely that's not a bad thing, even if it was misguided?



PS - I know this isn't a Slowdive critique, but fuck it, I was listening to Tarkus and felt like adding this. Spontaneity, how "rock" is that? And, if this has somehow piqued anyone's interest in much-maligned or little-known progressive rock, here are some bands to check out, in addition to the inevitable (and often great) Floyd, Genesis, Yes and King Crimson: Caravan, Egg, Soft Machine, Henry Cow, Necronomicon, and above all, Van der Graaf Generator, the very best band that genre ever produced. I'll surely be mentioning a couple of them over the next few eternities.

The evils of Britain

Taking a quick break from music, it's time to get political, with these two articles by one of Britain's most articulate and interesting journalists, Johann Hari (I'm not too sure what to make of all Mr Hari writes, but there is no denying he is a refreshing alternative to The Mail's legions of evil columnists). Basically, these two articles display and remind of why I hate two particularly nasty British institutions: the Conservative Party and, most of all (after all, at least the Tories are playing the part they were meant to play), the national tabloid press.

For me, our tabloids are currently undoubtedly the biggest stain on this nation's image, with the exception I guess of the Iraq War (I say I guess because the tabloids do actually annoy me more, the War's being going on for so long now it no longer manages to provoke outrage, which is precisely part of the problem).

There is nothing nice to say about our national gutter press. Xenophobia (fuck it, let's call a shoe a shoe in the case of the Daily Mail: it's racism), homophobia, cheap gossip, slander, intrusion into peoples lives... And lies. And more lies. Incessant lies, all in the aim of pushing forward a political agenda and making a lot of money along the way. Whether it's accusing Elton John of pedophilia, spying on a sick Lady Spencer, using racist slurs to attack our European neighbours and asylum seekers, spitting on gays and lesbians or accusing Liverpudlians of defiling corpses, there are few depths these rags won't resort to. It's enough to make you ashamed to be British.

Sadly, this is a matter that so reviles me as to limit my ability to properly write up a stinging critique. In these moments, it's best to turn to the pros. In these two texts, Hari effectively and powerfully denounces the attitudes of our press (and in the second case, the Tory party) for its attitudes towards foreigners and gays. It makes for disturbing reading to realises just how bigoted and unpleasant "newspapers" such as The Sun and The Daily Mail are. That they are the two most-read rags in the country is a rather damning statistic. The solution? None, sadly, short of a cull.

TWO ARTICLES BY JOHANN HARI (http://www.johannhari.com/)

1) The asylum-hating press - and the politicians who appease them - have blood on their hands

Here's a real asylum scandal, far more shocking and savage than a few Romanians being allowed to slip into Britain. Yet you won't see this on the front pages of the more rabid British newspapers, and you won't hear Michael Howard ranting about it at the despatch box. Jhon Reyes thought he was safe when he made it to Britain's shores. He came from Colombia, a country riven by both fascist and communist paramilitary groups, and three of his relatives - including his father - had been hunted down and slaughtered. Jhon and his children were running for their lives.This country has particular responsibility for the human casualties of Colombia's civil war like Jhon, since the British government has destabilised that country for over 30 years. Britain is one of the main international enforcers of a crazed "war on drugs" that has handed the drugs trade (Colombia's largest industry and 40 per cent of its economy) to criminal gangs. They have proceeded to make the country ungovernable. Thirty thousand people have been killed in the past year in a Colombian civil war facilitated, funded and fostered by our failing "war" to keep cocaine off our streets. So when he arrived here, terrified, traumatised and indisputably a genuine asylum seeker, you might expect that we would treat him well. But the Home Office is run by a cowardly politician, David Blunkett, who will not challenge a right-wing press that has been condemned even by Ruud Lubbers, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, for inciting violence against asylum-seekers.

Blunkett instead chose to appease our own domestic far right by being so "tough" that Jhon was forced - with your tax money and your police force - on to a plane back to Colombia. Blunkett claimed that Jhon would be safe if he went to a different part of the country - a statement that was obviously nonsense to anybody who knows anything about Colombia. The Home Secretary was warned by the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns that he was potentially sending a man to his death. He ignored them. So on Monday afternoon, Jhon was tracked down by the paramilitaries and shot. It is pure luck that he was not killed; he expects the gunmen to return. Over a dozen asylum-seekers were deported from Britain to their deaths last year. The asylum-bashing press and the politicians who give in to them have blood on their hands.The British press has created a hate-filled culture where even centre-left politicians behave like this.

I saw the distortion machine at work when I was invited on to Littlejohn, the Sky News TV show presented by the Sun columnist Richard Littlejohn. He is a journalist who almost every week incites hatred against people fleeing torture. He jeered about the Rwandan genocide and the refugees fleeing it, asking: "Does anyone really give a monkey's about what happens in Rwanda? If the Mbongo tribe wants to wipe out the Mbingo tribe then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them." He has even suggested we should be pleased if refugees drown on their way to Britain. I was invited to appear on his programme against a British National Party thug who was standing in a council by-election that night. I was initially inclined not to go, but then I realised that it was an opportunity to ask Littlejohn some questions. For him to present himself as a neutral arbiter between the BNP and non-fascists was so absurd (and typical of Rupert Murdoch's empire) that I thought I could have a chance to expose that too. After all, BNP leader Nick Griffin has described Littlejohn as his favourite writer. The hero of Littlejohn's semi-literate "novel", To Hell in a Handcart, says, "Don't give me multi-fucking-culturalism. The only culture these pikeys have is thieving."

Littlejohn makes a great fuss about condemning the BNP as a "rabble", but what exactly in their political programme does he disagree with? No, Littlejohn pumps out the anti-asylum sewage and the rats of the BNP inevitably feed on it. With this in mind, I arrived on the set. He was already ranting about me, saying to his producer that I was "a nutcase". I coughed politely. He twitched and shook my hand. As we were waiting, I thought I would have some fun with the notoriously homophobic Littlejohn. "My friend Peter Tatchell really likes you," I said softly as we were waiting. He shifted awkwardly. "Oh. Does he read my columns?" "No Richard, he really likes you." (Apologies to Peter. It was for a good cause). Silence. With that, we started the show.

The BNP fool was very easily dispensed with. I pointed out he hadn't sued the Evening Standard after it was revealed that he was a convicted football hooligan banned from his local grounds for screaming abuse at black people, and he simply blustered. No non-racist was going to vote for him. So I asked Richard how much a single asylum seeker is given in benefits each week. You'd think that a journalist who writes about asylum twice a week would, of course, know something so incredibly basic. His response was clear. He snapped: "I have no idea". No idea. I pointed out that he refers constantly to asylum-seekers being "hosed down" with benefits. He implied in his novel that they are given hundreds upon hundreds of pounds a week. Shouldn't he try to find out some facts before he writes his far-right propaganda? (By the way, they are given £37.77 a week, 30 per cent below the poverty line. This is the fortune that Littlejohn and his friends - the bulk of the British press - says people are flocking to Britain to claim.) He began to howl: "It's people like you who help the BNP!" He declined to talk me through the mysterious process by which people who peddle urban myths, exaggerations and prejudice about asylum-seekers are really stopping the BNP, and people who correct those distortions are helping them. I kept offering him facts, like the simple truth that the Association of Chief Police Officers has stated that asylum-seekers do not commit more crime than anyone else. Or that asylum-seekers and immigrants make a net contribution to the UK economy of £2.5bn a year - saving us the equivalent of a penny on income tax. Littlejohn's response was to accuse me of staging "a student prank".

Soon we were off air, and Littlejohn started to screech at his producers. "I told you not to ask him on! I told you not to ask this nutcase on to my programme!' He looked genuinely upset. I tried to explain that if he doesn't want to be humiliated he should make his articles correspond with reality. He began to howl, and one of the floor managers suggested I leave. Littlejohn - and the countless other journalists inciting hatred against asylum-seekers - justify their behaviour by saying that they are simply reflecting the prejudices of their readers. When the Daily Mail said in 1938 that "the way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring into this country is an outrage", no doubt many of their readers agreed too. No doubt many believed the stories about Jews carrying diseases, exploiting our hospitality and committing evil crimes.That doesn't stop it being a litany of lies. Most of Britain's asylum-seekers in the past decade came here from Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq. They are no more thieving crooks than Jews fleeing Hitler.The distortions of the asylum-haters have now created a climate in which the British state is handing men like Jhon Reyes to murderous gunmen, and it is not considered a national scandal. Well done, Richard.


2) SECTION 28

Twenty years and an eternity ago, the final official piece of anti-gay prejudice was signed into British law. Its name was Section 28, and it ruled that local councils – including their schools, libraries and social services – could not “promote” homosexuality. Councils were forbidden from saying that we were “normal”, and from approving of our “pretended family relationships.” The consequences scarred and infected the lives of a generation of gay men and lesbians in this country – and even though its corpse has now been tossed onto the bonfire of history, the stench still hangs over Britain’s playgrounds today.

The strange story of Section 28 begins in the 1980s, when a young new wave of left-wing Labour councilors began to emerge in London. They were the first to ever come of age in a country where you could be openly gay and not be sent to prison. They looked out over the city – teeming with out gay people who flocked here from all over the world – and saw that there was still a spiked chain holding us back. A gay teenager was six times more likely to self-harm than his heterosexual twin brother. And worse still, a new sexually transmitted disease, AIDS, was beginning to rip through the gay community – but homosexuality wasn’t even mentioned in the sex education lessons at 82 percent of our schools.

That’s why a few councils decided it was immoral to stand inert while gay kids killed themselves and more and more young men contracted HIV out of ignorance. So they began to distribute bland, cosy literature explaining to children that gay people exist and they aren’t anything to be frightened of. A typical example was called ‘Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin’, which showed a four year old girl living with two daddies. She ate breakfast with them, she made cakes with them – wild stuff. And for older teenagers, there were leaflets explaining safe sex, and helplines where they could receive counseling.

A sudden tsunami of bile smashed into the councils responsible. They were savaged by the tabloid press as the “loony left” and “militant perverts.” The Sun newspaper announced that “benders” and “poofs” were trying to “recruit children” by “distributing filth.” The stories inverted reality, claiming that the people trying to prevent homophobic bullying and protect children from violence were “gay bullies” and “homosexual fascists” from whom children needed “urgent protection.” In a typical article, the Daily Mail’s Gerald Warner warned against “the paedophile aggression of loony-left London boroughs” who were pumping out “the propagandist machinations of a homosexual underclass.” He said that gay people’s “invert psychopathology seeks to subvert society in favour of their recently decriminalized subculture” and he concluded that if the uppity gays didn’t shut up, “the normal 95 percent of the nation” should begin to call for “the recriminalization of homosexual activity.”

The Conservative Party piled in behind them. Rhodes Boyson MP demanded action against the councils, saying: “It is wrong biblically, is homosexuality. It is unnatural. Aids is part of the fruits of the permissive society. The regular one-man, one-woman marriage would not put us at risk in this way. If we could wipe out homosexual practices, then Aids would die out.” Nicholas Fairbairn MP said in parliament that homosexuality was “a psychopathological perversion” based on “inserting your penis into another man’s arsehole.” At the height of the backlash, a London newspaper called Capital Gay had its offices burned down by anti-gay arsonists – and a Conservative backbencher said the arsonists were right. In parliament Elaine Kellett Bowman said of the attack: “There should be intolerance of evil!” A few months later, Margaret Thatcher made her a Dame.So a few peers in the House of Lords decided to take a stand. In 1986, the independent peer Lord Halsbury introduced a Private Member’s Bill to bring these councils to heel. He said that “sick” homosexuals – who are “reservoirs” of disease – needed to be stopped. The proposal failed, as almost all Private Member’s Bills do, but Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher thought it was such a good idea she picked it up and made her government push it through. In her 1987 conference she expressed her outrage that children “are being taught they have an inalienable right to be gay.” Instead, she said, they should be instilling “traditional moral values.” And so Section 28 was born – a hard, go-to-prison ban on “promoting” homosexuality.

What did this mean for ordinary gay kids across Britain? Adam Powell, 49, is a heterosexual English and PE teacher who taught in a comprehensive school in Ealing at the time. He explains how Section 28 made him unable to protect gay children. “You would hear kids calling each other ‘poofter’ or ‘queer’ all the time, but you felt your job was on the line if you challenged it,” he says. “There’s one kid I still think about because I feel so ashamed that I didn’t do more. He was a quite effeminate boy, and very clever. The other kids would pick on him. Obviously if they attacked him – which they did pretty often – I would intervene and punish them. But the name-calling, the isolation… I didn’t do anything about that. I wanted to intervene and say – if he is gay, so what? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, it’s a fact of life, get over it. I would challenge racist kids if they called somebody a ‘Paki’ or whatever, and it worked. They would stop. I could have stopped that homophobic abuse, and I didn’t.” After attacking one of his bullies with a pen-knife and then trying to cut his own wrists, the boy was expelled from the school. Powell doesn’t know what happened to him. This was far from an isolated incident. A Stonewall study in 2000 found that 56 percent of teachers said they had difficulties in addressing the needs of gay and lesbian students as a direct result of the legislation. The gay journalist Alex Bryce remembers what it meant for him. “I was in the throes of puberty, with my hormones in overdrive and I was starting to develop an awareness of my sexuality,” he says. “As my own feeling were not explained or even mentioned in the sex education lessons, for the first time in my life, I began to feel different. After one particular PSE lesson I plucked up the courage to stay behind after class to talk to my teacher. I remember packing away my things slowly and carefully choosing my words. ‘Miss, what do men who are attracted to men do in bed?’ I asked. The teacher looked slightly concerned by my question. ‘I would really like to talk to you about this, but I’m legally obliged not to,’ she said with genuine regret. This was my personal encounter with Section 28. What could have been a turning point for me, allowing me to feel acceptable and ‘normal’, left me isolated and confused at a time when I was particularly vulnerable.”

And so a generation of gay children were left to be bullied, and in ignorance of the terrible threat of STDs. We will never know how many people contracted HIV as a result – but we know there are some. The UK Gay Men’s Sex Survey in 2003 – commissioned by the Terrence Higgins Trust – found that one third of 20 year-old gay men, the children of Section 28, did not even know the most basic facts about HIV transmission. Some 51 percent didn’t know that HIV is more likely to be passed on if he or his partner has another STD; 31 percent did not know that water-based lubricant reduces condom failure; and, incredibly, 14 percent did not know that HIV is more likely to be passed on if a man ejaculates inside his partner. Several AIDS charities believe there is a trail of infected blood that runs right back to Margaret Thatcher.

Whenever Section 28 and its hateful backers dominated the news, the rate of gay-bashings was ramped up – but the gay fight-back was as brave as the assaults were cowardly. Gay activism became bolder and bigger than at any time in British history. Thirty thousand people marched on Westminster. Ian McKellen – one of Britain’s most famous actors – was so horrified he felt he could no longer remain in the closet; he was followed out by Eastenders star Michael Cashman, and a battery of others, declaring that in the age of Section 28 everyone had to stand and be counted. A group of lesbian protestors abseiled into the chamber of the House of Commons to disrupt the parliamentary debate of the Clause, and they later burst into the live broadcast of the six o’clock news. Thousands of people banded together to form Stonewall, still the most high-profile and high-impact gay lobbying group in Britain. The gay community’s most successful weekly gay newspaper, the Pink Paper, was set up to report on the savage backlash against gays.The legislation always seemed to reveal a strange insecurity on the part of its fans about their own sexuality. Did they really think children could be ‘taught’ to be gay, like they are taught the ten times table? In 2005, I asked Michael Howard – who piloted it into law as the Local Government Minister – if he thought he would be gay today if his teachers had “promoted” it to him. He said, “Well I think that there are some people who could be influenced. Who could go either way. I think there is a question about the extent to which people can be influenced…” He trailed off, with a little shrug of embarrassment.
At first, the Labour Party supported Section 28 out of fear of being tarred with the “loony left” brush. But it soon regained its moral compass and began to call for its repeal. The Conservative Party swooped in to use this as a wedge issue against them. Norman Tebbit drew up an election poster showing a shelf-full of gay books and the slogan: “This is Labour’s idea of a comprehensive education.” They accused Labour of supporting “perversion.”Britain’s religious establishment rallied behind the Tories. Cardinal Thomas Winning announced: “It pains me to use the word perverted when discussing the homosexual act but that’s what it is. I will not stand for this sort of behaviour.” He compared gay people to the Nazis, saying: “In the place of the bombing of fifty years ago you find yourself bombarded with images and ideas which are utterly alien.” Today this seems like an act of psychological projection: he was, after all, a senior figure in a Church that was riddled with real perverts and paedophiles who were committing the mass rape of children under Winning’s own nose.The Tories and the religious – from the Chief Rabbi to the Muslim Association of Britain – stayed with Section 28 to the end. Labour came to power in 1997 committed to repealing the anti-gay law. Tony Blair said: “I guess, reading the newspapers, that repealing Clause 28 is not popular, but we are doing it because it is the right thing to do. The truth is that this campaign is based on people who do not want to openly say they are prejudiced against gay people, so they hide behind the issue of child protection.” The Conservative leader William Hague called this “politically correct nonsense”, and said bizarrely that “true tolerance means a minority accepting the experiences and beliefs of the majority.” He ordered his party in the House of Lords to hold up the repeal for years.The most senior figures in the Conservative Party today are still tainted by their association with Section 28. The Tory mayor of London, Boris Johnson, defended it, even though in his recent interview with Attitude he didn’t seem to actually understand what the law was. The current Tory leader, David Cameron, voted for it at every opportunity, and used the issue in his election literature to attack his Labour opponent.

The law was finally, at last and at least, abolished in 2004 – but its consequences live on. In every other area of British life, attitudes towards gay people have been radically transformed. Yet in our schools, anti-gay prejudices were preserved in the formaldehyde of Section 28. The fight against homophobia is only now beginning in our playgrounds – after it has been largely won in the places where it could be legally challenged, like the workplace. Stonewall found recently that 80 percent of schools admit they have a problem with homophobic bullying – but only 6 percent have a policy to deal with it.Let end with the story of one boy – one of many – who paid the price for Section 28’s stalling. Jonathan Reynolds was a 15 year-old from Bridgend, South Wales, who came out to some of his closest friends in 2006. They blabbed – and he was bullied and harassed and threatened as a "faggot" and a "poof" until he couldn't take it any more. His school had no policy in place to protect gay children; any move to develop one had been squashed by the vast legal block of Section 28, and hadn’t recovered in time for him. So one day, after he sat a GCSE exam where he earned a starred A grade, he lay down on the train tracks near his home. He texted his sister Sam: "Tell everyone that this is for anybody who eva said anything bad about me, see I do have feelings too. Blame the people who were horrible and injust 2 me. This is because of them, I am human just like them. None of you blame yourself, mum, dad, Sam and the rest of the family. This is not because of you." Then a train sliced his body apart. Jonathan Reynolds’ final text message – his last cry of “I am human” – should serve as the obituary for the late, un-great Section 28.

My note (Lonely Planet Boy): Most interesting in this last article is the points that the two most visible Tories, Boris Johnson and David Cameron, one recently elected as London Mayor, the other the next Prime Minister of the UK, both supported Section 28 up to its demise. This, the same loveable BoJo that seduced the capital's voters and who was editor of The Spectator, a magazine that regularly featured articles by self-described racist Taki during Boris' tenure. This, the same friendly "Dave", who is supposedly putting a friendly face on the Conservatives. This article I hope shows that the Tory part hasn't actually changed since the eighties. If you're gay, please don't be fooled just because they count Alan Duncan in their ranks. This is still the party of Portillo, Widdecombe and Tebbit. It's still the party of Section 28.

Hop Farm Festival 2008

Hello angels!

Before continuing on with Slowdive and the shoegaze movement, I would like to take a mini-detour to post my thoughts and feelings on the Hop Farm Festival, which took place on July 6 in a lovely corner of the Kent countryside. The bill was solid: Primal Scream, Supergrass, My Morning Jacket, Rufus Wainwright, and my own personal god Neil Young. How could I not attend?

Well, the weather would have been one reason not to. I guess it's all part of the Festival fun, but fuck me did it pour down. And personnally, I can think of a number of things that I'd rather do than spend nearly four hours getting soaked. I love rock'n'roll, but that's just taking the piss. And it just wouldn't let up! It was like the meteorological equivalent of Jim Davidson: unpleasant and relentless.

I had arrived early, to make sure I caught every act, and must first tilt my hat at the sterling organisation. A bus picked us up at the station, there was no queue to get in (the perks of getting there early, maybe) and every act was pretty much on time. Plus, the bars were nice, the food varied and interesting, and the sound was great for an outdoor venue. Thumbs up to the organisers!

But, by the time the first act, the pretty decent country-rock quintet Everest, came on, it was pissing down. Despite my hood and umbrella, and their excellent set (well, for a first band on, it was tight, smooth and melodic - can't really ask for more at 12.30 in the afternoon!), it was pretty dispiriting, so I went to take refuge under a tree during the second set, by folky 18-year-old singer Laura Marling.

So, it was on to Guillemots, an atypical "new rock" act, who have somehow managed to take the tired Franz Ferdinand - Razorlight - post-Strokes sound and inject a little originality by adding a sense of fun and wackiness most modern bands desperately lack. I can't say I like all their songs, but singer Fyfe Dangerfield is impossibly charismatic and funny, and they have a Flaming Lips-ish vibe and several lush, over-the-top melodies that worked like clockwork on my senses. Latest single "Get Over It" is a pounding, unrelenting, shouting bit of pure hard-pop energy, but it was the epic duo of "Trains to Brazil" and lengthy closer "Sao Paulo" that really got me going. The music is lush, with gently shifting and subtle rythm patterns, and an overload of bonkers sounds that at times even had me thinking of Roxy Music at their peak. No small compliment. Plus, Fyfe has a cracking voice, a bit like Thom Yorke, only madder and less overblown. "Sao Paulo" was actually stunning, as the band let rip, bringing on a bunch of roadies to bang away on random percussion as Fyfe punished his keyboards and the guitarist wailed away like an indy Kevin Shields. Shame about the rain...

Next up was Rufus Wainwright, after I'd refreshed myself with a surprisingly tasty burger (funny what seems delicious when yer knackered and cold!). He's always reliable to give a good show, even on his own, as was the case here. He played his most distinctive songs ("My phone's on vibrate for you", "The Art teacher", "I'm going to a town"...), in his glorious tenor, which is just as arresting live as on record, adding a little bit of camp glamour to the otherwise muddy event. And, just as he rolled through a gorgeous rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"... the sun came out!!!!! This prompted whoops of glee from the crowd and added a moment of simple poetry to the day, especially as it remained mostly clear until the end. Thanks Rufus, you bring the sunshine into all our lives!

At this stage, I have to admit to feeling butterflies in my tummy. The reason was that My Morning Jacket were the next act, and I always feel nervous when a band I love is set to perform, especially if it's the first time I'm seeing them. Will they deliver the goods? MMJ are also relatively under-appreciated in the UK, so I was willing them to kick off this crowd's introduction to them with a bang. Thankfully, I needn't have worried! Although I can't say I'm that keen on the material from their latest album Evil Urges (decent enough tunes, but not memorable, and a couple of them were too soul-inflected, never a good idea if you're a white rock band. Only Todd Rundgren and Antony Hegarty can really pull off white boy soul, guys!). But the tunes from Z, my personal fave by these Kentucky-ites, were just stunning when subjected to the live treatment. Here, Jim Jones fabulous high voice soared out on the wings of his superbly crafted melodies, drenched in reverb, but always powerful, whilst around him the whole band blasted out the album's thumping alt-rock with a fervour and energy that only Neil Young would surpass later. The guitars squealed and roared, Jones prowled the stage like Gary Rossington in his prime and the keyboardist ripped weird and wonderful noises out of his machines like Eno in full flight (ok, maybe not quite, but still). "Off the Record", "Anytime" and "Wordless Chorus" deserve classic status, in my books, and these guys proved just why rock remains the ultimate live music with this all-too-short high-octane set. Rock on!

And now, it's confession time. I have to admit that I had actually managed to confuse Supergrass with The Stereophonics! Either way, I had little interest or familiarity with the music that came next (collective gasp from Brit-pop fans, who supposedly look at Supergrass as legends). Instead, I took advantage of their set to catch up with some friends and have a wee and a pizza (not at the same time). I did bop away to "Alright", but, given how static these veterans were, I was quite happy to do so from a distance.

The same kind of goes for Primal Scream. I know they are the darlings of the UK indy scene, but (second confession), I'm not that fussed. They have some good tunes, but few that have ever stood out in my mind, and like their predecessors, I found them rather static. I know that this means they supposedly exude an overwhelming sense of cool-ness, but for me there's a fine line between seeming cool and seeming bored. So, I was happy to focus most of my attention on the vodka jelly shots a charming chap was selling at 5 for £5. If the band I'm watching seems bored, it tends to make me feel bored as well. Having said that, the rest of the audience was loving it, which meant for a great atmosphere, and I was very pleased to head towards the front of the crowd for "Rocks" and "Movin' on Up", which were actually better live than in the studio, and really had everyone jumping. Again, I won't be listening to either track at home, but I did enjoy hearing them belt out from the stage to the roars of thousands of adoring fans.

And so onto the big one. The Loner. Shakey. The Godfather of Grunge. Again, I could feel the butterflies. How would my idol hold up to the scrutiny of this youthful (ok, there were some oldies in there, but more than a few scrawny indy kids too) crowd, many of whom I suspected were mainly there for Primal Scream? The massive crush to get to the front suggested at least that he had a loyal following in there, and of course, I needn't have worried.

To put it succinctly: Neil. Young. Fucking. Rocks. I am beginning to think there is no-one quite like him out there. I'm pretty sure they must have been able to hear this set in Calais! He kicked off with a beyond-grungy version of "Love and only love" and never looked back. Old Black, his trusty Gibson Les Paul screamed, roared, squealed, moaned and howled over nearly ten minutes as the old fucker stamped around the stage, his face screwed up in an expression of sheer, what? Anger, hurt, delight? It's hard to tell with old craggly-face, and it doesn't matter. What matters is that no-one, not Elton, Macca, Dylan or Prince, plays with such fire and rage in their bellies as Young. And this was just the first song!

The stage set up, identical to the one from his Hammersmith Apollo show of a few months ago, had me wondering if I was going to get the same set. Again, why was I worrying? Have I no faith in the man? After all these years? What a cock! Some songs were the same, but there were enough surprises and jolts to have me grinning like a teenager whose just got laid for the first time and is about to tell his mates. "My My, Hey Hey" came next, and, if possible, things got louder. The feedback roared out of the speakers like a monstrous sonic kraken (a pretentious metaphor, I'm aware, but sod it), and I was half expecting earthquake reports this morning. These were My Bloody Valentine-worthy noise levels. We then got the first surprise in "I've Been Waiting For You", a song that goes back 40-odd years and still sounds like it could have been written by, oh, My Morning Jacket. Or Guillemots. Or fucking Primal Scream! Then came "Spirit Road", which continues to grow on me, especially when watching Neil, all of 62 years old, jumping up and down like Pete Townsend circa 1978. I can't enumerate all the delights. We had pure grunge, of Nirvana or Dinosaur Jr. intensity (only better than both) with "Fuckin' Up", a superb acoustic set (maybe slightly more predictable - "Old Man" and "Heart of Gold" are the only songs I believe he has played in all three gigs of his I've seen), and then a heart-rending finale.

I''ve seen Neil three times. Each time I've cried. And I was at it again as the thundering riff of "Words" rang out across the crowd. Who were enthralled - talk about blowing away the competition! I could actually see several jaded twenty-somethings turn and gaze goggle-eyed at their friends, stunned by the intensity and power of this old fogey and his equally ageing mates. They were like a gang, and his guitar was the gang-leader, exhorting its cohorts with each screaming solo or driving riff. And, y'know, it may not be what it was in 71, but Neil's voice still rings out strong and true, and "Words" was the perfect demonstration. It stretched out for over ten minutes, but even that didn't compare to what came next: his rousing new set-closer, "No Hidden Path", easily the stand-out track of Chrome Dreams II and of his live show. It just goes on forever! Each time you think the latest solo is the last one, he suddenly leaps back for more, dragging more and more notes and noises from his protesting axe. At the end, it had become a raging, boiling mass of feedback and squalls as Neil raged, "Ocean skies/Sea of Blue/Let the sand wash over you" over and over as the rain and wind battered at the stage and us poor souls, who couldn't give a care in the world, such was the trance he had us in. And yes, the tears flowed down my cheeks as the joy gripped my heart and I was yet again reminded of why Neil Young is the most important living music artist today.

His encore song, a ragged version of The Beatles' classic "A Day in the Life" that out-did the original in terms of sheer intensity and power, and even managed to be more psychedelic, as Young once again abused poor Old Black, and more and more twisted, elegiac notes sounded out across the Kentish valleys. He ended up ripping the strings off the neck in a possessed rage and pounding the poor axe on the floor to drag out even more feedback (as guitar tech Larry Cragg looked on in obvious horror), before storming off with nary a glance at either his beleaguered (but ecstatic) audience or his bandmates. Punk still lives! It's 62 years old and it's name is Neil fucking Young!

Afterwards, I wandered in a daze for a few minutes, still stunned, still overjoyed. Then it was time to pile into coaches and head back to London and normality. As we cruised past dark fields and empty office buildings, I put my iPod on and tuned into "Down by the River". To keep the dream alive a bit longer. Seeing a true rock legend, an icon, a legend, a hero, will do that for you. You just don't want it to end. Despite the ringing in your ears...