Sunday, December 15, 2024

Garry Bushell - The Clash - London Calling - Sounds - December 15 1979






































Resuming the series of reviews in which a critic is wrong-footed in real-time, with Garry Bushell giving a measly two-stars to the record that Rolling Stone would later anoint as Best Rock Album of the Eighties (even though technically it came out in the 1970s, at least in the band's native land, and at the very end of the decade, the last weeks of '79).

But, thinking about it, I don't even like London Calling. And all the reasons why Rolling Stone would rate it so high are exactly the reasons why Gazza finds it so boring - the relapse into Presley-Stones-etc rock's rich tapestry-ism. 

And within five years Strummer himself would be in resounding agreement with Gazza and would attempt to restage The Clash debut with Cut the Crap

Yes, despite various attempts over the years, I've never clicked with London Calling, apart from the title track single, and "Lost In the Supermarket," which I find affecting. 

The rest bypasses me....  it's like the Clash submitting belated candidacy to be part of the Last Waltz line-up....   a truce between New Wave and Old Wave. 

I prefer Sandinista...  on points....  but also because they sound confused and dispirited...

The spiritedness of the Clash is one of the things I find least appealing about them - probably why I never clicked with the debut either. 

(That's why I'm endeared towards "Lost in the Supermarket" - a Strummer song, and Strummer sentiment-admission of frailty - even though it's Jones who sings it, with trademark wetness).

Thursday, December 5, 2024

Pop musicians review the singles, 1 of ?? : Morrissey - Smash Hits - October 1984

 

Some surprises here - warm words for Duran Duran.


Bonus bits


Morrissey on the U.K. weekly music press.


“The British music press is an art form”

- Morrissey, Sounds, June 1983


"I grew up a chanting believer in the New Musical Express.... deep in the magazine's empirical history, the New Musical Express was a propelling force that answered to no one. It led the way by the quality of its writers - Paul Morley, Julie Burchill, Paul du Noyer, Charles Shaar Murray, Nick Kent, Ian Penman, Miles - who would write more words than the articles demanded, and whose views saved some of us, and who pulled us all away from the electrifying boredom of everything and anything that represented the industry. As a consequence the chanting believers of the NME could not bear to miss a single issue; the torrential fluency of its writers left almost no space between words, and the NME became a culture in itself, whereas Melody Maker or Sounds just didn't.

"The wit imitated by the 90s understudies of Morley and Burchill assumed nastiness to be greatness, and were thus rewarded. But nastiness isn't wit and no writers from the 90s NME survive. Even with sarcasm, irony and innuendo there is an art, of sorts.

"It is on the backs of writers such as Morley, Burchill, Kent and Shaar Murray that the 'new' NME hitches its mule-cart"

- Morrissey, not so long ago


Morrissey's own music journalism

I had read that he contributed to Record Mirror under the nom de plume Sheridan Whitehead, but here are some reviews under his own name. He also "contributed" by writing to the letters page of NME incessantly, mostly about New York Dolls. (About whom he also penned a fan bio published as a short book).












































Friday, November 29, 2024

Dave McCullough - Siouxsie and the Banshees - A Kiss in the Dreamhouse - Sounds - November 6 1982

 









Continuing the series of reviews where critics get wrong-footed in their real-time reactions to an album, here is Dave McCullough mystifyingly underwhelmed by Siouxsie and the Banshees's A Kiss In The Dreamhouse. If not indisputably their best album, it's certainly right up there, and it's definitely their most expansive and experimental effort - but here it gets a measly three stars and is judged to be a misfire..

I also found it puzzling that he harps on about John McGeoch as the record's star and saving grace, because it doesn't leap out to my ears as a guitar-dominated record...  McGeoch is much more the forefront dominant on Kaleidoscope and Juju, I'd have said. 

(Check out the continuously ever-expanding Dave McCullough Archive)






Saturday, November 2, 2024

Garry Bushell - Gang of Four - Entertainment! - Sounds - October 6 1979




Not quite an example of critics totally missing the significance of an epochal record in real time, as this does get a measured 3 and a half stars out of five from Gaz, with Entertainment! further described as "erratically brilliant".  

Included in the series more because the critique comes from a well-informed position (SWP member conversant with Brecht etc) yet advances a stance contrary to the now historically sanctioned viewpoint (here it is arty postpunk that's deemed is the wrong direction out of punk, the diversion of energy).  Instead of "rip it up and start again", it's more like "reiterate it and stay street". 




Saturday, October 26, 2024

Rose Rouse - Kate Bush - The Dreaming - Sounds - November 1982

Continuing the series of critics getting it wrong in real-time, not divining the significance of a release or artist... here's Rose Rouse in Sounds underestimating Kate Bush's The Dreaming.

Still, in mitigation, it would have to be said that Rose was not alone here - in fact Bush had almost zero critical support from the thinking person's press at this time - that all came with The Hounds of Love

And as slag-offs go, it's well argued and even somewhat convincing. 






Saturday, October 12, 2024

Lester Bangs on Miles Davis (originally published Phonograph Record, June 1976; republished NME, April 30 1983)

Continuing the series of critics missing the significance of a record on its initial release - here is Lester Bangs in 1976 with what is ostensibly a review of Agharta but is really a panoramic takedown of Miles Davis after In A Silent Way. It's included here mainly for its utterly wrongheaded take on On The Corner and similarly dismissive reaction to Get Up With It

Originally published in Phonograph Record in June 1976, the piece was reprinted in NME in 1983 as a tribute following Bangs's death and that's what is reproduced here (to read it in full you might need to download the images - but there is a portion of it in text form below). 

By the end of the 1970s Bangs completely changed his tune and decided that On The Corner was genius and in some piece or other (corralled in Psychotic Reactions) declared that he would stake his writing life on Get Up With It and Metal Box

Nowadays you will get lists that place On the Corner as #1 Miles album.






 





".... But here I sit, nearly three years later, and this man and his music refuse to ease their stranglehold on my tastes, more, my emotions. I am obsessed with him because he once released Sketches of Spain, which contains an adagio passage in Rodrigo’s ‘Concierto De Aranjuen’ which may hold more distilled sorrow than any other single solo by anyone I have ever heard; I am obsessed with him because Kind of Blue, like Birth of the Cool a decade previous, defined an era and produced some of the most beautiful, spacious, expansively inspired music it was to know; I’m obsessed because In a Silent Way came close to changing my life, reinstalling a respect for the truly spiritual aspects of music when I was otherwise intent on wallowing in grits and metal; I’m obsessed, simply because he is Miles, one of the greatest musicians who ever lived, and when a giant gets cancer of the soul you have to weep or at least ask for a medical inquiry.

Which is why I have been studying Miles’ work for the past year or so, trying to figure out where (if?) he went wrong. Think about the fact that this guy has been making “jazz” records since the late Forties, and that many of them, way more than any single musician’s share, have become (to borrow the title of one) milestones. The man has defined at least three eras in American music – can Dylan say the same? Never mind that when In a Silent Way came out it had the same effect as Charlie Parker’s renaissance and influence on his followers – i.e., it ruined a whole generation of musicians who were so swept by its brilliant departure that they could do nothing but slavishly imitate so every goddamn album you heard dribbled the same watered-down-kitsch-copy of Miles’ electric cathedral – it remains that now, seven years later. In a Silent Way not only has not dated but stands with Sketches of Spain and a few other Miles albums as one of the sonic monuments of our time. And that’s neither hype nor hyperbole.

But since then, the years, private problems, celebrityhood, hipper-than-thous – something, whatever, has taken its toll. On the Corner was garbage. So was, with the possible exception of one bit I have been told about but am unable to find in its four unbounded 30-minute sides, Miles Davis in Concert, Big Fun and Get Up with It were largely left-overs, with predictably erratic results. The former’s “Go Ahead John” was a cooker, but too much of the rest was something never previously expected of Miles, simple ideas repeated for whole sides, up to a half hour each, in an electronicized receptiveness and distortion-for-its-own-sake that may have been intended as hypnotic but ended up merely static. What was perhaps even more disturbing was that once you got past the predictability and disappointment and analyzed the actual content of the music, it took Miles past his traditional (and traditionally heart-wrenching) penchant for sustained moods of deep sadness into a new area redolent more of a by turns muzzy and metallic unhappiness. He should have called one of these albums Kind of Grim. And mere unhappiness, elaborated at whatever electro-technocratic prolixity, is not nearly the same as anguish.

Much of Miles’ finest music, from Blue Moods to “Prayer” on Porgy and Bess to Sketches to My Funny Valentine, has been about inner pain translated into a deep mourning poetry so intense and distilled that there have been times when I (and others have reported similar reactions) have been almost literally unable to take it. I have always been offended when people ask me to take off any jazz record because they find it “depressing,” but secretly I always knew what they meant. Because there were times when I found Miles’ anguish not purgative but depressing, when I had to yank Jack Johnson out of the 8-track deck because I could not drive to the laundromat with such a weight on my heart; but I also knew the reason why I (and, if I may be presumptuous, the nebulous anti-jazz people I just mentioned) was depressed: because at that moment there was something wrong with me, of a severity that could reach by degrees from my consciousness to my heart to my soul; because I was sweeping some deep latent anguish under the emotional carpet, or not confronting myself on some primal level – and Miles cut through to that level. His music was that powerful: it exposed me to myself, to my own falsity, to my own cowardice in the face of dread of staved-off pain. Because make no mistake, Miles understands pain – and he will pry it out of your soul’s very core when he hits his supreme note and you happen, coincidentally, to be a bit of an open emotional wound at that moment yourself. It is this gift for open-heart surgery that makes him the supreme artist that he is. So, obviously, I am damned if I am going to shrug him off at this point. I am going to tear these fucking records apart and find out what the source of the cancer running through them is, praying for cure....."

He's not wrong about the soul-sickness in Miles's music of the 1970s... but for the life of me I can't see why he didn't recognise that this made this music compelling, a puzzle worth solving. 

^^^^^^^^^


Here as a chaser is Bangs getting it right in real time:  a rhapsody about In A Silent Way for Rolling Stone. 

Miles Davis
In A Silent Way
by Lester Bangs


This is the kind of album that gives you faith in the future of music. It is not rock and roll, but it’s nothing stereotyped as jazz either. All at once, it owes almost as much to the techniques developed by rock improvisors in the last four years as to Davis’ jazz background. It is part of a transcendental new music which flushes categories away and, while using musical devices from all styles and cultures, is defined mainly by its deep emotion and unaffected originality.

Miles has always gone his own way, a musician of strength and dignity who has never made the compromise (so poisonous to jazz now) with “pop” fads. It is a testimony to his authenticity that he has never worried about setting styles either, but continued his deeply felt experiment for two decades now. Albums like Miles Ahead, Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain simply do not get old, and contain some of the most moving experiences that any music has to offer. In his new album, the best he has made in some time, he turns to “space music” and a reverent, timeless realm of pure song, the kind of music which comes along ever so often and stops us momentarily, making us think that this perhaps is the core around which all of our wayward musical highways have revolved, the primal yet futuristic and totally uncontrived sound which gives the deepest, most lasting sustenance to our souls, the living contemporary definition of great art.

The songs are long jams with a minimum of preplanned structure. That they are so cohesive and sustained is a testament to the experience and sensitivity of the musicians involved. Miles’ lines are like shots of distilled passion, the kind of evocative, liberating riffs that decades of strivers build their styles on. Aside from Charles Mingus, there is no other musician alive today who communicates such a yearning, controlled intensity, the transformation of life’s inchoate passions and tensions into aural adventures that find a permanent place in your consciousness and influence your basic definitions of music. And his sidemen also rise to the occasion, most of them playing better than I have ever heard them before. Certainly Herbie Hancock (piano), Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), and Joe Zawinul (organ) have never seemed so transported. The miracle of jazz is that a great leader can bring merely competent musicians to incredible heights of inspiration —; Mingus has always been famous for this, and Miles has increasingly proven himself a master of this incredibly delicate art.

The first side is taken up by a long jam called “Shhh/Peaceful.” Tony Williams’ cymbal-and-brush work and the subtle arabesques of Zawinul’s organ set a space trip, a mood of suspended time and infinite interior vistas. But when Miles enters, the humanity and tenderness of his trumpet’s soft cries are enough to bring you tears. I’ve heard that when he was making this album, Miles had been listening to Jimi Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone, but the feeling here is closer to something like “2000 Light Years From Home” by the Stones. It is space music, but with an overwhelmingly human component that makes it much more moving and enduring than most of its rock counterparts.

Side two opens and closes with the best song on the album, a timeless trumpet prayer called “In a Silent Way.” There has always been something eternal and pure in Miles’ music, and this piece captures that quality as well as anything he’s ever recorded. If, as I believe, Miles is an artist for the ages, then this piece will be among those that stand through those vast tracks of time to remind future generations of the oneness of human experience.

Between the two takes of “Silent Way” lies “It’s About That Time,” a terse, restrained space jam somewhat reminiscent of the one on the first side but a bit sharper, allowing more of Miles’ fierce blues ethos to burn through. This is the one that might be connected to Miles’ interest in Hendrix and Sly.

They say that jazz has become menopausal, and there is much truth in the statement. Rock too seems to have suffered under a numbing plethora of standardized Sounds. But I believe there is a new music in the air, a total art which knows no boundaries or categories, a new school run by geniuses indifferent to fashion. And I also believe that the ineluctable power and honesty of their music shall prevail. Miles Davis is one of those geniuses.


^^^^^^^^^

Not one of his great reviews - often in praise mode he over-relies on these windy vague terms, a rather standard lexicon of humanist-literary approbation. “Timeless”, “heights of inspiration”, “the oneness of human experience”. Almost a sense of being intimidated by the subject.

^^^^^^^^^^^

And here's me with the benefit of hindsight - but well before it became a fashionable opinion - bigging up OTC. August 17 1991, Melody Maker




































Some windy, lofty lingo in there - and below too.

From a few years earlier - September 2 1989 - a paean to Silent Way. 




Sunday, October 6, 2024

Mick Farren - The Stooges

 



Not sure which publication this was in - probably International Times - but this could be the start of a sporadic series: reviews in which critics don't perceive the significance of something at the time of its release. 

Interesting, though, that the one track Farren digs and praises is "We Will Fall" - the track that most Stooges fans find tedious and interminable.

Contradicting his own point, it also the one with the least "live" energy.



But he's right - "We Will Fall" is a great track, precisely for its droning narcotic lassitude - the absence of kinetic-ballistic energy.  Attributing it all to John Cale strikes me as unfair, but it does indeed resemble The Marble Index relocated to Michigan. 

Personally I never had any problem with its protractedness or inertia - always loved it.  Plus it functions similarly as side-one ender to "Dirt" on Fun House

It's an atmosphere to sink into.  An ambience somewhere between an opium den and a temple. Sinister ceremonies, rituals of annulment. It could go on for ever.

"Ann", on the flipside, starts with a similar kind of limpid limpness - before erupting (erecting) with rampaging desire.




What's this "Dance of Romance"? Presumably an ironic title -  courtship, wooing, seduction, cloaking the animal reality. 




I could go for a 70 minute version honestly.









Thursday, September 26, 2024

pop groups reviewing the singles, a series / 1 of ? - Prefab Sprout

source unknown  (Record Mirror?)

date: spring 1984? 













































































































































































































































































Tracie Responds (boom boom)












Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Mark Cordery - Dexys Midnight Runners - The Old Vic - NME, November 21 1981

 














Here's a review I never forgot.

Possibly the accusation  - "Emotional Fascism"  - seems in retrospect a little harsh, considering what Dexys soon became (jolly jigsters circa Too-Rye-Aye....  harmless has-beens / heroes-to-some thereafter...). Also in light of Rowland's evidently troubled soul. 

Still, as a real-time reaction of repugnance, this is forcefully argued, I think


Friday, August 30, 2024

Yob Rock (Melody Maker 1996)

Apropos of nothing in the news, honest! 

The Yob versus Romo War



For the June 29 1996 issue, Melody Maker investigated the phenomenon of "Yob Rock", convening a round table that has a number of people representing ladpop and ladette-pop but also a rather large contingent of Romo musicians and Romo-writers, who deplore the Loaded-ladded culture. 




There's also a sort of historicising thinkpiece about the yob tradition in British rock by Taylor Parkes 





The Yob Rock debate -  Orlando members and Romo-in-spirit Placebo singer plus Simon Price critique the ladpop, while Ben Stud + some lad and laddette performers retort that this is elitism and snobbery and stereotyping

I think is actually the UK music press at its best - purely ideas-oriented and ideals-oriented argumentation - flashbacking to similar debates about e.g. Synths in Pop, or the New Mod, that Sounds might convene.

It gets pretty fiery.












Ben Stud: "Romo.... was a comprehensive failure" from the most acrimonious bit of the exchange






You might draw some discomfiting conclusions from the fact that in this Lads versus Dandies furore, the women present barely get a word in edgeways....   suggesting that Cavaliers versus Roundheads is just a fratricidal battle within the Patriarchy - Sons versus Sons.


In following weeks the surviving Romos out there bite back at the Yob Champions





- but futilely. 


And then Oasis have the front cover for two issues in a row - Loch Lomond and Knebworth




Followed, with a week's interval (Ash) by The Stone Roses 

(At Knebworth, John Squire joined Oasis on stage)


And then this!



A brief flicker of Romo-adjacent ambiguity






And then Oasis again!





Ladrock's grim hegemony maintains

(1996 was really a dead-arsed year when I think back to it - outside of dance music and R&B)