Throbbing Gristle
Directed and produced by Tøni Schifer / Monitorpop
This interview is part of the DVD Monitorpop - Contemporary Culture on DVD. with interviews, shortfims, slide shows and music clips by Throbbing Gristle, Hermann Nitsch, Mark Stewart, Joseph Kosuth, Amos Kollek and Matthew Herbert.
“Fame” Jon Savage’s Secret History Of Post-Punk (1978-81)
The art of the good compilation album is one that is finely balanced between
selecting the familiar and the obscure. known pleasures sit alongside previously
unheard offerings, ready to open up new areas of musical contemplation.
When Caroline True Records and Jon Savage embarked in selecting tracks for this post-punk compilation album, things were certainly never going to be neither humdrum nor boredom inducing. here is the idiosyncratic final cut....for those of you who may not know him, Jon can best be described as a cultural commentator, writer and long-time music journalist. (The Guardian, NME, The Face, Melody Maker). he is also the Sex Pistols and Joy Division biographer and writer of the acclaimed Teenage' and soon-come documentary on the book. Actually, he's really a secret national treasure.
When Caroline True Records and Jon Savage embarked in selecting tracks for this post-punk compilation album, things were certainly never going to be neither humdrum nor boredom inducing. here is the idiosyncratic final cut....for those of you who may not know him, Jon can best be described as a cultural commentator, writer and long-time music journalist. (The Guardian, NME, The Face, Melody Maker). he is also the Sex Pistols and Joy Division biographer and writer of the acclaimed Teenage' and soon-come documentary on the book. Actually, he's really a secret national treasure.
The spine of this collection are tracks by post-punk luminaries Wire, Joy
Division and the Prefects. not so 'secret' you may think, but consider the
nascent lo-fi Subway Sect, the tough polemic of Noh Mercy, and the hyper obscure
experimentalism of File Under Pop and you're getting the idea. From Pere Ubu's
dystopian phychedelia to the motorik of Chrome, it's a snapshot of a brief era,
heavy on invention.
Full Tracklisting:
........
Full Tracklisting:
Side A:
Pere Ubu-Heart Of Darkness
Chrome-Chromosome Damage
Nigel Simpkins-Times Encounter
File Under Pop-Heathrow
Subway Sect-Imbalance (Rehearsal
Kleenex-Ain’t You
Side B:
The Prefects-Total Luck
MARS-3E
Rosa Yemen-Herpes Simplex
Wire-A Touching Display
Joy
Division-Autosuggestion
Side C:
Cabaret Voltaire-Partially Submerged
Robert Rental & Thomas Leer-The Hard Way In
The Human League-The Dignity Of Labour Part 3
A.C Marias-Drop
Noh Mercy-Caucasian Guilt
X_X-No Nonsense
Side D:
The Urinals-Sex
The Method Actors-Do The Method
Rema Rema-Rema Rema
Judy Nylon-Dateline Miami
DNA-Blonde Red Head
This Heat-A New Kind Of Water (Edit)
“Some of it doesn’t sound like anything that has happened since.” (Jon
Savage 2012)
........
MISFITS - fruitman inviato speciale a Berlino
Berlino – Venerdì 24 Febbraio, in uno dei tanti spazi adibiti alla musica dal vivo che offre la capitale tedesca, suonano i Misfits. Sono passati 30 anni dall'uscita del loro capolavoro, Wolk Among Us (1982, n.d.a.). Trent'anni di successi e di numerosi fan che hanno seguito la scia tracciata dai loro beniamini, un punk condito di horror e spettacolo. Perché la musica dal vivo è anche questo: spettacolo, intrattenimento. Lungi dal contemporaneo e noioso esibizionismo delle indie band che cavalcano il palco con la pretesa di sembrare i portatori dell'innovazione musicale; lungi anche dall'esoso entertainement delle Pop-star.
Il “palcoscenico” era tripartito: piattaforma decorata a sembrare un castello, sormontata dalla batteria, basso (la cui asta per la voce era ricoperta da uno scheletro umano) e chitarra; quest'ultima con la stessa decorazione scheletrica. Una scenografia rinforzata da luci spettrali e dai costumi della band: cuoio, punte d'acciaio, scheletri.
I Misfits presentano il loro nuovo tour: The Devil's rain. Il Columbia Club, luogo scelto per il live della band americana, è pieno; la platea copre età differenti: dai più giovani adolescenti aggrappati alle transenne di fronte-palco, sino ai più adulti: tra questi ultimi, spuntano creste e capelli colorati, quelle dei punk ancora fedeli alla linea. Con tutto rispetto, i Misfits hanno saputo conservare il loro pubblico e non lo hanno deluso. Dopo una buona ora e mezza di live, il bassista … si è dedicato a firmare numerosi autografi e a parlare con le persone che lo avevano circondato, impedendogli di tornare nei camerini.
Musica e intrattenimento, scevro di pause: il tempo di intervallo delle canzoni era costantemente scandito dal rapidissimo “one, two, three, four” e il “randello” di batteria partiva in battuta. Ogni brano era legato al seguente con una traccia spettrale. La grinta, mmm ‹ co ce l'hanno messa tutta, con passione. Il problema, come si sa, non viene purtroppo quasi mai a mancare: in questo caso si è trattato dei volumi.
L'indiscutibile scelta dei suoni, non pagava la pessima scelta di aggredire il pubblico con volumi assordanti; si incontrava tra la folla qualche fan con i tappi. Per mezz'ora il concerto era incomprensibile. Un impasto generale di suoni, disperso nei timpani vibranti di una folla esasperata. Scatenato il panico e il pogo, il concerto si è svolto come da copione: presentazione del nuovo disco, un po' di vecchi successi, il bis per strappare gli applausi al pubblico con i grandi successi. Sorrisi e canzoni, in un alone di pop-decadente che ha emozionato ma ha anche lo stesso spessore del cerone usato dai musicisti per fingersi “morti”. In poche parole, il genere è quello, classificato e definito, e ormai un po' da clichet, a tal punto che il gruppo spalla non ha saputo rappresentare la novità, la scuola dei Misfits; anzi, i Juicehead hanno preferito regredire in un punk-rock debole, senza idee, pieno di standard e di armonie sentite, con temi scadenti. Troppi tatuaggi e poca sostanza, troppa cresta e poca testa. Per quello che rappresenta il punk, come fenomeno musicale e come fattore sociale, non ci resta che sperare in una nuova generazione che punti a rinnovare la musica secondo invenzioni “punk”, piuttosto che schemi musicali assodati.
Questo per dire che i Misfits hanno fatto del loro meglio, nei tempi migliori: oggi restano un'icona intramontabile del genere, pur non riuscendo, con le nuove canzoni del tour, a esprimere freschezza e novità. Tuttavia nel live rimangono densi di magnetismo: questo li porta a conservare il loro successo. Peccato per quei volumi...
Concerto da vedere
3 su 5
Consigliato a
amanti del genere con sprazzi nostalgici;
appassionati di scenografia e costumi;
musicofili incalliti del live;
(Fruitman)
Subway Sect Live and Rare Vol 1
Live and Rare Vol 1 is the first in what will be an ongoing saga of releases, which will include live tracks, with an eclectic mix of line-ups, rare demos and some unexpected arrangements, from 1976 to the present.
The first two tracks were recorded by Jordi Valls, a Catalan abroad in London and featured in Jordi's exhibition at Arts Santa Monica Barcelona in 2010 'The London Punk Tapes'http://www.visit-bcn.com/blog/culture//
The London Punk Tapes
15 July - 26 September 2010. In 1976 Catalan poet Jordi Valls travelled to London where he spent the next two years recording a new type of anarchic music known as punk. The city of London found itself playing a pivotal role in this rebellious, angry scene, generally associated with disaffected youth whose wild hairstyles drew considerable attention. Valls was not to know at the time but he was documenting the climax of a movement which proved both short-lived and self-destructive. (I found this at 'What's on in Milan??)
The CD starts in brutal fashion at a Night of Treason at the RCA November 5th 1976. Our first two gigs, in September and October '76, had gone ok and awful and the RCA gig was make or break time. We thought we played pretty well but obviously not well enough to keep Paul Packham interested, he left after a few more gigs to join the army. Our next drummer was Mark Laff, his first gig was at the Harlesden Coliseum, and after one tour (White Riot) he left to join Generation X. Bob Ward joined and became the Sect’s mainstay on drums until his last gig at the Music Machine in 1980. He really enjoyed the new musical direction the Sect were taking from Punk to Northern Soul beats, in fact so much so that soon after he left to join Dexy’s Midnight Runners.
The next four tracks are by the line-up I most enjoyed singing live with- Sean McClusky, Chris Bostock, Rob Marche and David Collard. They made doing the Swing thing easy with their musical and vocal skills. Never a dull moment on tour with them!! There is some great crowd comment on the verse of Just in Time that we had to keep in, someone saying we're a bit boring and they should have gone to see Joy Division. There are probably better ive versions of Stamp of a Vamp but I like the trumpet and vocal where I’m trying to get away with being as lazy as is allowed. ( Post Sect this combo went on to become the Jo Boxers with Dig Wayne http://joboxers.net )
This 1996 version of George Blake Masterspy, the latest in a growing tradition of Sect instrumentals, is a classic with a one off line up with Neil Palmer (Last Party) on drums, Edwyn Collins on slide guitar, Simon Rivers on rhythm guitar, Dan Ashkenazy on bass and Paul ‘Wizard’ Baker on keyboard and vocals ( all three from Bitter Springs), turning in superb performances. GBM came out on the album Long Term Side Effects.
Nasty Man is one of those songs that crops up in a live Sect set every once in a while but, while it always gets a good reception, it seems somehow to have slipped through the net as far as recording goes, so I thought we’d include this version with the Leopards (members of the Creeping Bent stable- www.creepingbent.org ), Pete Saunders and Wizard-a line up blended together for this one gig at the LSE, with some blistering guitar from Mick Slaven.
The Bitter Springs- (Simon Rivers lead guitar/vocal, Paul McGrath drums, Dan Ashkenazy bass, Paul ‘Wizard’ Baker keyboard, etc, Nick Brown guitar/tambourine and Phil Martin violin/ukelele) did many turns as the live Subway Sect from the late nineties for about eight years. Over that time we included about nine songs in the set from the Irvine Welsh collaboration ‘Blackpool-the Musical’. We recorded several tracks – the four best, Blackpool, Hand Jobs, the Sewer Song and the Working Class Song, came out in 2010 as an epcd on gnu inc- our own micro label. I hope to finish recording the rest of the songs and releasing them........one day. One of the best, unreleased numbers is The Wedding Song with Wizard on drums. Wizard moved back to his keyboard for the laid back Dylanesque rendition of Ambition. After some in depth research by our latter day musical chroniclers Lee Mcfadden and Tracey Holloway, we discovered the two tracks from Brentford Stripes Bar were recorded by Andy Driver of Fishwife's Broadside - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fishwifes-Broadside
La Maison ou J’ai Grandi came via Celentano/ Francoise Hardy and the Wet Dog Sect. A rare demo, one of only four recorded with this line up- Leigh Curtis, Sophie Politowicz, Becka Gillerion and Paul ‘Trigger’ Williams.
Of all the songs I have done with the Bitter Springs the ones I most enjoy performing with them are Blackpool, recorded here at St Aloysius Social (as well as many other venues over the years) by Lee Mcfadden-a great way to end Live and Rare, and Hand Jobs, which will be in Vol 2, also courtesy of Lee.
Vic , December 2011.
Live and Rare Vol 1, Blackpool epcd and We Come as Aliens vinyl are all available from me via the website:
www.subwaysect.com
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