Luke Velazquez on the singular experience of the queer punk scene, reflected in the work of sculptor Fernando Carpaneda

In our society, people are expected to behave in a certain way. To grow up, go to school, work a soulless dead end job, squirt out a few kids for the good of the commonwealth and do so without question. But occasionally, a person, or a group of people, comes along and they pursue their own path – a path that draws the ire and the contempt of the masses, but also spawns jealousy and the desire for their lives to be so free of monotony. Eventually, these people find one another, and their numbers grow, turning into a community with its own set of ideals, values, beliefs and aesthetics. They turn their backs on the masses, which in turn, peek over their shoulders to catch a glimpse of their lives, and their ways, to see why they are so content to be living a life so different from all others.

Whether you’re a queer or a punk, it means that you’ve got an attitude that the masses disagree with, and that you’ve dedicated yourself to a life of constant scrutiny. But to be a queer punk means that even among your own kind, you can still be an outsider. As lines are drawn and ideas are solidified, people have been pushed out of either community. This happens for the sake of preserving everyone’s best interests, or to keep the scene ‘pure’. Despite this, however, we exist, and we walk the line between fringe groups, too gay to be a punk, too hardcore to be a fag. And even though discrimination happens, for every hater you’ll meet ten times as many supporters in the gay community or in the punk scene. No other social circles out there can say that they are as open minded or accepting as ours. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what side you stand on, as long as you’re proud of who you are.

The works of Fernando Carpaneda show us a world of carnal desire, where the line between queer and punk is non-existent. Here, we see men unafraid of embracing their libido and all the dark alleyways it may take them down. His depicts his punks, stripped of their studded leather jackets, tight pants and chains, bared naked to the world, so that we can see who they really are. This is done, less as an act of sexual depravity, and more an expression of their overt and undeniable masculinity. Fernando’s works serve as a reminder that sexuality is a pillar on which both the gay scene and the punk scene have drawn on for support, and despite all the differences, the two scenes will constantly look to one another for inspiration. So whether you’re gay, straight, bi or otherwise, a punk rocker or a scene queen: stay proud, stay true, stay queer.

—–

Fernando Carpaneda:Queer.Punk.
Open daily, June 26th to July 2nd,1-6pm
The Leslie/Lohman Basement Annex
127-B Prince Street, New York City, NY 10012

Carpaneda’s sculptures reflect the extraordinary side of the human element. Hustlers, rent boys, punk rockers, unknown artists, junkies, thieves and outcasts are recreated to the minutest detail in clay.  Parts of the artist’s own clothing are hand tailored into miniature wardrobes. In the style of the17th-century paintings of secular subjects, human hair and modern day relics are incorporated into each piece to reflect a sense of capturing a moment in time.The artist takes his inspiration from the urban element and uses the language of the street along with his own experiences with drugs and street life. His bold artistic statements  as a gay activist are painstakingly expressed through this controversial work. Often sexual in nature, his ‘in your face’ approach to the acceptance of gay sexuality and the Queer Punk lifestyle are recreated to provoke and inspire the observer.

Further Resources:

• Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation
• Fernando Carpaneda
• The Kymara Gallery

Poet, author, artist, vocalist, and all-round force of nature Joolz Denby recently published her latest novel The Curious Mystery of Miss Larkin and the Widow Marvell. Though more playful than her other books, the story also deals with the harmful effects of a religious cult on a young boy’s life, and the attempts of a two strong Bradford women to help him out. Denby’s prolific output has gained just rewards, including an Honorary Doctorate at Bradford University and a Crime Writers’ Association award for Stone Baby. The third novel Billie Morgan lost out to Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin for the Orange Prize in 2005. Based on her own involvement at 19 with a biker gang, it was widely praised for the intimacy of its characters and sense of place (Bradford, both present day and during the 1970s). Despite the attributes, one senses that Joolz has found the strictures of publishing houses too limiting at times. Displaying a healthy sense of perspective, she told For Books’ Sake that learning to tattoo was a bigger challenge than writing novels – “you aren’t going to mutilate someone for life” – and also an honest way to support her other projects. This rejection of obstacles keeps her moving forward. Whilst previous work was put out by HarperCollins and Serpent’s Tail (most of her poetry has appeared via Bloodaxe), Jools decided to take the independent route this time. Miss Larkin and the Widow Marvell is the first title for the small-press Ignite Books. The venture was formed in late 2010 with Steve ‘Spot the Poet’ Pottinger, co-author of last year’s The Rest Is Propaganda, Steve Ignorant’s account of life with Crass. Spike spoke to them both on the eve of Ignite’s launch party.

Tell us the story so far of Ignite
Joolz Denby: I got totally bored and irritated by the complete lack of common sense, business acumen and complete disinterest in anything to do with the actual quality of writing by the major publishing house, who I have been published by and who came to make me despair of British publishing.

Steve Pottinger: It was kick-started through a series of conversations with Joolz, who was frustrated by the impasse she felt she’d reached with her then publishers. I’d just finished writing the Steve Ignorant autobiography and was itching for another project. I read the manuscript of The Curious Mystery…, loved it, and was confident other people would too. From there on, Ignite Books was the obvious way to go – the alternative would be to do nothing, and why do that when the opportunity’s there to give it a go?

The project seems to focus on social media. Is this a deliberate policy to remove all barriers between you and the readers?
JD: It’s the best way to get actual readers to relate to a book. We cannot as the majors (see above) do and try to drag on in the past whilst trying to screw the last pitiful drops of cash out an industry they have virtually destroyed by their isolationism and incompetence. We both also work in the music industry and that’s the same.

SP: Yes. Like most people, I thrive on interaction and connection. So I want to hear from people who’ve read Joolz’s book, or who are interested in what we’re doing. I love that exchange of ideas. For me, that’s vital. Cut yourself off from that and the hard work involved in something like Ignite becomes a hundred times harder.

Something revolutionary seems to happen when clusters of people get together. Do you see this happening around books right now?
JD: About bloody time if it is.

SP: Let’s hear it for the cluster. When you’re sharing skills, enthusiasm, and knowledge, when you’re picking each others brains, then your perception of what’s possible gets well and truly shaken up. Why shouldn’t that be true in publishing too? Get your hands on the software, a modicum of enthusiasm, and a willingness to learn, and off you go…

You worked on the book with Steve Ignorant. For Crass there was a political dimension to their creative autonomy. Do you see much evidence of a political aspect to independent publishing?
SP: I think there can be. As soon as you do something as simple – and as profound – as taking control of the process of publishing your work, then everything changes. Beats the hell out of waiting for someone else to promise to do it for you and then screw it up. Ignite produces the books we want and that we know there’s an audience for. Any mistakes and fuck-ups we make are our responsibility, no-one else’s. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Is there a punk/ DIY/ obstinate and bloody-minded aspect to that? I think there may be!

Independent music labels have been common for over 30 years, why is it taking publishing so long to reach a similar acceptance?
JD: Because of their utter snobbery – they see themselves as a ‘cut above’ the music scummers. When I was published by HarperCollins, I suggested that as I was gigging at Glastonbury they could take an ad out ion the programme for the book or at least, flyer the festival. Their response was (and I’m not kidding) ‘Those people don’t read, it’s pointless’. And that with three fully-functioning bookstores on site and quarter of a million attendees. I did it myself in the end and sold about 50 or 60 books at the three gigs I did that year.

SP: Good question. Maybe the fact that writing is a solitary pursuit has something to do with it. Your work gets turned down, or you’re told there’s no market for it, and you just swallow the hurt. Rejected by experts – where do you go? A band – with four or five people to share the cost, and the workload – are more likely to reach that critical mass necessary to go “Stuff it. We’ll do it ourselves”. If publishing’s finally catching up, that’s good.

You must be learning a lot of new things. What have been the most exciting for you so far?
SP: Learning a whole set of new skills has been immensely satisfying. But what I’ve really been struck by is the generosity of people in sharing their knowledge and experience with someone who’s learning the ropes. Christian from Bracketpress (who typeset Steve’s book) couldn’t have been more helpful when I sent him a string of emails going “How do I do this…?” Getting Ignite off the ground would have been a lot harder without that kind of support.

Have you run against any obstacles?
JD: Not as far as I’m concerned but I wouldn’t pay attention if I did.

SP: Obstacles, no. Plenty of challenges, naturally. But then I knew we would! Given that this is our first book, I’m pretty happy with how things have gone. Second time round, it should all be a lot easier.

JD: I am a lazy, chaotic, arty type and Steve is a genius at organisation also he is a big nag and makes me do stuff. I admire him tremendously and am completely grateful for his efforts. Were it left up to me alone none of this would have happened.

What single myth about publishing (or creativity) do you think needs to be challenged?
JD: The one about major and imitation major publishing houses: ‘they know what they’re doing because they’re proper publishers’. It’s pants, they don’t.

SP: Myth: you can’t do it. Reality: you can. (But be prepared to graft.)

What would be your message to everybody affected by the arts cuts?
JD: I never had an arts grant in my life – I made a living out of my various art talents for over 30 years. Never depend on a government. Do it yourself.

SP: If you want to keep your local arts venue, get involved. You might just make the difference.

You work in so many different art forms, what ambitions do you still want to achieve?
JD: To get my own private art and tattoo studio – to write a great novel – to write a great poem – to finish the album I’m currently recording with members of New York Alcoholic Anxiety Attack – to tour with the band and live to tell the tale – to get Steve a new camper van – to live forever in order to finish all the projects I want to do – man, the list is endless.

SP: I’ve a couple more writing projects to dive into, for starters. I’m endlessly intrigued by people’s life stories – which is why the chance to write Steve Ignorant’s book was one I grabbed with both hands. And, of course, there’ll be the next Ignite publication to start work on…

Can you tell us a little about how this book came together?
JD: I just thought I’d like to write a light book about something amusing, as everyone in the publishing/media world said I couldn’t. They said I could ‘only’ do big heavy novels. When I do write big serious, exploratory, Urban Romantic novels like Billie Morgan and my latest, Wild Thing (as yet unpublished), they all go, “My god, the writing is superb but it’s not in genre so we can’t publish it, marketing would go mad”. So I thought I’d do it anyway. It would be a nice change and it was. I enjoy studying mythology, so I chose a take on that. I love the idea of Olympian gods living out their immortal years in modern, urban Britain and I put in lots of jokes about stuff like everyone knowing who Brad Pitt really is (guess).

The Curious Mystery of Miss Larkin and the Widow Marvell is available from www.newmodelarmy.org
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Stories We Could Tell – Tony Parsons

See all books by Tony Parsons at
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, sprinkled with love and betrayal, plus the odd smattering of violence, forms the basis of Tony Parson’s novel, Stories We Could Tell — a familiar setting for the man who made his name in the 1970s writing for England’s seminal rock publication NME, and a tale which isn’t lacking in autobiographical parallels.

Inspired to become a music journalist, because writing and music were the two things he loved most, and, as he says, “a music paper was the only kind of paper that was prepared to give me a chance”, Parsons embedded himself in the post-Hippy generation, personified by the rise of punk rock.

In his early career he followed anarchic enfants terrible like The Sex Pistols and The Clash, while not being averse to mixing up his musical tastes with the diverse sounds of David Bowie and The Who.

It was a mad time.

“The life I lived at the end of the 70s was 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – you can only do that for so long,” he muses. “I was glad to get out before I was 25, and happy to get out alive.”

There’s no doubt that for Parsons now, life at 50 trundles at a much slower pace than it did amidst the chaos of the 70s. But while it may lack the buzz of hitting the town every night, going to gigs and regularly breaking stories of obscure bands on the brink of success, it’s hard to deny that these former days have left him rich in experiences – ones which have sparked more than the occasional literary inspiration.

His latest offering puts the author’s bacchanalian history to good use, as he explains.

“Stories We Could Tell is as autobiographical as my other books, which means some of it is made up, some of it is almost as it happened, and a lot of it is exactly as it happened – especially the stuff about sex and drugs and rock and roll. It’s usually the most unbelievable stuff that’s true.”

Set in the summer of 1979 the book focuses on a hippified music journalist Ray; an aging rock star Dag Wood who cuckolds his friend Terry’s girlfriend Misty; and the Dagenham Dogs, a gang of violent groupies who follow the Sewer Rats, a band much maligned by a writer called Leon.

Set against the backdrop of the Silver Jubilee and Elvis Presley’s death, the lives of this disparate group become entangled and mutually explore the limits of their own freedoms.

While he says he writes with no real readership in mind, he thinks Stories We Could Tell will appeal “to anyone who knows what it means to be young”.

“The reason I started writing novels is that some themes and thoughts need a full-length work to explore them fully,” he adds. “It is my way of making sense of my world.”

So how has Parsons and his world changed over the years?

Well, while he is still true to his musical roots, the man’s tastes have broadened in the last three decades and now includes, blues, country and reggae, as well as rock and soul. He is inspired by the new British Ska explosion, in particular a band called The Beat, but laments the way the media today thrusts bands into the limelight before they are ready.

“In the past, a band – although this is also true for painters, writers, anyone doing something creative – would be ignored for a long time and given a chance to hone their style.

“That said, the UK is still a hotbed of creativity and I am constantly amazed at the number of great bands we produce.”

In spite of his years of rubbing shoulders and getting sweaty with many of the musical greats of the last three decades, he’s clear as to what his greatest life experiences have been.

“The birth of my son and my daughter passes everything else. And beyond the miracle of birth, the thing I remember most is seeing the Cormorant fishermen of southern China.”

In terms of reading, Parsons’ influences have changed over the years. He cites Ian Fleming’s James Bond books as favourites, age seven, JD Salinger’s classic The Catcher in the Rye as a major influence as a teenager, along with the work of F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, and puts Jack Kerouac’s On the Road as the best read of all time, calling it “a timeless love letter to freedom”.

Currently he’s reading Jason Burke’s Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam, “to increase my understanding of those murderous bastards,” as he puts it. An apt choice considering how London was recently rocked by suicide bombers.

Paradoxically, some positive developments have spawned by the terrorist campaign, he says.

“At the moment everyone is united – I actually think that it has improved race relations here, because most sensible people know that the majority of our Muslim community hates the terrorists as much as anyone else – and of course there were Muslim victims among the dead of 7th July.

“I think it will go on for a long time, but London survived the German bombers, it survived the IRA and it will certainly survive these Islamic nut cases. If the history of London teaches us anything, it’s that Londoners cannot be bombed into submission.”

Parsons’ says the police response in bombings’ aftermath was “brilliant” and he much admires their “almost Sherlock Homes-type” detective work.

While this newfound respect for the boys in blue may seem strange for someone who lived and documented the excesses of the smash-it-up, brick-chucking anger of the 70s – stranger even than his plan to pen a love story– he still retains some of his Punk ethics – namely a deep disrespect for politicians.

“They all disgust me,” he says. “I have a problem with any kind of authority.

“I would have made a good caveman.”

Originally published in 2005

Ben Granger

Someone To Drive You Home – The Long Blondes

See all albums by The Long Blondes at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

To be one of the immortals, one of the greats, a band needs two things. The first, surprise surprise, is fantastic songs. Of equal, not secondary importance however, is image. “Heresy!” comes the purist cry, “it should be all about the songs, craftsmanship, the flick of horny white finger on plectrum, never in all my born” etc. etc. Ridiculous and stupid of course. Image is not just looks and clothes, though it is that too. Image is the attitude, the stance, the philosophy, the essence. The excitement this elicits is just as vital as any middle eights. In the past few years two bands have groped at the mantle of immortality, but have fallen down on one of these two vital elements.

Franz Ferdinand had and have terrific songs, but not the image. Gorgeous, cerebral, majestic tunes with an eerie blankness at their centre, coldness as a result. The Libertines were the other extreme, a fantastic Arcadian mythology, literary and passionate at their core, but with only quite good songs to back it up. With the Long Blondes debut, we finally see something approaching the whole package. The Blondes, three girls and two boys from Sheffield togged up in retro-bargain chic have both an unfailing knack of pumping adrenaline from all the right places and the alchemic ability to turn rank seediness and neediness into weird pop-greatness. No trick is missed.

Singer Kate Jackson, bedecked like a bohemian secretary from one of Reginald Perrin’s more outré yet understated fantasies, has a magnificently imperious voice which draws from the best haughty ice-queen traditions of greats like Siouxsie, not just emulating but embracing this pedigree. Jackson is a stunning front-woman with the young but old at heart paradox that the oddball pop greats have – youthful enough to be getting the action and angst, but aged enough to be terribly ennuish about it.

On the whole it’s not her writing the lyrics though, which are mostly down to male guitarist Dorian. The resulting hybrid is wonderfully pervy, exciting all sorts of contradictory emotions at once. A character emerges in the lyrics, jealous, brash, sad, devious, defiant; whose every instinct is brought expertly to life by the pinpointing of its surroundings. The voice is powerful enough to sweep you away in deliberate paradoxes; we sympathise with deviously amoral, premeditated plans to steal friends’ boyfriends in several tracks, while in others where the narrator is the victim the power dares you to empathise only; never sympathise.

Song after song celebrates the combination of the mundane and the glamorous and their hoodlum offspring:- seediness. Intelligent pop is stuck between high art and cabaret, and so seediness is its default setting, the greatest dare to explore this condition to the full. Both fellow Sheffielder Jarvis Cocker and the Mancunian Morrissey (the latter slyly alluded to in two songs) recognized this truth, and with the deft explorations of groping thwarted by stubbornly forbidding tights, addiction to half-forgotten film starlets, meditations on the weird freedoms offered by the British motorway system, descriptions of gin-fuelled desperation, and fraught worries about the significance of a lover’s arse-based tattoos, the Jackson/Dorian team prove themselves the heirs apparent.

A band cannot live on lyrics alone of course, and musically this is one hard-wired into the best traditions of weird pop greatness, supercharging along with the best bits of punk and indie, and managing the rare and eerie quality of forging the best bits of dance and disco too from this alchemic combination.

The other girls can do gorgeous Spectral harmonies, they can do the Riot Grrrrrrl shout bits too – both done equally well and without any hint of incongruity.

The Long Blondes are just amazingly, unbelievably cool. Cool in the sense of generating an aura which encapsulates a whole world of their own, a world where the urban and surburban grime and boredom make the glamour of the mind more and not less exciting. Cool in the sense of looking, sounding and feeling right all at the same time, and getting it right every time. Cool in the sense of not trying too hard. Cool in the sense that I can even write that word without feeling like a complete dickhead in enthusiastically describing them as such (you may think I sound like one, but that’s a quite a different thing.)

There’s no room to examine at length the wonder of the album’s many highlights, but the perfect sharp pop of single “Once and Never Again” should do. The slamming guitar-line and gorgeous backing-harmonies meld the best of both the 70s Ramone-punk and 80s-indie-jangle tradition. The tragically under-rated Primitives once managed this too, but The Blondes transcend even their greatness as that voice and those lyrics leave the forbears in the shade. Jackson takes the old-before-her-years (27?) standpoint of the older supportive friend berating the self harming, (“another drama round the kitchen-sink tonight/you said you cut yourself whilst washing up the knives”) damaged young teen trapped in a sad relationship in a killer chorus “19? You’re only 19 for god’s sake, you don’t need a boyfriend!”

The deadly double-meaning of the song emerges when it appears that the supportive narrator just might be exploiting the lass for a sly spot of “sympathy” groping: “I know how it feels, I know how it feels to be a girl your age, I could show you a thing or too, once and never again?” Thrilling, sinister, beautiful, perfect.

We all heard a huge deal about Arctic Monkeys, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and The Gossip in 2006. Rightly so, they’re good. But with this far less feted CD, the Long Blondes definitely made the best album of that year, on every level. I await their next moves breathlessly.

(Warner Brothers Records)

Out to please everyone at once, Muse’s symphonic-U2-punk-politicalness strikes a lot of different chords, none of them all that disagreeable. Certainly a lot of cut-and-paste goes on here – there’s seriously a bridge stolen from Foreigner in “Exo-Politics” and that’s just the beginning if you feel like playing Whack-An-Influence – but it meshes the way a non-horrible G-rated flick would come together, with lots of pleasant, never-before-heard vibe, the type of album that’d be perfect to have playing in the background when it’s time to interrogate Junior about the Trojans you found under his bed, things like that. Muse doesn’t try to scorch the earth with beauty, relying more on dusty Spandau Ballet and Depeche Mode albums to dictate what they’ll be doing at any given time, and then there’s the Queen thing – these guys’ ultimate supergroup one-off would have been Chris Martin fronting Massive Attack on a re-do of Night At the Opera. So yes, it’s good.

Okay, so I listen to Thom Yorke, and enjoy reading books about people living with a gun pointed to their head. Call it entertainment, or living vicariously through others; apathy, black humour, a touch of the politically incorrect and make me laugh out loud, in these dark and here troubled times.

I remember with nostalgia digesting the contents of Chuck Palahniuk’s stomach in his debut novel Fight Club, and wondering why the hell he even bothered to rise in the morning. It was visceral and exciting to see the stirrings, of my own apathetic generation. They say it’s always easy to recognize one of your own, and it was, in the end.

Misguided beacons of hope, in oceans of relentless despair and revelation. Second-by-second bytes of surrealism, drip-fed to you through a plasma-coloured tube. Navel-gazing, in a nutshell. So now, we bomb the shit out of each other, devise ingenious ways of blowing up aircraft, with liquid explosives, paperclips and an iPod, or otherwise inhabit “hi-density Jpod clusters,” at the end of the world.

Three cheers for nihilism, and for making a profession out of not giving a fuck, when underneath we do, more than most. For desiring a cloak of pathos and invisibility and yet being cursed with the contradiction, of needing a public stage upon which to vent it all. I’m human, so shoot me. Riotously funny sometimes, it hurts.

Apathy And Other Small Victories, by Paul Neilan. Angst plus equal parts sublimated anger, life seen through the grime of a Greyhound bus window, disposable culture and disposable life…

“If Tolstoy were alive today and working as a temp at Panoptican Insurance, he’d say that all insurance companies are the same, then throw himself through an eighteenth story window and plunge to his death in a hail of glass and shattered dignity. I worked on the eighteenth floor, but the windows were too thick…”

Shane is a regular ray of sunshine, one click away from voluntary euthanasia. He doesn’t inhabit space as much as make the odd guest appearance. There’s his sadistic, corporate-climbing shag buddy, who would have been better suited to Interrogations Officer at Guantanamo, and a deaf dental assistant who humiliates him at every turn {the fact she winds up dead, is no surprise}.

Shane makes fun of retarded people, more out of boredom than malice and puts the spunk back into corporate space. Temping has never been so much fun as it is, played out in a disabled toilet

“I began to develop a bathroom narcolepsy so that whenever I sat on a toilet I’d start nodding off, even if I wasn’t tired. I was Pavlov’s mongoloid third cousin from that other experiment. His name was Iggy. He died forgotten and alone”

And sex? Well, try this.

” And then there was some sex. Technically, at least. Mechanically speaking, it was sex. Really we were just naked and smacking into each other. We were like two dead fish being slapped together by an off duty clown, swinging us by our tails, both of us slippery and cold, our eyes open and glassy, looking away. That’s about as passionate as it was…”

The supporting cast are equally as reverent, with their lust for life. Dr Weinhardt, dentist, who suffers “episodes” after his head is slammed in a bus door, a landlord, whose tenants service his wife, in lieu of rent, and a neighbour who may, or may not be having improper relations with that guinea pig… We’ve met them all before in different guises, when the soulless shall walk the earth, I think is how it goes….

So how do you define apathy and other small victories in a cubicle world?

With comedy, satire and everything in its right place. Neal Pollock (Never Mind The Pollocks) crowned Neilan heir apparent to Camus and Bukowski’s throne, all existential-ham-on-rye, and really, it’s fitting.

Naked ambition through a looking glass darkly, from a deeply cynical and troubled mind.

“Buy this for anyone you know who cries in the shower, who drinks in the morning, whose life only has meaning when they’re asleep and dreaming that they’re somebody else. They will find comfort here. And if they don’t, it’s not your fault. They’ve always been this way. Some people are just all banged up. Good for you for trying to help. You’re a great person. Give yourself a hand.” {as related to Matt Borondy, Identity Theory}.

The humour’s crisper than a winter’s day on Planet Global Warming, and there’s no background “credentials” to speak of, either, well, if you discount scribbling in journals and fine- tuning the delicate art of talking to oneself… Neilan remains a sort of virginal, blank page, an enigma, dredged from the basement of Insurance Company hell, and soaked in the manna of there’s-definitely-something-in-Portland’s water supply. Three cheers for Palahniuk, Sampsell and the next in line….

Paul Neilan.

Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album – Matthew Robertson

See all books about Factory Records at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com



In the late 70s, the mysterious, topographical radio waves of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures appeared like a burst of energy in an empty void, signifying the arrival not only of one of the best bands this country has produced but also its finest independent record label, Factory. It’s not too strong to say that Peter Saville’s sleeves for Unknown Pleasures and New Order’s Blue Monday are up there with Peter Blake’s Sargeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Kraftwerk’s Autobahn and Vaughan Oliver’s 4AD covers. The design mostly matched up to the quality of the music.

The chaotic, quixotic Factory Records existed from 1978 to 1992, from post-punk to rave, and continues to influence those making music now, not only in nostalgic terms but because they were essentially purely about the music – and the design was all about enhancing the music. Ironically, it was on the very front that Factory couldn’t compete that it ended up competing on – design. This is the label whose die-cut Blue Monday single by New Order, the best-selling 12 inch of all time, cost them money every time someone bought the record.

Of course, Factory is most closely associated with the graphic designer Peter Saville. In the summer of 2003 there was a big Saville retrospective, The Peter Saville Show at the Design Museum and a book, Designed by Peter Saville, which of course featured a lot of his work for Factory. [See Spike's interview with Peter Saville]. Saville’s book presented his art work and other writers put it into context with long, considered essays; what this book does instead is simply catalogue the work and provide minimal expositionary notes. Unlike the Saville book, it highlights the work of other people involved in the Factory story and shows how it evolved beyond the visually literate aesthetic of Saville.

The shadow background of the artwork in FAC461 reinforces the idea that these are objects, artefacts, photographed as if from above on mini-plinths. Ironically, a lot of the artwork published here that we are forever told works best as a 12" vinyl or 33rpm sleeve is shown at pretty much the exact dimensions of a compact disc.

There is a fantastically pretentious but sublime introduction from Factory co-founder and twat-about-town Tony Wilson whose register and sentence construction is unique. How about this, with its brilliantly ambivalent "or": "It all began after a very, very bad Patti Smith gig in late 77 or early 78…"; or this, explaining the Factory design rationale, the pick of the crop: "Does the Catholic Church pour its wine into mouldy earthenware pots? I think not." How can one not love this man (other than by meeting him perhaps)? [See Spike's interview with Tony Wilson for much, much more in that vein].

However, Wilson’s got a gimlet eye for the design success of the Happy Mondays album Bummed, writing about its controversial inside sleeve: "It wasn’t the fact that the woman was middle-aged, it wasn’t the shaved pubes, it was the colour quality which made the viewer feel dirty. Sheer genius, that."

The Durutti Column album The Return of the Durutti Column (1979) designed by Dave Rowbotham is composed entirely of sandpaper and was inspired by the situationist Guy Debord‘s Memoires, "a book bound in raw sandpaper designed to damage all other publications around it" – perfect for punk.

Of course, Factory didn’t just operate in two dimensions – as Tony Wilson might have said – there was Ben Kelly’s Hacienda nightclub, for a while the most famous club in the world, with its chevrons, bollards and cats eyes – a kind of theatrical industrial space, which included the Gay Traitor bar, with its spot lights and furtive air of treachery. (Saville said astutely that "Instead of being a monument to the 80s, the Hacienda is the birthplace of the 90s".) Then there was Factory HQ on Charles Street, a disused textile warehouse (since the 70s they had operated from Alan Erasmus’s one-bed flat) – "a mausoleum to the corporate brand that the label could never be", plus the Dry bar, a continental-style bar, one of the first of its kind in England, all in Manchester.

There’s even info here that’s new to a Factory nut like me (and I made sure my son’s initial allowed me to have a FAC family code, though perhaps that’s a retrospective justification), such as the f-hole logo which I’d always taken to be f for Factory but it’s actually f for Fractured Music, Joy Division’s company (fascinating eh?). Also that there was a cigarette pack design for the Joy Division video Here Are The Young Men, got up like 20 John Player Special’s – I want to trade my VHS copy now! There’s even plenty to drool over in corporate terms such as the stationery and the Factory Christmas cards, especially the one from 1987 designed by Johnson Panas (they were of course commissioned and absurdly lavish), a cardboard model kit of the Hacienda.

While Saville continued his "grand tour for the masses", a visual journey of cultural heritage, with the New Order covers taking in De Chirico for Thieves Like Us, Futurist Fortunato Depero’s Dynamo (1927) for Procession (1981) and appropriating Jan Tschichold typography, there is a sense of a fast-approaching dead end. Luckily, the Happy Mondays covers rescued Saville’s anally retentive control freakery and let rip: they were garish, often unreadable and trippy. Happy Mondays’ Lazyitis single by Central Station Design looks as if they can’t be bothered, which is perfect of course, the bloated lettering slurring its way across the sleeve – you half expect the cover to belch in your face.

Suicide: No Compromise – David Nobakht

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Just finished the top notch hardback edition of David Nobakht’s biography of synth-rock pioneers Suicide. I would have loved to have written this book. Very much a band biography rather than a personal history of Suicide’s two members, Alan Vega and Martin Rev, Nobakht assembles a wealth of material that traces Suicide’s genesis. From the first tinkerings with primitive electronics in the early 1970s, endless confrontational, blood-smeared gigs, through to the release of their seminal self-titled debut album – "up there with the first Stooges or Velvet Underground album" – the extreme reaction they provoked touring with The Clash at the height of punk in the UK (one night someone threw an axe at the stage. A fucking axe!), the involvement of Ric Osacek from The Cars who spent a good chunk of his own popstar earnings on them, through to their gradual acceptance during the 1990s and their triumphant string of gigs that they’ve been playing since 1997 to an increasingly enamoured audience – Nobakht covers it all, and it’s one of the strangest and most fascinating pop history stories I’ve read.

Over 30 years, Suicide have not simply survived, they’ve thrived, and now they are getting as much acclaim as they used to get abuse. It’s just as well, given that both Rev and Vega must be getting on towards 60 now – and having seen them live twice at London’s Garage, it’s evident that age won’t stop them from generating some of the most beautiful and vicious noise you can ever hope to hear. For all their supposed influence on industrial music, Suicide have an intense warmth and humanity to their music – even when they’re sonically scaring the crap out of you – which is wholly absent from the more po-faced knobtwiddlers that came after them. Suicide are still as vital as ever within an increasingly moribund music scene, still outside it even as they become accepted and assimilated into it.

What’s interesting from Nobakht’s book is how aware of their own position in pop history Vega and Rev are – much of the book is written in their own words, and they are reluctant rock stars. Clearly they’re quite thrilled at finally getting some recognition and earning some money to support themselves – because despite being hugely influential, no one actually bought their records – but equally, after 30 years of scraping together enough money to get on to the next album, their new success only comes from doggedly sticking to what they wanted to do. At one point, Vega talks quite poignantly about his 1980s solo career, where he became huge in France of all places, had a major label deal with Elektra – and then suddenly got dropped. He admits it felt really painful to be kicked off the label after struggling so long to get paid anything for making music – but also reckons it was for the best. It’s not often you hear a musician openly admit he misses the money that a major label brings.

Nobakht does a sterling job of chronicling Suicide’s rise over 30 years with a cast of thousands describing what a huge impact listening to or seeing the band had on them – Marc Almond, Henry Rollins, Moby, Michael Stipe, Bono (eh?) – among many others. You’re left in no doubt about the huge impact they had. There’s the received wisdom that the first Velvets album sold very badly, but that everyone who bought a copy started a band – and Jim Reid from The Jesus And Mary Chain says as much about the first Suicide album. People like Marc Almond say it was the second, more heavily produced and disco-tinged Suicide album that actually laid the blueprint for many of the one keyboardist, one singer synth bands that were to follow – either way, neither album had much success at the time of their release. Either way, while Suicide’s records are great, they simply don’t capture the sheer euphoria of what they do live.

Beyond Suicide themselves, No Compromise provides an evocative description of decaying Seventies New York and the emerging punk scene around Max’s and CBGB’s, mixed up with the artist lofts where Vega and Rev first hung out and played their first tentative gigs alongside the likes of the New York Dolls. If Vega and Rev seem like New York cliches at times – summoning up death, darkness, lust and disgust, all the usual motifs of that city’s music – it’s because they were the ones helping create that now-overused vocabulary to begin with. And, as several people point out in the course of the book, others may throw the same shapes or try to adopt the same postures, but very few get near the intelligence that radiates from Suicide’s own sardonic, sonic howl.

Nobakht himself stays pretty much out of the text – he doesn’t really talk about Suicide’s own impact on his own life or the process of writing the book – it would have been interesting to see a more personal slant at times and some "behind the scenes" comments on talking to so many pop stars about Suicide’s influence on themselves. Likewise, the personal lives of Alan Vega and Martin Rev remain firmly out of the spotlight, which is both good and bad – reading the book, you do develop a certain affection for them both and it naturally leads you to want to know more of their traditional biographical details. On the other hand, maybe it’s just better to preserve the mystique. On a pedantic note, I bristled at the one word mention of The Sisterhood, a side project from The Sisters Of Mercy on which Vega guested, as I would have loved to have heard more about how that was recorded. The Sisters were huge fans of Suicide, regularly covering "Ghost Rider" as a set closer when they played live.

Nobakht’s book is definitely an essential for Suicide fans – it’s perhaps a little too reverential, but then, Suicide deserve a bit of reverence after all the shit they’ve been through. (Although there is a hilarious moment when one person describes seeing Suicide as "One guy playing a crappy Farfisa badly and another guy hitting himself with a microphone and falling down a lot"). Vega and Rev prove to be fascinating interviewees, unafraid to try and grasp for the big ideas when talking about their sound but not taking themselves too seriously either. Their self-awareness of their place in musical history, and their depictions of what came before them and after them, makes for a unique perspective on how music has changed from doo-wop to rock’n'roll to punk.

More importantly, though, No Compromise is not an eulogy for a band that was great once but is now just playing the circuit cashing in on their reputation – what’s life affirming about Suicide is that they are a band who are still going strong, still experimenting, still playing. (See a Suicide gig and the only time you might actually recognise a song is during the encore). While the audience has changed and become a lot less hostile, Suicide themselves continue doing just what they want. True, they still don’t sell many albums, but royalties for covers of their songs appearing on soundtracks for The Crow and The Sopranos have apparently earned them more cash than their entire 30 year career of record sales. That such unexpected luck should befall Suicide is a skewed vindication of both their influence and their sound – 30 years old, rooted in the past, playing in the present, still sounding like the future.

Fall Heads Roll – The Fall

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It’s time again for the Seer of Salford to blast forth his enchanted bombast. With more albums now than anyone can count, and with its title surely a sly reference to the number of foot-soldiers fallen from his ranks in the grand Quixotic battle, a new Fall album stakes its claim. Those who care, care. Should you?

The trouble with a talent this unique rattling out at the rate it does is that it gets taken for granted. Does this album stand out enough to win back those who’ve seen the band’s twisted charm in the past but who’ve got tired over the years?

The patience of the part-timer is tested straight away with first track “Ride Away”, a cranky simplistic diatribe against someone who’s pissed the Great One off; literally one-note in all senses. And yet at this point the faithful (and yes, of course I’m one) will hear that Mark E Smith’s always ugly, tuneless voice has, in the end, taken on an incredible inner-poetry of its own. As I believe John Peel once said, it really would be beguiling reciting the Yellow Pages. And yet once Smith has frightened off the chaff with this lengthy dirge; The Fall are ready to thrill with some of their most defining moments yet.

The sound of Fall Heads Roll is very much riff-heavy guitar based , with a decidedly minimalist primitive moog-synth backing, eschewing most of the dance effects which have appeared on Fall records in the past two decades. Not that there haven’t been great pure-dance Fall moments (“Free Range”, et al) but this particular fan prefers the purer approach on balance. The brilliant minimalism of the early 80s period is evoked.

And what riffs! “Pacifying Joint” is an incredible second track, with a machine-gun snare that will instantly snag anyone who hears it. If they choose to rip themselves off the snag that’s up to them, but it’s as catchy as anything by Franz Ferdinand. And once again the “bla blah blah”‘s of Smith’s voice attain a weird transcendent cohesion. By the next track more incredible hooks with age-old synths are underway. And by the time the pop kids are singing along to next track “What About Us?”, perhaps they’ll scarcely notice they’re chanting from the point of view of an East German rabbit (or is it a Rabbi?) indignantly demanding that Dr H. Shipman gives them morphine…

Smith and his lyrics have generally grown more arcane and opaque with age. While this has entrenched the weird mystery, at times the scabrous social realism and satire of old has been somewhat lost in recent years. Here though, several themes of yore are re-examined to great effect, and while of course there’s still great dollops of the incomprehensibility that makes them what they are, a little bit more sense seeps in. Smith may be a fervent loather of all things nostalgic, this record is by no means a rehash in any sense, and yet somehow some of the best spirit of the old in The Fall is at work here.

One track, “Assume”, goes back to the old legacy of fucking seriously with the English language, and applying strange new laws onto the commonplace populace that sound like they’ve been handed down from some Norse Deity gone schizoid. “If you assume, you are a Hu(l)me. If you half assume, you are a Hu(l)me. If you don’t assume, you are a cap-it-an!!“. That this damned and despised new category of humanity could take its name from either the philosopher David or the run-down district of Central Manchester (more probably both, or neither) just adds to the disturbed allure. Of equal importance – it’s aligned to a gigantic, siren guitar sound that flattens all in its wake. Even if Smith wasn’t around the band at all (and it can happen if you go see them live; take it from me) instrumentally alone this bludgeons the living crap out of any musical opposition standing today.

Elsewhere, the song “Blindness” delves into the extended, grinding, inexorable Canny hypnotism they do so well. The repetition in the music is a brilliant back-drop to the meandering meditation on an unhealthy and paranoid hatred of the narrator’s surroundings “The flat is evil/and full of cavalry and Calvary”. At their best, and they are at their best here, no-one can produce a sound quite as menacing as The Fall. Unlike Slipknot or assorted goth-goons, Smith has always known that true horror ensues when emblazoned on and interwoven with a background of mundanity. In “Blindness”, as in “When The Moon Falls”, “City Hobgoblins”, “Hotel Bloedel” and “Bremen Nacht” before it, they sound like they’ve cracked open a scene of everyday life, and found something unfathomably terrifying seeping out. It’s unnerving and marvellous.

The many supernatural themes from previous forays are also present in the deeply mysterious “Midnight In Aspen”, though this time the backing is the Fall in beautiful and subtle mode, and yes they can do that. A gentle plucked arrangement introduces a delirious description of what seems to be a man attempting to summon spirits in the Swiss Alps by firing a rifle at selected stars. For once, Smith’s periodic preoccupation with the occult seems less to do with Lovecraft and creeping terror, and more the benevolent engagement of a great mind with what may be beyond. And for once thinking it may not be that bad.

That’s not the only time on this record that the grouchiest sod recording today shows an uncharacteristically warm side. In “Breaking The Rules”, a wonderfully light uplifting backing carries a mockingly bemused tale of a man “who tried to break his mind breaking the rules”. Probably the closest Smith will ever come to a wry self-mocking acceptance of his popular image. A sign of the comfort-zone probably unthinkable just a few years ago, during the sorry days of on-stage punch-ups in New York. It seems his fourth (or is it fifth?) marriage, this time to keyboardist Eleni has brought forth something at least bordering on contentment.

I’ve found most Fall albums in the past decade, however many gems in the first half, tend to run out of steam a bit on Side 2. Fall Heads Roll bucks this trend more than any other. Even the sillier ones like “Bo Demmick” (a drum-based-track with a concentrated stream of abuse against one hapless individual – main refrain -”Hey fat-eh!” while conceding “He was called….a lot of things”) make you actually want to listen all the way through. The first track is the worst track, and there is not one silly piece of crap on the whole product. Lover that I am, that is rare. (Put it this way: would you like to listen to a compilation album consisting of “WMC Blob 59″, “Bug Day”, “And This Day”, “Fireworks”, “Mollusc In Tyroll”? Half of the Levitate album? Well, not me.) There’s a fantastic sound going on all the way though here. I thought I’d forgotten it, but here it is again. That others may hear it for the first time is a minor miracle.

If you wanted to turn a friend on to The Fall you’d be just as well playing this to them as the early rockapunkabilly days or the mid-80s Brix poppier rockier period. That in itself is an incredible achievement. Its not just that you couldn’t imagine another band being anything like The Fall ever again, you couldn’t really imagine anything being like The Fall ever again. The blooded moon goes on shining, and is no less respected, and nor should they be.

See also: Slang King- a review of Mick Middles’ “The Fall” and Simon Ford’s “Hip Priest: Mark E. Smith and The Fall”

They may have been going for years beforehand but it was in 2001 that weirdo-duo The White Stripes became known to the world, arriving in fine feral style with their supercharged brand of primeval punk blues. They were hyped to the max with their red and white uniforms and carefully contrived sister/brother/lover cartoon mystery but White Blood Cells was a seriously impressive piece of work, far more than the sum of its excess publicity.

There was something genuinely unsettling and odd about this pair, a distinct whiff of Deliverance despite them hailing from the decidedly non-hillbilly Detroit. The songs weren’t bad either. “Fell In Love With A Girl” had one of those unstoppable riffs that make you fall in love with rock’n'roll all over again.

After years of nu-metal gleck and turgid indie-schmindie here were serious contenders for one of those bands that actually end up meaning something, or at least coming close.

Two years later came Elephant, and as Peter Wild’s review on Spike rightly showed, this was a work that built on the foundations of White Blood Cells into a still more towering aural edifice. “Seven Nation Army” thundered more darkly and triumphantly than anything on the previous album; while “Black Math” competed with even “.Fell In Love” for jagged thrash brilliance. There were less wasted songs on the latter album than the former, and Jack White’s strangulated yelping in tongues could still beguile.

And yet, and yet. In the end I spent less time with Elephant than on White Blood Cells. Bad first impressions usually come back, like the slight irritation at the whole contrivance, the doubts about the vague impression left by the lyrics. They’d made their imprint. It was a good album, something to come back to from time to time without doubt, but this was not a Great Pop Moment and these weren’t one of the Great Rock Bands. So is Get Behind Me Satan enough to relight the spark?

Elephant‘s big gimmick was its avowed primitivism; no instruments from after 1960. This rule is shunned many times on Satan with distortion effects dotted here and there to erratic but sometimes inspired effect. Furthermore the electric guitar is often not the main instrument at work here, and the tone and pace is markedly slower, with a higher ballad to thrash-out ratio than either of the former two works. There is more of a return to the experimentalism and avant edges of Blood Cells as against the 2003 album’s direct approach too (including one; “Little Ghost”, which is pure bluegrass.)

As ever they’ve got a star performing single to herald the album, and as with the former two it storms like a rabid beast. “Blue Orchid” shows Jack can still pull out a riff that bowls you over with its rampant dirty simplicity.

And as ever, there are some very fine moments throughout the album. “The Doorbell” is decidedly funky, not a word I’d thought of in association with the pair before. “Passive Manipulation” brings another rare vocal performance from Meg, and while her vocals have been decried as “one-note” as her drumming, I find her untutored tones basely alluring. Sphinxy. The regular lovelorn longing on Jack’s ballads often hits the sad-spot too, dwelling even more than usual on themes of loss and betrayal. Yet at as the album progresses some of the longer work-outs meander too long, and to too little effect.

The subtler pace makes for a lack of distraction from another nagging doubt I had in the first place about the whole charade here, namely the Led Zep rawk tendencies which were always there both in Jack’s voice and his guitar. Not a bad thing to many I’m sure; but to me anything that smells even faintly of the mid-70s and leather trousers is somehow profoundly wrong. It’s an initial disability comparable to a severe lisp for me, and the invention here isn’t quite strong enough to mask it.

This is a good album from a still solid talent. Those without my acute Page/Plantophobia may rate it higher still, particularly with the very real and laudable innovations to their old sound the Whites are making here. But for me, it is final proof that they are one of the best of the rest, not one of the all time players.