Out of My Brain on the 5.15 Plane

It’s amazing what sixteen hours in the air (using the laptop as a battery re-charger) can do for your ears. I spent the best part of my ten days in drab and grumpy old Auckland revitalising my iPod and left with close to 2000 songs, many of which were found in the boxes of old CDs out the back of the office, some of which haven’t seen my light for close to a decade or more. It was like making acquaintance with a bunch of long lost, and sometimes estranged friends…you know, you fell out but some time later you have no idea why and just put it down to an over familiarity some time back.

I don’t know if I really want to roll out lists of what I listened to…sixteen hours is one hell of a long list & beyond me… and, anyway, if it comes to iPod lists, Jen over at The Smacked Face does it so much better than me. But I did, as I said, revisit a few dark recesses which had no idea I was heading towards. I love shuffle and I have a fairly unbending rule that I don’t look at the display and I don’t fast forward.

Of course the shuffle process is marred by one obvious flaw…payola. Nothing on this planet will convince me that Quincy Jones and Steve Jobs are not, somehow, deviously, in cahoots. I had a Quincy Jones compilation (put together actually by my buddy Nathan Graves at Universal Jazz in the UK before he ran off to look after Gilles Peterson’s various ventures) on the pod and its now down to about five tunes left as I filtered the things off, but regardless of this, Quincy keeps on coming around every few songs. Day in day out, there is the bloody theme from Ironsides or Stuff three or four songs in…I’ve resisted deleting the lot as some sort of perverse experiment to see how long this keeps happening…..it must be some sort law, the number of plays per Quincy track is inversely related to the number of tracks on your pod or something like that…QJ=IPOD²

Nevertheless, the vastly enjoyable fact that I can be hit with Johnny Cash, then Quincy of course, then Fingers Inc then Timebox (the not as obscure as it used to be 1968 post-mod epic, “Beggin” from Mike Patto (I released a record from Ivan Zagni who used to be in this band, although not on this record…six degrees blah blah…) complete with soaring and crashing strings…who needs drugs when music is this good) then The Who (two tracks, in a row, off their best studio album, “Quadrophenia”…when Pete Townsend pulled all those strands together in one almighty peak before it all got a little sad) then Elvis Costello (of course) doing a “Radio Sweetheart” shuffle, then Barbara Tucker and the MAW dub of “I Get Lifted”, is the crucial upside of a digital player for me.

To be honest, I scribbled these ones down somewhere north of Darwin but got a bit moody on the next one and lost the plot for a spell.

Eugene Record did my head in. I love Eugene Record. As a kid growing up in New Zealand in the seventies I had no exposure to the mighty Chi-lites, or even less than none to the man’s solo works for Warner’s later that decade…we were all punkish and silly by then anyway and the afro-ed man in the flared suits and platforms would’ve made us run a mile then. How silly you can be. Sweet soul had a bit of traction in NZ….the Stylistics of course and the odd Philly hit, plus I remember falling in love to Blue Magic’s wonderfully understated “Sideshow” at age 17, but it was never more than the odd track. So it took Paul Weller to bring me to the Chi-lites, via The Jam’s cover of “Stoned Out Of My Mind” on the “Beat Surrender” EP. I tried to find an album around Auckland with no success until I eventually stumbled on a Greatest Hits during a raiding session of the samples in the CBS NZ boardroom in 1982 and was besotted, something that’s not changed since. I discovered the joys of his solo work (and as recently as a month ago found a hitherto unknown, at least to me, Impressions album from 1981, produced by Eugene and his longstanding production partner, Carl Davis, which featured a killer cut of “Fan the Fire”, which Eugene had done so well a couple of years earlier in his mostly not so hot disco phase). Eugene got the Lord a few years back and gave it all away, which is fine (you can find that side of his life here if you are so inclined…a graphic artist he clearly was not) as he did his bit and if the Lord was ever to judge a man on his contribution to the soul of mankind then….. I could go on and on about how wonderful Eugene and The Chi-lites were but there’s no need. You could even forgive him for the lyrics to “Homely Girl”:

It must have broke your poor little heart
When the boys used to say,
You looked better in the dark.

So at 40,000 feet the little white rectangular machine spun across to “Overdose of Joy” and I read almost at the same time in the newspaper I had on my knee of Eugene’s passing from the big C (did you know Capsicum is highly carcinogenic…just thought I’d pass on that phobia) at the early age of 64 and I lost it… a grown man sobbing…I got an odd look or two before I pulled myself together. I’m just pleased he died a deservedly wealthy man, after “Crazy in Love” which is little more than a cover of his “Are You My Woman” with new lyrics (and Danny Krivit did a sterling job of mashing the two together on a “limited” 12”). I was reading in Mojo about Bo Diddley sitting in his “modest’ house in the South and I thought “modest’??? What did Bo do? He invented Rock’n’Roll that’s all but gave his rights away to Chess (read: Universal, who could surely afford to give them back but show no inclination)…..

So, bugger it, Luther and Eugene in a month. It’s all coming of a time…more and more of my heroes are passing and (damn….Phuture’s “Acid Trax” has just come on the pod…now I’m happy) so hazard I’m feeling a bit vulnerable and aged. It happens I guess as time flows on but each one still pricks a bit. I got a bit sad about Joey Ramone the other day too for some reason, all that promise and then fifteen years stuck in a typecast prison with people you hate…and then you die…

I’m getting morose again…

And talking of time flowing, it’s a sobering thought that its twenty years since the French government, in act of terror that they’ve yet to really be held accountable for, blew up the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour and murdered a photographer.

I was, last week, fortunate enough to see a rough cut of Claudia Pond-Eyley’s forty minute documentary, “The Women Who Launched a Rainbow”. Made for less than $2000, and rejected out of hand by TVNZ who had their own Rainbow Warrior documentary which I’ve not seen (but I fail to understand how such an important occasion can’t support two pieces) and TV3, but fortunately picked up by Greenpeace globally and several festivals, the work focuses on several women who lived and worked with the ship throughout its decade of work and is profoundly moving, especially the final sequence as the boat slips below Matauri Bay with the recent remake of Don McGlashan’s “Anchor Me” as the soundtrack. The film is made with same passion (and this more than compensates for any budgetary limitations…in fact the way it is made is integral, maybe even vital, to the film’s spirit) that took New Zealand to the place it was in the nineteen eighties when, for much of the decade, after the Stalinism of Robert Muldoon’s misgovernment, the people of the nation spoke, firstly with the 1981 tour then the anti-nuclear movement when the overwhelming will of the populace was heard and listened to. As a New Zealander I’m justifiably proud of my country’s stance then and most of my countrymen and women would agree something we need to protect and treasure but are, in 2005 in grave danger of losing as the National Party refuses to commit to such. Mallard’s comment about policy being made in Washington may have been unwise but the drift was not…senior National party members have already said in the past couple of years that they would unquestioningly follow the USA wherever it went. There really can’t be any doubt that Brash would happily align New Zealand with a US foreign policy that in 2005, as London recently found out, is not a happy place to be.

Brash’s refusal to answer the question about New Zealand’s commitment to Iraq under his administration is simply gutless and his dismissal of the question as hypothetical and historic is appalling. I doubt if many Iraqi’s would agree it is all historic. Polling today suggests many NZers agree…

You have to ask yourself too, how many New Zealanders would be dead now if NZ had been under a Brash administration in 2003.

As an aside, I’ve also been wondering, based on current reporting standards, when the NZ Herald ceased to to be a newspaper and became a National party auxillary as it now plainly is…the obvious twists and anti-government bias I saw whilst back in NZ in July were so blatant they would make The Sun blush…

And finally, sticking with old fogies…check out Danny Barnes’ fine review of Danse Macabre at The Kings Arms last week, on Peter Mac’s site. I got to spin a tune or two before and after and had a ball…….

Extended Play 20 July..one off..on George FM

LCD Soundsystem-Disco Infiltrator (Francois K Infiltrated Vocal)-DFA-2005
George McRae-I Get Lifted (Tangoterge edit)-Supreme-2005
The Impressions-Fan The Fire-Chi-Sound-1981
???-Run Disco Run-Moxie-2005
Lil Louis & the World-Nice’n’ Slow (Supreme Re-edit)-Supreme-2005
Teenage DJ-I Was a Teenage DJ -DISCO-2005
Woolfy-Oh Missy-Rong-2005
The Others-Crying Underwater-White 7”-2005
Jah Wobble / The Edge / Holgar Czukay-Snakecharmer (FK Snake Dub)-Island-1981
Abe Duque & Acid Maria-Turn Down The Lights-White-2005
Kerri Chandler-Return 2 Acid-Large-2005
Maurice-This Is Acid-Trax-1989
Kraftwerk-Radioactivity (Francois K mix)-Capitol-1991
Plant Life-The Last Song (Chicken Lips dub)-Gut-2005
The Ragga Twins-Hooligan 69-SUAD-1990
Tomi D & Blake Baxter-Living in the City-Mix Media-2005
The Juan McLean-Titos Way (Lindstrom & Thomas mix)-DFA-2005
Jerome Sydenham-Stockholm Go Bang-Ibadan-2005
Kym Sims-Too Blind To See It (Slam Atlantis mix)-WEA-1991
Leon Huff-Tight Money-Philadelphia Int-1980

A Macabre Soul Musing

Damn, poor old Luther Vandross………..

Actually not that old of course. 54 years used to seem positively geriatric and completely in the unattainable future when I was a lad but now, for reasons that are becoming too obvious daily, it’s a sprightly young age that approaches in the now not too distant future. Its life, Jim, as we know it…it passes so quickly, far faster than we ever expect it to. I remember my mother telling me a couple of years back that, at seventy, she still felt eighteen….I’m damn sure I do and maybe that’s part of my problem….

So, to Luther….dead at 54. We all knew it was coming but it’s still sad as hell and a damn waste. Luther was bigger than life…any way you look at it, but beyond the girth and the physical presence came the voice, what he did with that voice, and way he changed the planet ever so slightly for the better. Smokey Robinson hailed Luther as one of the great voices, and coming from Smokey, in-arguably one the greatest vocalists ever (as I type the Miracles’ take on “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”, a favourite version of the song, has scarily started on the iPod), that is no mean praise….

I first became aware of Luther (or “Loofa” as the soul boys with their white socks and loafers used to chant in the London streets in the eighties) about 1981 when, my then flatmate, Murray Cammick (we shared a flat for three years between 1980 and 1983…just us, 10,000 records, a decade of NMEs, boxes of other magazines and a cat called Ned…no TV, it didn’t seem important) started playing records in the house that featured THAT voice…records first of all by a group called Change and then solo records driven by the tautest driving (Marcus Miller) basslines and layered, exquisite, backing vocals that sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before, of for that matter, since. I took tapes of this astounding music (and other things I “borrowed” from Mo, like early Sugarhill and Enjoy 12”s) on tour with me as manager of The Screaming Meemees, confusing the be-Jesus out of the crowds in places like Matamata (but not Whakatane where a young Roger Perry recalls hearing the music through the PA in 1982).

I had a swag of old Motown, James Brown, P-funk, Ch-lites and Philly singles and had been heavily exposed to Stax and disco, but Luther hit another nerve. And that nerve continued to be tweaked over the next decade. Common soul-boy purist wisdom holds that Luther’s best work was behind him by the mid eighties, by the time he released “Give Me the Reason” about 85. As with much perceived wisdom, this is complete elitist nonsense of course and is more about “I was into [insert artist] before the masses caught on, i.e. the artist became popular/ populist”, one of the driving principles of purist musical appreciation. Its true that the albums from the late eighties onwards became less rewarding but there were still tracks like the extraordinary Morales mix of “The Rush”; “Are You Using Me” with the Masters at Work from the late nineties (whose work in reviving so many timeless voices deserves greater recognition and is probably their greatest contribution to urban music since their golden, revolutionary, period ended a decade or so ago) and the lovely “Dance with my Father” from last year.

I was always a sucker for the third party stuff too…his voice soars out of his work with Chic and Sister Sledge and makes Bowie’s “Fascination” (a Vandross co-write, which was also recorded by Luther as “Funky Music” on one of his rare mid seventies Cotillion albums, which I guess will now appear on CD…it was Luther himself who blocked re-issue) the seminal post-Ziggy-white-boy-goes-plastic-soul performance it is. I’m also a big fan of his rendition of “Georgie Porgy” (which leaves the ugly original by the bloated overrated pomp rockers, Toto, in the dust) with Charme on RCA from about 1981. The two albums he recorded with Aretha, using his band, and co-producer Marcus Miller (a crucial part of “Luther Vandross-the sound”) in the mid eighties are her best work (and only worthy work to be honest…she is notoriously difficult to work with if legend is to be believed ) since the mid seventies. Check out the semi-duet “Love me Right” if you have any doubt…especially good on the 12” mix.

Luther also made it respectable for tough guys to like ballads again in a post punk world. Along with the likes of Alexander O’Neal (now, maybe MAW can put Alex in the studio again…) and Lillo Thomas, Vandross let hardened white kids, having cut their musical teeth on the likes of The Gang of Four, The Clash and PIL, listen to syrupy songs about love and passion without grimacing or blaming their girlfriends. Who said boys don’t cry?

And probably more importantly, from an Auckland perspective, Luther was the soundtrack to a minor inner city revolution of sorts. In the mid eighties the first generation of New Zealand born Polynesian kids to come from the mass immigration of their parents in the sixties came of age and many of them started coming to the new generation of clubs in the city. They had links to via their families to American Samoa and Los Angeles and the nu-soul that was becoming pervasive amongst communities there. More than anyone else, Luther was their man and these kids and their sound drove clubland. From about 84 onwards Luther Vandross dominated the dancefloors and bars of High Street, Fort Street and Albert Street as these sophisticated, stylish kids from South and West Auckland came to town.

Yep, as much as anyone, Luther was the sound of inner urban Auckland and it’s largely forgotten twenty years on. History is often written by press releases, and skewered by a lazy media, and personal agendas; and sometimes it needs to be re-written somewhat to reflect a more accurate past. Which is why it’s important to make a fuss about the re-union of Danse Macabre at the Kings Arms on July 22.

Generally, I’m not one to get too excited about re-unions, I avoided the Blam Blam Blam reunion a year or two back despite my ties to the band (although I saw them finally about two months ago and, yeah, it was okay) and similarly was not inclined to see the Straightjackets although I’m a Carter fan…I guess I’d rather see his new band and listen to his old records from time to time. But the history of the early eighties has been largely re-written by the overwhelming legacy of Flying Nun and is largely inaccurate. There is no doubt that Roger’s label had a small presence but it wasn’t dominant in the Queen City during that period (and not really until the mid to late eighties when bands like Children’s Hour and the Headless Chooks made a statement….the early stuff sounded interesting but parochial….the South Island band that really mattered in Auckland then was The Gordons who were not a Flying Nun act as such), that perception comes from record companies and people who weren’t there. I suppose there may be an element of sour grapes but many of the musicians who battled away in the post punk period in Auckland maybe feel that something has slipped past.

And there are also people who maybe haven’t had the recognition they are due. In particular I’m thinking of Trevor Reekie whose releases and production work for, firstly Terry Condon’s Stun label, and, more importantly, Glyn Tucker’s Reaction label and then his own Pagan Records were crucial and it’s fair to say that no-one has contributed more or worked at the creative cutting edge than Trevor over the past twenty five years. From the groundbreaking eighties electronica, to the series of quirky pop records later that decade, to his intuitive signings in the nineties & more recently (like Dub Asylum & Pluto) and his own work with Trip, well…hopefully you get the picture. Oh…and along the way he also discovered Bic Runga, Greg Johnson and The Strawpeople amongst others….

Which brings us back to Danse Macabre. Signed to Reaction and produced by Trevor, they were fairly much at the forefront of the post punk movement in Auckland. If AK79 was about the punk thing in Auckland (and it was more a post script to a movement which had more or less finished by late 79, than a signpost of where it was at…punk was 1977 to late 79 and the delineation was fairly clear at the time and is nowhere clearer than Nigel Russell’s move from The Spelling Mistakes, a Zwines punk act, to Danse Macabre, who could NEVER have played at Zwines), then the swag of indie releases from mid 1980 that began with The Features “City Scenes” showed us the way forward. The two EPs (now on CD) from Danse Macabre (Russell, Roddy Carlson, Ralph Crump and Wes Prince), like much of the music from that time may have worn their influences fairly squarely but added something else that could only have come from Auckland…it has a flavour and its pleasing to see how well much of this stuff has held up.

Nigel and Trevor took this places later with the foolishly underrated Car Crash Set (“Imagination” is still one of the great NZ singles of the 80s and their other releases are close), but Danse Macabre are indicative of a time and place that’s now long gone but shouldn’t be forgotten.