Plastic world.
Kool Keith once asked “is the world made of plastic?” but as far as I can work out the world’s made of shit these days, and I’m sorry to be so crass but for those in the know London’s clubland is facing very sorry days to say the least.
It was announced at the weekend that the East London institution that is Plastic People is facing possible imminent closure at the hands of Hackney’s police force who wish to revoke PP’s license to prevent “public nuisance” and “crime and disorder”.
I could be completely mistaken and maybe there’s something more sinister at play here but in a town littered with what seems like an endless array of soulless drinking dens frequented by shit-faced city-boys and “going up London Gary” weekenders, why would one of the few venues dedicated to the cause of pushing new music face closure?
Remember The Spitz? Only a few years back you could have been one of a handful of people watching anything from outsider punk rock to Restiform Bodies wrestling both nasty hangovers and their Gameboys live on stage but sadly not any more because now Spitalfields, thanks to a mediocre makeover, is now a lifeless sack of nothing out of the ordinary. Has anyone noticed there’s now a tex-mex restaurant bankrolled by depressing hen night’s on Brick Lane? What’s really happening to this part of town?
Just to set some records straight this isn’t self centred gushing, I’m by no means bias, and will be the first to admit that Plastic People could often attract a cliquey crowd who to quote a nameless patron “would show up to the opening of an envelope” but I’d hardly associate rowdiness with the place or the people. Anyone that’s been to CDR can vouch for a crowd gathered together to explore the wonders of music so fresh it might have come off the mixing desk barely an hour before it was aired, in fact It’d be hard to name an event held there in the past decade which wasn’t solely about the music. So put simply, what on earth are the Met thinking?
Have the slew of strip clubs been issued with such an order? What about that BNP pub up Hackney Road? There are so many places which clearly contribute to the piss and vomit stained pavements of shitty Shoreditch that pointing the finger at the one place which doubtfully contributes to the local stench seems downright ludicrous.
As I say though maybe I’m gravely mistaken and there’s something we don’t know going on behind the scenes, or maybe the council for some mad reason want a Walkabout in it’s place, either way if you give a damn about one of the last bastions of creative clubland then get involved over on facebook.
On a personal level I’ve enjoyed many a night there from Big Dada’s Gosh! nights to testing out tracks on their amazing rig at CDR and hope this wont spell the last of these People and their fantastic Plastic.
Snow joke, I tells ya…
Well, we aren’t going to lie: after the rather damp squib of a close to 2009 with me off sick for the last two shows of the year, we were all pumped up and ready for our EXPLOSIVE* return to the airwaves tonight.
And then it snowed.
A lot.
And, true to British form, the world ground to a halt.
So sadly tonight’s show is cancelled, much to our frustration. Back in the Days Of Yore™, in the event of a power outage, a band would spontaneously jam in the dark, determined to entertain the fans. Well, with the lights going out on our show this evening Tom has stepped forward with his own busking skills for your delectation… if by “busking” we mean “rare, unreleased remix with an uncannily coincidental title given the snowy weather”.
This is actually (according to Tom) his first reggae production as Stoneleigh Mountain Rockers, dating back to about 2005. While the vocal version saw the light of day, this one did not. So, re-light your pipe, pinch up your twills and sit down to enjoy a fine slice of our Wrongest one in action…
Click here to download Jay Bharadia – Snowy Day (Wrongtom SMR Dub)
We will be back next week on pain of death with our first show of 2010. Until then, Tom will be out back making a snowman effigy of Kid Creole and I shall be using this as an excuse to drink brandy and muse on my Hendrix bootleg collection. See you on the other side people!
*note by “explosive” we mean “reasonably energetic”
Be Black, Be Loose.
For the final installment of my sex-blog trilogy I’ve decided to pen a few words about my favourite film with the usual rambling and eventual link to the soundtrack, hopefully qualifying it as relevant to a music blog…
Hi, Mom! is not a porno, though someone sought to market it as one with misleading alternative titles such as Blue Manhattan and Confessions Of A Peeping John, however the John in question is simply trying his luck in the porn industry. Hi, Mom! is in fact a satire, made in 1969 by Brian DePalma as a standalone sequel to his previous Greetings which featured an unknown actor by the name of Bob DeNiro exploring what he dubs ‘peep art’ before getting drafted into the Vietnam war.
Hi, Mom! follows up with John (Bob) returning to NYC trying to pick up the pieces of his post war life. The parallels with Taxi Driver end there as he sells his peep art idea to a porn baron who quickly pulls the plug on the project leaving Bob roaming the streets til he stumbles upon a group of black activists staging an off-Broadway play called Be Black Baby.
Funk & soul fans may have an idea of where I’m going with this as Grady Tate recorded a song called Be Black Baby back in ‘69, sampled by the likes of Main Source and Big Daddy Kane for the spotters amongst you. What you may not know is Tate made the track for Hi, Mom! specifically to accompany various sequences revolving around the militant theatre group as they attempt to spread their Black Power message to the middle class population of Greenwich Village…
A word of warning: the following sequences contain acts of violence which some may find upsetting, if you are of a delicate temperament or you don’t get jokes then I’d advise you go straight to the 4th video and simply listen to the Grady Tate track in full.
Be Black Baby Part 1
Be Black Baby Part 2
With friends like Shaun’s, who needs enemas?
I’ve been in two minds about posting this because of the subject matter but bad taste outweighed good sense so here it is. I wont mince my words here, I’m talking about porn and not simply porn but hardcore porn, though this isn’t any old grunting stag movie, no, Waterpower is arguably a masterpiece, or maybe an accidental artistic anomaly in a field of filth.
Though this entry isn’t strictly about the film it’s best that I give you a brief run down on the unsettling subject matter. Waterpower also often goes by the high concept title The Enema Bandit, and if we’re gonna be reductionist about this, it is about a bandit that applies enemas but, and this is a big BUT with no pun intended I assure you, this is so much more than a marginalised piece of exploitation.
The short version of the story goes -- Mafia boss calls up director to make speciality porn film, mafia boss wants nothing more to do with the project, director seizes opportunity to make what he wants assuming no one funding the film would watch it and sets about making the sex industry’s answer to Taxi Driver. Of course there’s much more to it than that and I urge you to read director Shaun Costello’s personal account which gives the film the further unique accolade of being possibly the only picture to have a behind the scenes explanation in place of a plot on IMDB.com.
You might be wondering why I’m sharing this or worse still why I even came to be watching such a monstrosity, and for the latter you can blame the unlikely duo of Jonathan Ross and my Mum -- Ross for including a chapter on the film in his Incredibly Strange Film Book, and my mum for buying me the book in the first place. Setting about searching for The Enema Bandit (Ross failed to mention it was also known as Waterpower) led me to a fair few unsavoury encounters and raised more eyebrows than the time I went on the hunt around NYC for Sexual Harassment. Finally I came across a guy who discreetly dubbed me a fuzzy VHS copy which I swiftly slipped home with and was soon staring at in abject horror.
So here’s why I’m telling you about it (aside the fact it’s a must for those of you that like bizarre films). While I was picking tracks for the show last week I wondered if I could track down Waterpower’s soundtrack. Alas it’s rare that a hardcore flick has an official OST and I gather much of this one was culled from other films including Thompson’s Cape Fear and of course Taxi Driver but amongst the rubber piping and hammocked between hookie motifs is a wealth of bizarre synth work and ambient noise akin to the Eno output of the time. There now follows the only clip I could find online which is both very short and not remotely filthy…
See what I mean about the soundtrack? If anyone reading knows anything more about it please get in touch as I would love to listen without having to wade through flushed bowels and ham acting (as appealing as that obviously might sound).
I couldn’t leave it at that though as whilst having a scout about for more info, I stumbled upon this clip from the equally Ronseal named New Wave Hookers which stars the Enema Bandit himself Jamie Gillis dressed like Darby Crash if he shopped in the Camden branch of Argos. I warn you, this one gets a bit sweary but I gather if you’re still reading, colourful language will be the last thing to phase you.
Sensual Selection.
Before I made my selections for the sexed up edition of last week’s show I fired up twitter and posed the simple question, “what are your sexiest records?” Surprisingly bar a brace of ladies, it was the boys that got busy with the love talk with a suitable agglomeration of acid house, soulful slow jams and even some Nine Inch Nails making the shortlist.
Obviously the show degenerated into the expected innuendo, and the squeaky bed/conga combo of Erotica or the highly dubious “Rape Sequence” from Emmanuelle drifted way off the actual sexy mark into the absurd, and in the latter case, downright unpleasant. The plan was to battle the soft porn of True Blood which we’re currently in a clinch with over the 10pm time slot, subtlety and a soft touch weren’t on the agenda, so now to make amends I’ve chosen the Crème de la Crème of what Dan The Automator charmingly described as “music to make love to your old lady by”.
Donna Summer “Love To Love You Baby”
The sound-bed to our show and no doubt the soundtrack to many an illicit act since it graced the airwaves for the first time back in 1975, amazingly this almost wasn’t a Donna Summer release as she was reluctant to traverse the overtly sexual route which Moroder wanted to take her down (i’ll forgive you if you suddenly remember the “I’ll tell your mum you went down Sexy Road” joke). Fortunately Summer conceded and took to the mic channeling the spirit of Marilyn Monroe caught in the throws of passion resulting in an astounding 23 orgasms throughout the 17 minutes of the full length version.
Lil Louis “French Kiss”
Like the degenerate little sister of Summer, French Kiss looked back at Love To Love you Baby and I Feel Love and took everything which was perfect for both upright and horizontal pass times and put them together for what is arguably still some of the sleaziest of dancefloor action. I played this out only the other day and the venue manager suggested people weren’t ready for that kind of music, you’d hope after more than two decades of it being on wax that they were, personally I’d like to think that deep down, the world has been ready and waiting for this record for years before the phonogram, discoteques or even dry humping in public was invented.
Al Green “Simply Beautiful”
As if I would have left out the reverend; it was actually former Brownswood bubbler Orsii that reminded me of this beauty of a track but it’d be hard to single out one particular song from I’m Still In Love With You. I wouldn’t be shocked to discover that more kids were conceived in 1972 than any other year simply because of this LP. Many would argue that Marvin out-sexed the rev with Sexual Healing but everything about this record oozes unbridled passion, as opposed to the well matured cheese of Gaye’s titillating tune.
There would’ve been 5 videos here but alas thanks to Prince’s war with youtube the only version of When 2 R In Love is a shaky shot of a Dansette playing a scratchy copy of Lovesexy, and the few Majesticons tracks which appear pon “the tube” don’t include the thrusting computer funk of Prom Party. I’d also considered picking a couple of my favourite slow jams but let’s face it, they’re all pretty silly.
Addendum:
For some reason I couldn’t find this when I looked on youtube before but it just popped up in the search function so without further ado…
Larry Young’s Fuel “Turn Off The Lights”
Everything about this record can be construed as sexy -- the title alone says it all but then there’s the moans and yelps, the slow pounding beat, even the name of the band if we can get a bit nudge-nudge wink-wink for a moment, and don’t make me say something about Larry Young knowing his way round an organ (somebody stop me). Seriously though this track is as stunning as it is dirty, the synth work is bordering on barmy, like the drunken dirty auntie of Add N To X’s Metal Fingers In My Body slow dancing with granddad George Clinton.
Jah Jah Children In Need.
I’ve just been scouring the pages of everything from The Rough Guide To Reggae to Dick Hebdidge’s Cut’n'Mix because after gushing on last week’s show about Wogan being the 1st DJ to grace the BBC airwaves with the JA sound, I couldn’t find the info anywhere and was ready to resign myself to the possibility I may have even dreamed the whole thing.
Fortunately I took a 2nd glance at the Trojan story and sure enough hiding amid a section on string arranger and producer Clive Crawley is this episode…
Crawley’s background had been in sales, and then record promotion for B&C and Trojan Records. ‘I got into the music business as a result of a £10 bet funnily enough,’ he recalls. ‘I was in a pub one night having a drink with Lee Gopthal and I asked him how business was. He had some [Musicland} retail shops as well as the record company, and he said the record shops were doing great but the record company was a bit slow. So I asked him "Why is that?" and he said "Well we're not getting exposure on the records."
"What do you mean" I asked.
"Well" he said "We send them to the BBC but they never play them."
"What do you mean 'send them'?"
"We post them."
"No that's not the way to do it, I don't know anything about it but would imagine they call that plugging."
"Yeah I suppose they do," said Lee "but I couldn't do that." So I said "Well I bloody well could!" So I had a bet with him. I bet £10 I could get his record played on the radio.
'The next one he had coming out which was a song called 'Kansas City', sung by Joya Landis. I went down and played the record but thought "This is going to be tricky", 'cos although it was a good record, it wasn't really a radio record, more a dancing record. But I went home and got a copy of the Radio Times - I've a £10 bet on this, this was half a week's wages, you know? So I go off down to the BBC, having looked up the names of these record shows, and the very first play I got was by a guy called Ian Fenner, who produced a show called Late Night Extra, which was hosted by Terry Wogan.
This was in 1968 and it went on every night of the week Monday to Friday from 10 o'clock to midnight. And he's the first guy I go and see, this guy Fenner, and I gave him a lot of nonsense, you know, told him a few stories, a few dirty jokes, whatever and eventually he said, "Are you going to play me something else?" I said yeah and he said, "What have you got?"
"Well It's a new kind of music from the West Indies called Reggae, and if you put it between Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, it might sound half tidy." 'He quite liked that, "I'll play it wednesday night, before the 10:30 news," he said. I thought "Christ this is easy!"
So anyway, Wednesday night comes along and I'm sitting indoors with the news at 10 on, transistor down one side of the armchair, and sure enough at about 10:25 Wogan comes on and says "Now we've got a new kind of music from the West Indies called Reggae, and here to sing 'Kansas city is Joya Landis."
'Well! You can imagine I leaped out of my chair and the following day I was down there [at Trojan] collecting my tenner. And the [Lee Gopthal] said, “Clive, why don’t you carry on doing this? I’ll give you a fiver for every play you get.” And that was the start of my career. That led to 30 years in the record business.’
Taken from Young Gifted and Black (the Trojan Records Story) by Michael De Koningh & Lawrence Cane-Honeysett.
When will Hip Hop hurry up and diet?
By now you’ve probably been deeply shocked by Simon Reynolds’ latest article, though you’ve only got a couple of paragraphs in, paragraphs which let’s be honest, you didn’t really take on board because you were busy seething at the headline, not to mention still nursing your violently jerked knee from yesterday’s Speech Debelle debacle.
Maybe as I type you’re plotting some kind of summit to prove that Hip Hop is, as we all of course know, alive and well, though possibly living somewhere out in Buckinghamshire just up the road from the guy at Helly Hansen who you’re counting on sponsoring the event.
I wont be there unfortunately, I’ll be at home watching a boxset of The Wire from front to back with the same, all be it more robust lads who were with me when I bought my first Public Enemy LP from Our Price in Epsom. Yeah we keep it mad real, now pass me another burrito please Terry.
So when did we get fat, and what’s wrong with being fat anyway? Nothing obviously, just ask Fat Joe, Maseo from De La or most of the Boo Yaa Tribe or particularly Mr Marcel Theo Hall…
I was a bad younger brother.
The blogs are coming in thick & fast with the sad news of Derek B’s death -- a heart attack at the still tender age of 44 is the saddest part but rather than go into an ill-researched break down of the man’s career i just wanted to share an anecdote with a nod to the bad young brother.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned on the show a fair few times that being the youngest in the family I inevitably wound up being the weird kid in school who was more into my bother’s/sister’s records than the pop of the time but there was a moment back in ‘88 when a young Derek Boland from Bow, flirted with the charts with his single “Bad Young Brother”. Suddenly there was this conflict of misguided adolescent will verses ‘wait a minute, there’s a tough tune on the Capital Chart show’.
Now picture about 30 kids on a musty coach heading out to the Kent countryside for an overnight school sojourn. I hadn’t yet heard the said single but I had come armed with a muffled tape of By All means Necessary and Memory of a Man & His Music. A kid called Michael Smith asked for a listen and passed me his own brick-like walkmen and within seconds I was “finger poppin to the sound of the drum and bass that kicks…”
Sadly what with the temperamental and almost bi-polar behaviour of the average UK Hip Hop fan I don’t think Derek was taken too seriously as an MC once his LP dropped, at least amongst school kids anyway but he’d cemented a love for UK rap with me none the less as the next couple of years were all about Overlord X, Merlin, London Posse etc etc not to mention some of the amazing records released on Music Of Life where Derek was effectively the A&R.
Anyway, back to the coach and we’d ditched the walkmans, I say I wasn’t into pop but there were still those breakthrough moments in the charts like the one which led to a huddle of teenagers tormenting a weary driver with what must have seemed like a never ending rendition of Walk The Dinosaur by Was Not Was. Even now I can imagine the sheer hell of being forced to endure an ill-ventilated bus full of smelly kids chanting “BOOM BOOM ACKALACKALACKA BOOM”, maybe the poor driver still wakes up in a cold sweat with our squeaky voices echoing through his frazzled brain, hands shaking at the thought of even touching a steering wheel again.
So why am I sharing this almost unrelated odyssey? Well…
Tony McDermott wins the world cup…
I knew there was something fishy about the Scritti Politi track that Trick picked out for show 54. Ranking Ann’s style sounded too measured for this to be a flash in the pan pop-reggae cash-in, and sure enough after a quick leaf through the shelves it turned out Ann was part of Mad Professor’s Ariwa posse, the south London collective who have been pushing the boundaries of dub, dancehall and lovers rock for near on 3 decades.
There’s always been something which sets British reggae aside from it’s Caribbean counterparts, maybe it’s the weather; a drizzly autumn afternoon in any UK inner city is pretty much the antithesis of that old sun-drenched reggae myth. And with our temperate climate comes a tumultuous sense of humour, one captured by Greensleeves in-house designer Tony McDermott who’s caricatures remain as much a part of the UK reggae idiom as Janet Kay’s silly games or David Hinds’ hair.
I’ll spare you any more spiel and leave you to marvel at some of my favourite McDermott covers…
A Potential Success Story.
Another day another death; it looks like I’m gonna remember 2009 as the year that killed off my childhood. For those that missed it we lost Mr Magic yesterday, a Hip Hop institution who’s been immortalized in wax for almost as long as rap music, with his debut record hitting the shelves barely months after “King Tim III” and “Rappers Delight”.
I’d be under rightful scrutiny if I claimed I was listening to Magic’s Message at the time, nor would I make out that I was somehow tuning into The Rap Attack radio show which he started in ‘83 on New York’s WBLS-FM. I actually don’t think I even knew who he was until well into the 90’s when I heard records like the epic disco rap of “Potential” and the heavily sampled “Rappin With Mr Magic”. It was around this time I read an interview with KRS One pinpointing Mr Magic as the accidental instigator of the short lived but meme inducing Bridge Wars -- the Bronx vs Queens battle sparked by KRS dismantling MC Shan’s “The Bridge” and rebuilding it across the East River as “South Bronx”.
My 1st bridge wars purchase was “The Bridge Is Over” by BDP, with it’s unbridled disrobing of Roxanne Shante and further attacks on Shan & Marley Marl, it’s now bewildering to think that a guy from Connecticut started the whole thing. Back tracking a couple of years, BDP started life as The Celebrity Three then quickly became 12:41, it was in this incarnation that KRS went to see Mr Magic in the hope of some recognition for his Mantronix endorsed “$uccess Is The Word” which Magic instantly wrote off as wack. With Magic championing his assistant Marley Marl’s Juice Crew, a disgruntled KRS went straight home and penned South Bronx, dissecting and deriding the crew that up until that day he’d supposedly wanted to be a part of, and the rest is career affirming (and in some cases career destroying) history.
I’d considered compiling a bunch of youtube links to the original bridge battles but alas they’re not all up there, obviously I could have focussed on Mr Magic’s back catalog but you could always head over to Stones Throw and pick up their excellent The Third Unheard LP which features hard to find early tracks from Mr Magic and his Connecticut cohorts. In the meantime, what’s the word..?
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