Enlightenment! - #3

We’ve mentioned how Lionel Bart’s ... Isn’t This Where We Came In? was the inspiration for Enlightenment! -the current edition of YHO which can be downloaded here. Among the many musicians that played on that remarkable record were Danny Thompson and Harold McNair, who emerged as heroes of Rob Young’s Electric Eden, one of the few books on music that doesn’t goad the reader into smashing up furniture. Thompson and McNair have well established connections to Bart’s musical director John Cameron that flow from their pioneering work together on Donovan’s Sunshine Superman. It would be fascinating to map the recordings these musicians were involved in between, say, 1966 and 1972 to track the permutations in which they appeared among the credits. As a general rule, though, you can’t really go wrong if any one of the above are featured.
Those familiar with the YHO ethos will be aware how the project thrives on connections, particular where links are repeated and form a chain. And this works particularly well when it doesn’t matter where you start to trace the patterns. So, for example, Harold McNair and John Cameron worked together on the incredibly beautiful soundtrack for Ken Loach’s film adaptation of Kes. Cameron had worked together with Loach on his first screenplay, Poor Cow, which featured songs by Donovan. Cameron and McNair had already been working with Donovan. The screenplay for Poor Cow was written by Nell Dunn, drawing on her own novel. Loach and Dunn had worked together previously on the TV drama Up The Junction, which again drew on the original book by Nell.
The ‘revolution’ that took place at prime viewing times on Britain’s TV screens, with occasional ‘significant’ new works of drama by young writers tackling contentious issues, is one of the recurring themes in Enlightenment! In addition to Ken Loach and Nell Dunn, other important figures in the text are John McGrath and Alun Owen. Given the way YHO works, it is perhaps not too surprising that it is easy to establish key connections between Lionel Bart and both McGrath and Owen. But can links be made between either McGrath and Owen and where we came in? Of course! Alun Owen appeared briefly in Joseph Losey’s The Servant (having earlier written the screenplay for The Criminal), as did Davy Graham who recorded with both Danny Thompson and Harold McNair. You see it’s easy ...

Enlightenment! - #2

Enlightenment! is the latest issue of Your Heart Out, and it can be downloaded for free here. Enlightenment! starts with skiffle. “Skiffle swept Britain, not so much as a thing to be consumed but as a thing to do. Skiffle groups sprang up like mushrooms, & through them young people began to discover for themselves the roots of Rock music in the Blues & in collective playing. It was the first uniquely British pop movement. Apart from its simplicity & the Folk authority of the music itself, the vital aspect of Skiffle was that you needed very little musical skill & almost no money to play it. The point was that it sounded good quickly, required no study & developed the ‘ear’. It called for imagination rather than conventional skill or conventional instruments - & anyone could do it. Thousands of young people did.” That’s part of what Chris Cutler wrote about the skiffle boom in his book File Under Popular. It’s a fascinating read, and includes excellent stuff on Phil Ochs and Sun Ra. The writings of John Pilgrim on the secret Soho of the 1950s which are scattered around a variety of publications, proved to be one of the chief inspirations behind Enlightenment! He shed light of lives, places and events that are often overlooked in official versions. He was also for a while the washboard player with The Vipers, notorious skifflers, the first group to play at The Two I’s, and so on. Echoing some of the sentiments expressed by Chris Cutler, there certainly seems something very punk rock about The Vipers’ approach and their influences seem to have been spectacularly eclectic. Even with the guiding hand of George Martin at the controls there seems to have been something reassuringly rough about The Vipers. And given the course of events, The Vipers’ choice of Liverpool folk song Maggie May seems strangely prescient. Pilgrim and others put Lionel Bart right at the heart of the skiffle boom, holding court at south London boho hangout The Yellow Door where with his songwriting partner Mike Pratt he met merchant seaman Tommy Hicks. The rest is a familiar story – the story of Tommy Steele, Britain’s first rock ‘n’ roll star. But hopefully reading Enlightenment! you will realise stories are not always as simple as they seem. This seems, therefore, a very apt choice from 1957 ...

Enlightenment! - #1

Enlightenment! is the latest issue of Your Heart Out, and it can be downloaded for free here. The cover star is Lionel Bart who was very much the inspiration for this new adventure. To be specific, it was the reissue by Vocalion of Lionel’s 1968 set ... Isn’t This Where We Came In? That proved to be the catalyst for this expedition. This extraordinary record actually, for once, lived up to my wildest dreams. Bearing in mind this LP would have been released around the same time as the musical of Lionel’s Oliver! it really is a work of a very vivid imagination. It was released on Deram, home of so much great psychedelic pop and progressive jazz, and John Cameron did the orchestrations so you know it would have to be something special. I find it one of the strangest, most moving, most inspiring records ever. Many of the best players from the progressive jazz scene are on there, and no expense could have been spared in its creation. It could be a work of absolute folly, but it makes a special sort of sense and tells a very specific story about watching a film of your life. Lionel was obviously very much inspired by the more adventurous pop music of the day, and creates something as outlandish as any of the big groups ever did. Ironically just as some contemporary groups like the Beatles, Small Faces, Kinks were using elements of the Music Hall tradition in their recordings, Lionel was approaching the psychedelic era from the other direction. One of the recurring themes in this edition of Your Heart Out is how, say, pre-r’n’r influences were rather more mixed up in some pop music quarters than has been recognised, and that is rather reflected in this astonishing Lionel Bart record. There is a bit of everything therein, and it works. It is, therefore, a great jumping-off point for the adventure that is Enlightenment! This is the single selected from ... Isn’t This Where We Came In? It’s but one piece in the jigsaw, and hardly a typical one, but it’s a wonderful place to start:

Enlightenment!

Enlightenment! is the latest issue of Your Heart Out, and it can be downloaded for free here. Save it, share it, print it, read it, discuss it. What's it all about? Jazz. Folk. Calypso. Music Hall. Skiffle. Blues. Ballads. Agit Prop. Highlife. Lowlifes. Beatniks. Modernists. Anarchists. Communists. Chancers. Charmers. Tormented Thinkers. Theatre Revolutionaries. Pop Pioneers. Cockney Visionaries . Soho Adventurers. You could say Enlightenment! is a work of assemblage. It draws together strands of history that overlap, intersect and get pleasantly tangled up. It links stories from detailed works of research that tend to focus on specific areas. It’s fun sometimes to take things apart and put them together in different ways. In other words, Enlightenment! is a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces may not necessarily all belong to the same box, but the picture they form will make a special sort of sense.

Up The Revolution - Spring Selection

Factory Star - Enter Castle Perilous (Occultation)

The figure stands, a silhouette in the twilight, looking up at the castle and the garish glare of its artificial lights, listening to the sounds of distant revelries. As the rain falls, he kneels and lets a fistful of earth slowly sift through his fingers, head bowed as if in prayer.
After a few minutes, he stands and walks to the advertising hoarding next to the security gate of the exclusive heritage theme park which now stands where he once played among the wild flowers. He takes up his axe ...
Slash! Slash! Slash!
The guitarist’s left hand flails away as he leans into the microphone, neck muscles taut, and roars, seemingly summoning up hidden reserves of resentment, pent-up rage, and ancient wisdom.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The bell tolls, the preacher returns to the pulpit for the sermon of his life, to speak out against the philistines behind the gates, to speak up for the indigent and indignant.
“This is a warning to you all ...”
There are precedents, naturally, but the sounds are unsurpassed. The cat scratch guitar and nor’ westerly wail can only belong to Martin Bramah, once of the Blue Orchids, and now fronting Factory Star who release the invigorating Enter Castle Perilous on Occultation Records.
“This is the story of the blow not yet smitten ...”
Disgust and desperation summon up inspiration. The Factory Star set is simply astonishing. For anyone sentimental about futures and pasts, there is plenty to appeal (ah! that organ sound), but that doesn’t even hint at the bile and beauty therein. What is it with these contrary quintogenerians?
“This is the story of the foe not yet beaten ...”
30 years ago Martin Bramah with the Blue Orchids recorded Work, a life-changing song that caught a certain spirit of dissent, and had many identifying with the imagery of gold salmon swimming against the tide of life. The song has the mordant Martin chanting the one word ‘WORK’ until it mutates into something else altogether less recognisable. The same spirit fuels Enter Castle Perilous. If the Blue Orchids stuck out like a bold beacon of sanity amid the madness of Thatcherism and enterprise culture, then Factory Star are even more against the flow ...
There is a sense of urgency to the Factory Star set. It was recorded in haste. And the ‘live’ feel suits the spirit of the occasion. It’s odd though how the hasty recording is a talking point. New technology is supposed to make things easier. But industry processes make things more convoluted and lifeless than they need be. And then the money men scratch their heads and worry about the cost of living. Take any great 50-year-old jazz recording, and it will have been recorded in a space of a few days. I seem to recall I first came across the name of Sun Ra in a Blue Orchids feature by Dave McCullough in Sounds.
There was always something positively ancient about the Blue Orchids, drawing on folk melodies and pagan imagery when it really wasn’t the thing to do. At their most intimate and introspective they conjured up classics like The Long Night Out. And that mood is captured again by Martin on the achingly beautiful When Sleep Won’t Come, from the new Factory Star record. Oh it’s such a lovely song, an adult lullaby on the eve of a decisive battle.
There is a sense of the combative on the Factory Star record. It is easy to conjure up images of John Ball standing among the ranks, rallying the troops with a spirited sermon. The Factory Star record is very much in the English Radical Tradition, but there is a sense of mischief too. The obvious relish with which Martin toys with the double entendres in The Fall of Great Britain, like ‘antediluvian nemesis’ and the ‘unreliable historian’, will have listeners ascribing all sorts of meanings: “I say Dave wasn’t the first Blue Orchids single The Flood?”. But that’s a distraction. This feels like the sort of record we need in times like these. Get yours at www.occultation.co.uk

Audio Mobility - Cassette Snapshots #4

Some people don’t listen to music. They don’t need it in their lives. It’s an idea that’s hard to understand if much of your life revolves around music. Nevertheless the people who don’t listen to music seem to get by. I used to know someone who only listened to audiobooks. They had to spend a lot of time driving. And they would play tapes in their car, and all the tapes they played were audiobooks. They found the tapes relaxing. The voices helped them concentrate on the road, and proved to be good company. I rather liked that idea. I actually envied that simplistic approach to listening.
I’ve never actually seen sales or circulation figures for audiobooks in cassette formats. For the blind and partially sighted they must be (or have been) a godsend. I assume tapes have been replaced by CDs or downloads to a large extent. But you do still see a lot of audiobooks on tape around. Charity shops, for example, tend to charge considerably more for an audiobook set of tapes than for a music one. And while the idea of sitting listening to an audiobook appeals, nearly all the tapes I see are Agatha Christie mysteries or comedy classics.
I only have the one audiobook on cassette. Or to be more precise I only have one cassette of an audiobook. It’s parts 3 & 4 of Allen Ginsberg reading Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, recorded in 1991 by Audio Literature. I found it in a charity shop. I have no idea about what happened to the first tape in the set. I have never tried too hard to find the missing half either. I rather like the incompleteness.
I love the one audiobook I have. I think Ginsberg is brilliant at reading Jack’s book aloud. He rattles through it at a rate of knots, but you can tell he’s thoroughly enjoying it. I can listen to this cassette and feel genuinely relaxed. It forms a fantastic background noise. It’s good company to have around you. I have no massive flag to fly for Ginsberg, nor a particular torch to burn for Kerouac. I haven’t read The Dharma Bums for 25-odd years. I don’t know if I’d enjoy it these days if I did. I have just realized, however, I am the same age Jack was when he died.
Listening to Ginsberg romping through The Dharma Bums I recall my reaction when I read the book for the first time. There were certain sentences that leap out and grab you. Ones you remember forever, or have to write down. I guess Morrissey felt the same way when he borrowed the “pretty girls make graves” line. One that sticks in my mind is where Jack is walking through deserted streets of an evening, aware of all the families sitting in their living rooms watching TV, and he sadly acknowledges that at least they’re not doing anyone any harm. Jack was capable of moments of great insight and compassion, and that more than all the holy goof nonsense was why I loved his work as a kid.
Only recently online I came across an Allen Ginsberg Village Voice review of The Dharma Bums from November 1958 where his description of the book goes a long way to explaining why over 30-years on he clearly had such a ball recording it: “Spontaneous Bop Prosody, a nickname one might give to this kind of writing--that is to say, read aloud and notice how the motion of the sentence corresponds to the motion of actual excited talk. It takes enormous art (being a genius and writing a lot) to get to that point in prose. (And trusting God.) Bop because, partly, in listening to the new improvisatory freedoms of progressive musicians, one develops an ear for one's own actual sounds. One does not force them into the old rhythm. Unless one wishes to protect one's old emotions by falsifying the new ones and making them fit the forms of the old...” There is a strong spiritual, specifically Buddhist, core to The Dharma Bums, but it’s a sad book too in many ways. As Ginsberg said back in ’58, Jack was “weary of the world and prose.” You sense that’s why Jack’s summer job as a look-out up on Desolation Peak was so important to him, in terms of the challenge of being so alone for a couple of months. Thankfully I have that part of the book on the tape. As for Ginsberg himself, there are again certain lines that mean a lot. The one where he asks America why are its libraries filled with tears is one of the greatest things ever written. And I willingly acknowledge Ginsberg was there at so many important moments in history. It’s interesting what people choose as a Ginsberg 'pop' moment to identify with. For me, it would be where Tav Falco appends the opening lines of Howl! to his version of Leadbelly’s Bourgeois Blues. Or where Ginsberg adds vocals to The Clash’s Ghetto Defendant.
There is a photo of Ginsberg with Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, taken shortly after Ghetto Defendant was recorded. I think it’s an astonishingly beautiful thing.
I guess you could argue The Clash are rather like Kerouac and Ginsberg. They will always polarise opinion. They will always provoke strong emotions for and against. I was reading a piece recently relating indirectly to the Combat Rock-era, where the well-connected writer oh-so-boldly adopts a stance that could be interpreted as: “Oh I don’t like The Clash as they embody the ‘long live rock ‘n’ roll’ last-gang-in-town macho mythology”. But even a casual listen to Combat Rock, and in particular the second side, reveals surely a strange, haunted, vulnerable, adventurous set of songs which defy categorization? It was, after all, merely a couple of years from Combat Rock to The Smiths, which still feels like slipping back into a suffocating rigid orthodoxy.
On Death is a Star, the closing track of Combat Rock, where Joe talks about being gripped by that deadly phantom I am still reminded of Jack Kerouac maybe reading from Dr Sax. I have no idea whether this was the intention or if it was just coincidence. Like Kerouac, The Clash were full of flaws, contradictions and inconsistencies, but I still like that. The fact that The Clash could be as exasperating as they could be exhilarating is appealing, sometimes. Jack, of course, made records of his own, partly thanks to the godlike Bob Thiele, where he read his prose and poetry to a jazz setting. Allen, too, made records, and what immediately springs to mind is his infectiously joyous singing of William Blake’s poetry. Back in 1969 he recorded poems from Songs Of Innocence and Songs Of Experience, sung in his unique way, with musical contributions from some of the greats like Don Cherry, Elvin Jones, and Bob Dorough. And just in case you are not familiar with Ginsberg way of singing, here he is back in 1984 in fascinating company ...

Audio Mobility - Cassette Snapshots #3

The Mighty Reel is perhaps not the most well-known in the NME’s series of tape compilations, but this 1982 collection is the best one the paper put out. It’s billed as “1982 – the case in favour.” It puts forward a great case. And 30-odd years on, it retains the power to get me scurrying off to seek out more by certain of the artists featured.
So, for example, the inclusion of Sleep Talk by Ornette Coleman got me listening to his 1982 LP Of Human Feelings, and becoming quite obsessed by it. I certainly never heard it at the time. I doubt I even saw it. But listening to it now it seems almost perfectly to feature the ‘active background music’ the Fire Engines were itching to get together. I don’t know how this record is regarded by real Ornette-thologists, but it seems pretty perfect just now, striking a balance between melodic jazz funk/functional fusion and something more punk and unsettling along the lines of the Contortions.
The track on Mighty Reel that really caught me unawares was Fashion’s White Stuff. I had totally forgotten about Fashion. I can’t say I’ve seen their name mentioned in years. But White Stuff had me searching for, and falling in love with, Fashion’s Fabrique LP. The ‘owner’s manual’ that came with the Mighty Reel sums it up pretty neatly: “Last year’s ugly ducklings, this year’s beautiful swans, Fashion confounded everyone except themselves with the depth and durability of their Fabrique album, produced by German studio whizz Zeus B Held.” Ah yes, Zeus B Held, of Gina X fame (who guests on the superb Love Shadow), who did Win’s Freaky Trigger, Chas Jankel’s Looking At You (and Chas’ solo LPs are an excellent reference point), Pete Wylie’s Sinful, etc. The fascinating thing is that Fabrique doesn’t sound like the suffocating records their Horn-rimmed contemporary glossicists were coming up with. It’s a really smooth, almost scarily adult-orientated disco/rock sound they came up with, with lots of space, which has aged really, really well. It was a remarkable transformation for what were Birmingham post-punk also-runs famous more for their hair than their flair.
The track that made me stop and hold my breath was The Ravishing Beauties’ Futility. It’s Virginia Astley’s adaptation of a Wilfred Owen poem, and her angelic chorister’s delivery adds a macabre twist to the studied beauty of the arrangement. Hearing it again made me listen anew to Virginia’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, and imagine vividly the sinister undercurrents which Michael Bracewell almost hints at in England Is Mine. The music may be an elegy to a lost English pastoral romanticism, but what are the circumstances in which the ‘dreams’ of this arcadia are taking place? It is a little like J.L. Carr’s A Month In The Country in some ways. It also makes me want to go and read some Denton Welch. Do people still read Denton Welch? They should.
I am not an authority on the music and life of Virginia Astley, and if I associate anything in particular with her name it is the Vic Godard track Spring Is Grey which was the cuckoo in the nest on the Rough Trade Retrospective which appeared carelessly in 1985. I have never been sure about the provenance of that song. Virginia’s arrangement has a real 1983-ish feel to it, and I believe Robin Millar produced, so it must have been after Vic’s swingin’ Sect had left to be JoBoxers. Robin Banks, however, closed a 1980 Zigzag feature on Vic with the line: “You’ve climbed higher up the ladder only to feel sadder than the holiest confession”. So I dunno ...
Futility was I think the only ‘official’ recording released under the name Ravishing Beauties. There was a Peel session, too. And I seem to remember Nicky Holland going on to work with the Fun Boy Three, who are also featured on the Mighty Reel with The Alibi. The FB3’s recordings still sound ridiculously underrated, and what they came up with in such a brief space of time seems remarkable, in terms of the music and lyrical content.
There is a strong and very welcome non-UK/US presence on Mighty Reel. The new European pop is represented brilliantly by Yello, Liaisons Dangereuses and The Honeymoon Killers. And what was then a lively interest in African pop was reflected by the inclusion of the JuJu sound of King Sunny Ade and a track from Rough Trade’s Soweto compilation. Demonstrating how the African influence was working at the time, Weekend contribute an exclusive ‘live’ take of their highlife flavoured A Day In The Life Of ... (as opposed to A Life In The Day Of ...), which still sounds glorious and is a useful reminder of how much ground Weekend covered on the classic La Varieté. Their Rough Trade label mate Robert Wyatt contributed what was then an ‘exclusive’ and totally gorgeous recording of jazz standard ‘Round Midnight.
Among the other tracks there are what-are-now recognised as complete classics by Brother ‘D’ with Collective Effort (“Agitate, educate, and organise”) and Rocker’s Revenge. The tape closes with dub poet Michael Smith performing Trainer from his Dennis Bovell/LKJ-produced LP for Island. We, sadly, will never know what Michael might have recorded next. The word ‘futility’ seems apt again to describe his appalling murder. I’m not sure why but I seem to recall Michael cropping up unexpectedly in a Jonathan Coe story. Or have I dreamt that? Anyway, here is a brief glimpse of Michael around the time of Mighty Reel ...