Till deaf do us part...

The first band I ever saw live. It was probably in 1982, something like that. At least a couple of years after this album. The band's current release at the time was called "Another perfect Day". The cover was an artist's abstract impression of the famous Motörhead "death head" logo. The cover, along with some of the tracks, if I recall correctly, either hinted at or referred directly to insanity ("Back at the funny farm"…). It's one of my Motörhead favourites. I actually prefer it to "Ace of Spades", widely regarded as the band's "classic".
The concert was also my first encounter with excessive noise levels. Me and the buddy I went with had never heard anything like it. I remember Lemmy, singer and bass guitarist, enquiring if the volume was loud enough, "cos' we could have it louder if we wanted to !" Me and my buddy stood there waving our arms in refusal… Our cries were lost in a sea of headbangers, drowned out by the continual sonic onslaught booming from the P.A. system.
I don't know if it was the loudest concert I've ever been to, or if I just wasn't used to that sort of thing. I got used to it a little while afterwards. I remember not being able to hear myself pee when I came out of that concert hall.
Motörhead make a thing of their noise level. They recently put out a live album called "Everything louder than everybody else" (or something along those lines). I remember the best part of that concert being the end. When they'd finally stopped playing and we realised the suffering was OVER. Why didn't we just walk out, you may well ask ?
Good question. Well, we'd paid for our tickets for one thing. I know that's not much of an excuse, but when you're fifteen and you've saved up for such an event you don't necessarily reason things out properly. Maybe we considered it as some sort of initiatic thing. You've got to be able to "take it". Hummm…
Whatever, it was the first of many concerts for me. Concert going really took off for me some time later, a good few years later actually, at a time when I didn't have to pay for the tickets anymore. I'd secured a job writing reviews for a local student rag so for a year or two I'd go to gigs three or four times a week… I'd get used to the momentary discomfort afterwards. The incapacitated hearing that would last for a day or half a day and then just wear off.

Then, one day, of course, it didn't wear off.

I'd quit at the newspaper so I was paying for the concerts once more, but that didn't stop me now…
One fateful day at Paulette's, cult rock venue near the town of Toul, I went to see the Buzzcocks and the years of intensive concert going finally took their toll…

THE BUZZ DIDN'T GO AWAY!!!

A nagging, continual buzzing in my ears. Not exactly a buzzing, more like a blowing sound, like a soft wind moving through my head, in one ear and out the other…
Actually it was just in one ear. The ear that had been nearest to the loudspeaker…
This was nothing new of course. What was new is that this buzz was still there after the first day, and the second, and third. Still there after the first week. Still there after the first month. ETC, ETC…
A slight, haunting sound. Always there at the back of my mind. Always ready to fill in silences. Humming along gently, throwing my concentration…

So, middle-class white boy that I am, I went to the DOCTOR's. I went to see several of them for that matter, in true Woody Allen like style. They tested my hearing. Checked the frequencies I could hear. I had to say when I heard these little bleeping sounds.

I was ok. I hadn't lost any hearing. At least the doctor didn't think I had. The buzz was still there, though. And it was still just as maddening.
I went to see another doctor. He drew me a little picture of an ear, with a little part called the "internal ear" where everything happened in terms of hearing. He told me the repeated sonic assaults had weakened my ears and that this recent gig had killed a load of hearing cells in the internal ear. Some would stay dead, some would grow back again. And this whooshing sound was the result of the dead cells or something. Or the result of the dead cells trying to grow back. Whatever, it sounded convincing enough to me at the time. The guy told me that if I knew what was good for me my concert going days were over. He prescribed vaso-dilators to help the blood get to the damaged parts unhindered but then I'd just have to wait.

So I did. And I stopped going to concerts. Cos' this buzzing noise was a fucking pain !

I decided I wouldn't let other people's noise make me deaf. So here I am, listening to "Ace of Spades" on my computer instead of having to watch TV programs subtitled with teletext.

What's this digression got to do with Motörhead ?

You may well wonder. I suppose it's the band's position on noise. There's the show-off aspect. The apparent credibility if gives the band as in the title "everything louder than everything else". The fact the band seem to link this noise factor to the whole rock'n'roll ethos thing. Another of Lemmy's (remember: he's the singer and bass player, the band "leader") famous quotes is "if it's too loud, then you're too old". Mandatory deafness being associated with youth and with the "spirit of rock'n'roll". Usually, it's the old folks who are deaf.
Well, I'm not having any of it. I'll happily play the role of "old fart" if this allows me to listen my extensive record collection unhindered by buzzing sounds, or whooshing sounds. I'll happily be considered "past it" if it allows me to carry out a conversation without having to go "What?", "What?" "What?" "pardon?" "What?" all the time. If Lemmy chooses to pall me of with a load of conservatives while he continues to live the wild rock'n'roll life, well that's fine with me, at least I don't have to invest in a hearing aid just yet.
I'm "too old" at 33 but good old Lemmy's still rockin' it out at 53 or whatever, churning out album after album, each the same as the previous one…only not as good ! (To quote Randy Newman's great song on ageing rockers "I'm dead (but I don't know it)"

Still, there's nothing wrong with Another Perfect Day, or about Ace of Spades for that matter…
 
 

Ace of Spades (this time for real...)
 

"Ace of spades" is fast and mean. Not "fast and bulbous" like Captain Beefheart's squid, fast and mean. The band's name would appear to mean "speed freak". And history has it that the band's members, and Lemmy for one, were once, or maybe still are large consumers of this kind of drug. Now, I don't know that much about this sort of thing, but the general idea on the subject is that this kind of "upper" will boost your energy and allow you to function several times faster than your normal rate. There's a lot of that in this album. It's fast, it's mean, it's demented and to the point.
It's also an experiment in noise. Not an experimental noise album by any means. No, an experiment in noise. It's the driving intensity of the whole thing. It's hammering percussiveness. The way the progressions go from mere "pneumatic drill on your skull" effects to fully fledged dementia. The "blending" of the more distorted bass sounds and larsen with clear-cut, terse efficient metal.
Whether doing more "rock'n'roll" oriented numbers (Dance, The Hammer, Bite the bullet…) or those other founding classics of what was to become "metal" (Ace of Spades, Love me like a reptile, (we are) the road crew…) the principles underlying Motörhead songs remains the same. A prominent bass provides the tonal basis of the song and provides a percussive, repetitive drive. Simple metal guitar chords are repeated. Simple, but not totally predictable either. A Motörhead "melody" can move unexpectedly from one mood into another with the usual effect of amplifying the impression of overall dementia. The whole thing is relentlessly rhythmed by perfectly timed crashing drums and cymbals, brimming with raw energy. The song will usually launch into one or two perfectly-timed guitar solos, courtesy of "Fast eddie". Clear-cut and efficient moments within the song, very different from the indulgent progressive guitar heroes of the time but more enjoyable than some of the minimalistic post-punk stuff that was to follow. These solos are quite something, the mood ranging sometimes into the manic, crazy, demented side of what can be termed as psychedelic (never the laid-back, sunshine side however, so rest-assured).
Ace of Spades is music of conflict. It'll either give you a splitting headache or jolt you into a manic, excited frenzy as you listen along, shaking your head to the beat. A founding metal album ? A great piece of proto-punk ? The ultimate exercise in efficient, high-speed energy in rock-music ?

A great moment of rock'n'roll.Period.
 
 

Take me back to the main page, pleeeeze