An unexpected oasis. The inner cover of the original double l.p. (a reward for getting this far....).
It must have been the first Soft machine albums double set (1&2),
two pieces of scratched vinyl I had borrowed from my local library that
got me onto the band. I showed great curiosity for anything from the sixties
at the time, so I may have borrowed it on the off-chance that it contained
some psychedelic sounds. Then again, maybe I’d read something about them
somewhere, I can’t recall . In any case these two Lps blew me away completely.
In my sketchy sixties chronology, amongst the musical guidelines I had
painstakingly striven to build for myself these albums had no apparent
place. I’d carefully taken note of the dates they were published, 68 and
69, but this only added to my sense of great confusion. This was no blues
jamming, there were no recognisable psychedelic chord progressions, this
was something totally out of it’s time. I read on the cover that the group
had been involved with the pataphysicians and had been awarded the title
“ordre de la grande gidouille”. This was what had to be expected: you could
count on an anarchic bunch of surrealists to fuck up your musical references.
And this crazy vigour, this overkill of nonsensical energy was what knocked
me flat. It didn’t sound like anything that I knew had been happening at
the time, it was so much more adventurous, resourceful and basically avant-garde.
This crazy double lp knocked another double lp from grace, an lp that had
been my personal favourite uptil the moment I heard the softs, and this
was none other than Pink Floyd’s two first lps from the Barrett
days brought together under the title “a nice pair”.
Now this was an unfair and uninformed decision on my behalf and I must
say that I look back on this moment with some degree of shame. Shame because
my reading of the situation was wrong. I’d muddled my criteria and I didn’t
quite know just what I was looking for. I was unable to put these two sets
of albums in their context and judge them with objectively. What I had
been looking for was the craziest, the most revolutionary, the most avant-garde,
the most inventive and musically regenerating. It was some weird kind of
quest, a chimerical search for the absolute essence of rock’n’roll energy.
I was also searching for the key to a period that has always been a source
of great mystery and fantasizing for me: i.e. the second half of these
‘swinging’ sixties that I had never actually lived through ( and if I had
lived through them I would probably try to recreate a time before that).
And perhaps I was thrown off-balance, my mind momentarily blurred, my reason
temporarily on hold, my rationale off its rocker just because I believed
to have found that magical link, that condensed compound of late sixties
revolutionary raving.
This was unfair, because I wasn’t looking at the musical and artistic
merits of the two works of art, just at what I thought they represented
in terms of spaced-out psychosis. Of course, with hindsight I have been
able to restore the bard Barrett’s incontestable
place as numero uno in my rock’n’roll pantheon. But it took some time:
time to listen to the Floyd’s collection of platters and be able to claim
once and for all that they were the dinosaurs that the punks took them
for, four fat fuckers living off the fat of the land, and that yes, maybe
I could get a kick out of Roger Waters’ neuroses like "The
Wall"or even "The Final Cut" but this was only really because I was
tricked into listening to them as a teenager. So it was for the nostalgic
element just like I may choose to shed a tear while listening to an old
AC/DC
album, just because I grew up with it, and you can’t escape these big bands
you’re forced to grow up with because you’re too fucking young, you’ve
got shit for brains and no experience and you’re basically ready to accept
any old dope you’re given just as long as it fits in with your representation
of what is rock and mean and nasty and subversive and the promoters know
this very well and construct band’s images accordingly always ready to
rip you off so they can buy their Rolls Royces and plush offices and round
the world trips and houses in the fucking country, always ready to mug
you at a corner, you, sniveling thirteen year-old and run away with your
pocket money. So yes, I do give
"The Wall" the
odd listen, although the film is all the visual drivel that can be expected
from a director who shot four hundred adverts before being allowed to graduate
to fiction.
- Yes, I bought the double lp "The Wall", but I plead not guilty because there was a sale on at my local record store, so I got it for only two-thirds of its going price.
- This is not the point we are trying to make, sunshine. Two thirds or not two-thirds, in the Mr top rock critic's “albums of the century” compendium it is written that, and I read from page 172, that the wall is ‘ a vast commercial enterprise. An attempt to have gadgetry and overproduction parade as genuine feeling, as much the plaything of wily producer Bob Ezrin than that of the so-called ‘creator’ Roger Waters himself”.
- Yes, your honour, but I plead not guilty, for in the purchase of this album I forewent all personal pleasure and concern and thought only of my flock, those young and innocent one’s that it is my humble duty to instruct and to guide into adult life. I speak of my tender-aged doe-eyed pupils, those to whom I used to teach English, I bought it for them...
- I fear that this incident further worsens the charges held against you and further weakens your chances of aquittal. Do you not think that these young people you were entrusted with, these innocent souls you had under your direct responsability, deserved to enter life with the sensitivity to interpret genuine pieces of anglo-saxon musical culture and not re-heated junk like Roger Waters? Do you not understand that you tricked these young people into thinking that this fake, that this fraud, that this clown Waters is authentic. You have failed in your duty to show them right from wrong.What of that other project you had, to share with your eager learners the genius of the Beach Boys' greatest tracks ? Now there would be a noble intention.
- Your honour, this is true, however I was misled by the authors of the text book we used who had the bad idea to print "Another Brick in the Wall" on one of its pages. They knew not what they did, your honour, I was misled by the bunch of middle-aged burnt-out beatnicks who controll the education authorities today. And the kids, they enjoyed the song, they related to it, they felt that it merged with their everyday life experience. They even requested to hear the rest of the album. Surely, this doesn’t account for nothing. And, as you know, I attempted to get the nippers off on Brian Wilson tracks but I was knocked down by one of the philistine inspectors who couldn’t see past the lyrical content and, o.k, now the fucker’s on my hit-list but heck, what could I do...
- Your pathetic self-justification is embarrassing. The reasons for your actions are unjustified. There is only one possible sentence for such irresponsibility: Bring down the Wall !
I digress, I digress... Cut the Crap and stick to the subject. Where was I ?
Ah yes, the Floyd. Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, readers. So, o.k., this may be a somewhat scholarly opinion. A la-di-da, arty farty auteur jive, “Oh, didn’t the Stones go downhill after they dumped Brian Jones”, snub-nosed pretentious pulp. Not so, reader, not so, listen to the Barrett solo lps and the truth will hit you in the face. His playful poetry, his simple psychedelia, fairy-tale fantasy and child-like chant. This guy had it: it’s there on his solo efforts later to be plundered by the other established Floydies and it’s there on that first lp, an absolute gem in the history of rock’n’roll, a pearl, a diamond, a masterpiece. An album that does that unique thing: that can blueprint a whole era, the particular atmosphere of a particular place at a particular time in rock’n’roll history. At the same time the platter reflects a unique personality and style, something specific, something only possible by this one person’s talent: Syd Barrett in 1967. Spaced-out, tender pieces, subtle blends of rock’n’roll and gentle poetry: soft-style psychedelia and playful escapism. One of the best, truly, even at its re-edited fifteen fucking pound price it is well worth your money, this one goes in my top ten no questions asked.
Back to the Softs now. As I was saying, these two albums threw me off
my feet temporarily dethroning "A nice pair" containing the brilliant “Piper
at the gates of dawn” and this was very unfair, seeing that contrary to
most of the rest of the Floyd’s production ( when Barrett was dumped and
became a vegetable) it is an absolute shit-hot recording.
The Softs, surrealists, crazy avant-garde agitators, blowing my mind
and my speakers when I was twenty-two and lived in a slum. Robert
Wyatt, Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge were the founder
members. Ayers left after the first album and has brought out some brilliant
solo albums since. Wyatt was in there for four albums before breaking away
and launching into his fabulous solo work. Daevid Allen didn't get onto
an official release. As an Australian he was refused entry into the U.K.
after a stint in France and was forced to leave the band. He became a mainstay
of the group Gong. By the time of "Third" the line-up was Wyatt, Ratledge,
Hugh Hopper and Elton Dean.
O.K., so the main man was Robert Wyatt,
drummer and vocalist, but what a vocalist, eh? One of the most intriguing
and heartfelt moans in the history of rock’n’roll. After singing on the
first two experimental Soft Machine albums he sang on the famous "Third",
but only on one of the four tracks for the band seemed to be moving further
and further away from anything ressembling the ‘song’ format. He sang on
a further record, "Fourth" (Soft machine opted for a straight standard
numerical progression in lieu of album titles, they went up to sixth and
seventh, after that I lost count), although his singing was no longer really
in the foreground, so much so that people who now purchase Fourth, which
is a low price album, because of the red ‘featuring Robert Wyatt’ sticker
plastered on the front, generally get ripped off unless of course they
like the particularly free jazz state of the art the band was evolving
towards at that time. Although Third also has the red sticker claiming
bob Wyatt’s position therein, people buying this album are not, I repeat,
definitely not getting ripped off. Whatsmore, "Third" also being a low-price
album, it constitutes, in my humbly pretentious opinion, one of the best
possible value for money buys ( along with Pet Sounds or most of the Beach
Boy’s low-price ‘2 great albums on one CD’ collection). Yes, I have
often marvelled at the retail price of the two “greats”, once rivals, of
the sixties: the Fab Four going for fifteen quid a knock, the
Beach Boys going for about eight quid for two. What cosmic injustice
has brought this on, I often ponder. Simple laws of capitalism, dear readers,
the simple laws of capitalism, of hype, of publicity, of just who’s
in the limelight. So they basically charge what they can get. And they
have noticed that even at fifteen quid, the Fabs’ cds sell like hot cakes
cos’ they have the (not-unjustified) reputation of being the greatest rock’n’roll
band of all times. Hey, maybe if they were priced at less your lay Beatles
album buyer might get suspicious and wonder why, if they were so great,
didn’t they cost the full-whack. Be that as it may, it takes a little more
interest in rock’n’roll history to actually suss out rationally the full
potential and talent of the Beach Boys. You
gotta get past modern prejudice against surf tunes, you gotta get past
their one-time preppy image, the striped shirts, the blond haircuts and
blue eyes and smiles. You may sense something in the music, something special,
even perhaps something unique but then the image centers in : nah, can’t
be, it’s only the bloody Beach Boys, for chrissakes.
And there you go, the mystery remains unsolved and you saunter on to more
or less pressing everyday preoccupations putting the whole matter to the
side of your mind or obliterating it completely. Pet Sounds, that total
classic, undisputed candidate to the throne of rock’n’roll past, present
and future, more impressive even than the great Revolver ( fifteen quid
a copy). Pet sounds, that album that I was unable as an English teacher
in France to take with me into the classroom. For the simple reason the
“pet” means “fart” in French and, with a record called ‘farting sounds’,
even if it couldn’t be further from the reality of this great recording,
I would be liable to get laughed out of the room. Oh, sad youth of today,
oh lost and lobotomised generation, oh you who prefer Blur and Oasis’s
sad repeats to the real Maccoy. Oh misery, oh strife.
Let us ponder over the visual presentation of this said album.
And there they are, the Beach Boys, on the
front cover, on the inside pages feeding the friggin’ animals in a zoo,
and not your lions or tigers or whatever fear-instilling felines, no, the
front cover shows them feeding the goats. Ok, so it’s called Pet sounds,
the goats are the Pets (meaning number 1) but also these are Brian
(Wilson’s) favourite sounds (meaning number 2, the main one), his personal
sounds, the ones that haunt him, that famous ‘music he heard in his head’
with all the mystical meaning that that implies. O.K., so trad. cover but
“subtle” double-entendre in the title, and sure, this is more far-reaching
than it may first appear to be, for who, at that time, actually referred
to the music’s quality, to the author’s obsessive nature, to it’s personal
elements, in the title? Nobody did, right, in 1966 ?
But what was with these goats anyway? Were we supposed to think that
the
Beach Boys had goats for pets? So, right, it was corny, but the beatles
got photographed with animals too, so there ! ( they got snapped
with dead animals at one ill-famed photo-session immortalising them in
white butcher's smocks with raw slabs of meat and cut-up dolls).
So what we have here, you’ll all agree, is a light-weight cover with
a heavy-weight title. O.K., so Brian’s music was more important to him
than the fucking packaging and promotion. Positive point in my book and
shit, the guy couldn’t do everything. So if duff cover + heavy-weight title
is equal to a mid-price cd with a thirty page booklet filled with liner
notes whereas a cool, studied and artful cover with a banal if intriguing
cover is equal to a top price disc (fifteen pounds) with absolutely no
form of documentation inside well then readers I must say that I much prefer
the first formula, so there.( Simon, you tight-fisted git, avarice is a
deadly sin. You just don’t get what art’s about maaan...)
That’s the truth, folks, there were the Beach
Boys thinking: Hell, we’re musicians right, not graphic artists, so
we’ll shoot these really kitsch cover but drop a big hint in the title
so that real fans know where we’re at and that’ll mean that, thirty years
from now, our records will be affordable whereas the Beatles who have always
prided themselves in snazzy covers and much publicity will be sold at the
top whack. The suckers that just listened to us on the radio, didn’t really
get into us and who just thought we had a bunch of ‘nice tunes’ can buy
our crummy ‘Greatest Hits’ re-editions with even worse covers and the can
pay fifteen fucking pounds for them while they’re at it.)
Third is a good album whereas Fourth is found lacking. Unless of course you like that particular brand of Free Jazz, and some people actually do. I have met them and conducted rational conversations with them. They actually prefer the post-wyatt albums when the remaining softs chose to go further in their musical meanderings. Except of course, that they didn’t go further at all but just became stilted and boring, “professionals” conforming to a genre, although a free-form one a genre nonetheless. How to explain the difference between the first three and their successors? If I were doing this properly, this would be the time for lengthy technical explanations. Time to get into this magic bland of surrealism and rock’n’roll, of experimentation, of time changes, of fragmentation, deconstruction and modern theories of disharmony. Maybe this last element would be the essential one and this would be the time to mention their avowed references to Stockhausen on the one hand and Jazz innovaters like Parker and Coltrane on the other. But I’m not doing this properly so I believe I’ll opt for another form of ‘analysis’ more suited to the rock’n’roll format and that is : let yourself be guided by your feelings. And this is what mine say: the first three albums ROCK, they jump, they jive, they have it, whereas the Fourth album has lost it. The first ones are still rock’n’roll albums even if they are influenced by jazz phrasing, surrealism and dodecaphonic harmony. The noise sculpture on Third stands out, it’s there, it rocks, whereas later on things tame themselves down a bit and fall into the commonplace when before they were exceptional. Third used to be one of my faves and, pompous prat of a twenty two year old student in my slum, listening to it on my stereo, I felt proud at being able to grasp the vitality of such a work when so many around me would prefer to hear pneumatic-drills in the streets. There I was, feeling superior with Third that I had taped off local library vinyls onto a low quality phillips cassette. I’d turned the sound up and was savouring the thought that this was truly avant-garde music and therein lied the key to the meaning of life or at least some temporary relief from the inpecunious everyday drudgery of my student life. This is the music we must strive to put across, I said to myself confidantly. Little did I know...
Taking culture to the masses...maybe...
A ring at the door shook me from my pleasant reverie. Who could this
be? I certainly wasn’t expecting anybody at this hour of the afternoon.
I walked up to the door and took a peep through the eyehole conveniently
placed there for sussing out visitors and eventually not answering there
insistant knocks at the door. I looked, but there was nobody there. Stranger
and stranger. What now? I opened the door and there she was, standing not
four feet high, it was...THE OLD LADY FROM UPSTAIRS. I was still too amazed
figuring out the eyehole thing to actually wonder what may have brought
her. Check this out, she had been standing in front of my door and inspite
of the very wide angle of the little lense that goes in these eyehole things
she had been out of my range.
Anyhow, I must fill you in on the family upstairs. They were certainly
a motley crew. I’ve mentionned that the block I lived in was a slum: rundown
tenement in dire need of repair, roof leaking, heating and electricity
put in yourself, no bathroom or any such luxury, one toilet in the hall
per floor. Marx defined the lumpen-proletariat as the disposessed class
below the working class and I believe that the family upstairs fit this
definition. There were about ten of them spanning several generations,
they had that inbred look, there was a kid among them: they used to treat
him like dirt, balling him out all the time: we’d take bets whether he’d
escape his underprivileged environment, we usually decided that he wouldn’t.
He’s probably something from sixteen to eighteen today but I’ve moved and
lost contact so I shall never no. Anyhow, it wasn’t the kid that was at
the door, it was the eldest of the tribe, and this means Granny Lumpen
herself. What could she want? I had difficulty understanding what she wanted,
the words she used were inappropriate, her train of thought was unclear,
but basically she wanted the music turned down, or off. It appeared her
husband (Grandad Lumpen) was sleeping and this noise was disturbing him.
Disturbing! But this was great music, I frustratedly thought, this was
the music to put over, to turn up, to share with everyone, to blare out
of windows: life-saving music, liberating music, a work of astounding beauty
that would make the world a better place. No, this was headache music.
It was “me-hard-working-man (hard-working, my ass)-am-trying-to-sleep-and-that-long-haired-student-
bum-downstairs-has-put-his-fucking-noise-on” music. She spoke to me in
a kind of rant in which two words kept coming back “c’est vilain”. “Vilain”
can mean several things in french language: its two main centers of meaning
are ‘ugly’and ‘evil’. To this day I don’t exactly know what she was getting
at. Clearly she thought the softs’ music was ugly but did she mean my conduct
was ugly in its serenading of the unwilling neighbours with this unwanted
symphony. Maybe she thought it was evil: what I was doing to them was evil
but maybe the whole rock’n’roll thing, it’s vitality and energy was anathema
to their set of values.
Yes, this is how I was wont to think in those not so distant days (well,
ten years ago, actually) and this is how I failed to convert my neighbourhood
to the regenerating qualities of avant-garde rock.
But hey, don’t be like Granny Lumpen, buy Third (it’s a low price ceedee)
and make the world a better place to live in.
An unexpected oasis. The
inner cover of the original double l.p. (a reward for getting this far....).