PROCOL HARUM: Pandora's Box

Caught this on the radio the other night. Lena hadn’t heard it before and was blown away by it. It’s a curious record to be sure, and an even curiouser single to go Top 20 (only just) in 1975. While the video squeals “1975!” nothing in this record sounds remotely like anything happening in 1975, not even the 1975 of “I’m Not In Love” or “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

I have it on one of those old school no-frills double compilations called The Collection which I bought for about 10p donkey’s years ago. I miss those compilations of old; I’ve been going through a number of them for TPL of late – the Four Tops, the Supremes, the Hollies, the Seekers; somebody in EMI marketing knew what the time was in 1968 – and all you got were track listings, a couple of photos, and that was it. No liner notes, scholarly or otherwise; the artists were a mystery and as the listener it was up to you to formulate a story out of their music if you didn’t know them already. I don’t have its parent album since Procol’s Ninth was a bit of a stinker, though I thoroughly recommend going out and getting their first four albums plus the live album they did with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra plus 1974’s Exotic Birds And Fruit which may well be their masterpiece. Grand Hotel from 1973 isn’t bad either if you’ve never heard John Cale’s Paris 1919.

Procol were definitely in a bit of a quandary by 1975 and it’s unsurprising that Gary Brooker blew the whistle a couple of years later; Leiber and Stoller had been drafted in to produce Procol’s Ninth and it seems to have been a botched back-to-basics type move with a couple of odd cover versions (tackling “Eight Days A Week” was, to put it mildly, misguided). Moreover, “Pandora’s Box,” the album’s only decent track, seems to have been laid down much earlier and rescued from the shelf.

It really is a strange piece of work. Keith Reid’s free association historical namechecks, ranging from Handel to Morse, get their typical airing, and there is the overall “Salty Dog” feeling of being marooned in the middle of nowhere, groping to find treasure, or revelation, in strange lands, as evinced by the Paul Bowles-like “marble staircased plain” which materialises so ghostily at the end of each verse (there isn’t really a chorus). The song stops and starts and there are elements of both 1969 and 1981 at work; the Harrison-esque Leslie cabinet guitar solo, the general still-can’t-find-our-way-home aura of fuggy mystique, but also a serene cleanliness in the pronounced marimba strikes, the petrol station synthesisers (Korg string?), the peculiarly cheery flute solo and Spanish main-brushing slow samba beat, as though the mystery is cleaning itself up clinically in preparation for an airily brushed future. And that weird, where-did-my-hands-go guitar delay throb which lurks as though wanting to blow the song up. Ah, the title's forewarning of the selfish, unthinking Westerner come to fuck up the East with their stupid sixteenth century ambitions.

Its principal factor, though, is Brooker’s voice – this is a less clearcut journey through jazzy towpaths than Traffic’s, though Brooker and Winwood do tend to get bracketed together as countrified white soul psychouts. At least I do, and maybe Kate Bush does too, given Brooker’s key contributions to her (comparatively) recent albums. But look at him on the video clip, and swim in his strangely upturned eyebrow of “plain” – am I the only one considering the subtle influence of Bill Fay?

WARM BRANDY

I'm curious enough to want to check this out. There's a copy downstairs in the Oxfam branch where Lena works and I'll put in a fair bid.

UPDATE: Got it for £1.99. Extremely fair, I must say. Will report back later.

YOU AIN'T GONNA KNOW ME 'COS YOU THINK YOU KNOW ME

Rosie's a scream, in'she? I was away on holiday a little while ago and she posted this presumably thinking I wasn't going to find it when I came back. Actually she's got me bang to rights. Historians, eh? What do they know? If you weren't there you'll never understand and you should shut up. It's the truth for sure. That Hilary Mantel, for instance. What does she know about Thomas Cromwell and sixteenth century Britain? She's only fifty-seven! She should hand back the money to Booker and send her CBE back to the Palace straightaway. Wouldn't trust her with a tithed pole.

Really I'm more of a tiresome middle-aged egotist. I'll deal with old when/if I get there (if the propsect of "old" incorporates the necessity to write about albums by Kasabian and White Lies, though, I might have to rethink that concept). I've never hacked for the NME though. I did do two years freelancing on Uncut and then they got fed up with me and stopped ringing me. Quite right too. I wouldn't have hired me back in the 2004 day. Which makes me more than grateful to the people who did. But that's another story.

Still, I do feel the need to correct a few assumptions which are still floating around whatever is left of this here quarter of the music blogosphere (does anyone still use that term without rue or irony?). Only a few, mind. I'm only going to address this topic once and then it's back to normal business. I'm aware that some people still perceive me as a "bloated-egoed (sic) nobody" and "wannabe journalist." A shyster. A flip-flopping bandwagon jumper. A stuck record (there he goes again, punctum this, punctum that). A lost case. A bullshit merchant. An unalloyed egocratic wreck. An obsessive trainspotter. A bitter old carcass of a man rotting away in penurious hell who missed his chance 25 years ago and has nothing better to do than have a go at Guardian music writers. A straightahead tl; dr crackpot. And that's just the readers who like me boom boom.

For those who need it clarifying, here's how I do on Popular. Again, pay attention because I will say this only once. I read what Tom has to say about each entry. Then I turn to my specially preprepared commentary (sorry to burst the spontaneity bubble but, some of you may be surprised to hear, I do have both a day job and a life and it does save a lot of time if I turn to one I made earlier), tweak it to take out anything overtly personal or anything about which I might have changed my mind since originally writing it, and then add anything that occurs to me in the course of retooling the entry. Then I post. Then I stand back and let everyone else get on with it. If anyone wants clarification of certain points or wishes to correct any historical or aesthetic inaccuracies of mine then fair enough and I'll respond if the discussion is relevant. But otherwise the comments boxes take their own course and I don't wade back in; certainly it is no longer my business to start or engage in pointless "arguments" which is precisely why I'm taking this onto the blog rather than filling up valuable debating space on Popular. My instinctive view is that most Popular readers sigh "tl;dr" to themselves when they see my ramblings and move on quickly around the inert mass. But again that's fair enough. I can't force people to read me. The important thing is that I said it and it works as an integral part of that particular community.

And, just to wrap things up, one final word to those who really have nothing better to do than carry on with the slurs, or have the habit of accusatorily dredging up things I said four or five years ago when my life and views were utterly different from what they are now: when it comes down to it, you don't know me, you have no idea about how I've lived my life, what I've done with it, what I've lived through, what I've learned or how I learned it. So think good and hard before you make assumptions.

TOP OF THE CLASS POPS

I saw this in the paper yesterday and although I’m glad that someone other than me is banging this particular drum it’s a shame that Lynsey had to lower the tone a little – and I use my metaphors VERY carefully, I’ll have you know – and turn the piece into yet another grumble about Class, fourteen years after Jarvis put that non-argument to bed (if only he could drag himself out of his own self-made bed and start making decent music again, eh?). The charts full of poshos and BRITites? Forgive me for missing something peculiarly obvious here but I look at the current chart and at number one by a whomping great margin (nearly 293K copies/downloads sold) is a working-class lass from Newcastle. Can’t say I think much of it, or about it – although the title track of 3 Words is an unexpected, winding wonder, even if I suspect the song was taken straight off the BEPs’ spare shelf and I might have preferred Emma Bunton or Mel C to sing it with Will.i.am – but Cowell or no Cowell (and actually it was Louis Walsh, but hey ho) this isn’t exactly the Bullingdon Club Hit Parade. Don’t see any reference to quadrangles, dormitories or gimlet eyes in Calvin or Tinchy’s story either. Ah, generalisations, don’t they make complex arguments so simple?

As I’ve said I don’t know how many times, the formula is simple; reinstate TOTP at a time when everyone will be guaranteed to watch it (and yes, I agree with Lynsey here quite fervently, if they have to shift an episode or seven of EastEnders to do so then fine – who’s watching it now anyway?) and refrain from all efforts to make the programme “cool” or “relevant”; the kids are lost to the online world and the only way you’ll get them back is by going for the huge X-Factor Event button and pushing it; something, as in days of olde, that families watched together and could argue over – call that music, boy or girl, &c. Have the show do precisely what it was intended to do in the first place; reflect what is selling, get the artists in and encourage them to make a show of it. And the presenters – don’t get call centre drones who are only allowed to wear Cool Black and talk in Method Acting whispers (i.e. you can’t hear them), get personalities, get Moyles, Westwood, anyone, to go on there and be gloriously daft and naff. Make it Family Light Entertainment and marvel at any subversion that sneaks through – isn’t that why we of a certain age all remember it so well anyway? Watching Later with J Holland is like attending school assembly. The populist alternative is needed. Otherwise Cowellism will keep dominating the charts because what’s there to compete with him?

But where I have to diverge pretty wildly from Lynsey is when she starts prattling on about most of today’s Top 40 being guff compared with the exciting charts of 20 years ago. Again, let me remind you of some inconvenient facts – and if you’re quick you can hear it online – but the charts of October 1989 were fucking terrible, Jive Bunny taking out a mortgage at number one, blandness everywhere; nobody with any sense took any notice of the charts then. These days things are going a wee bit downhill from the epic beauty of earlier 2009 – but again most of that is ascribable to the Cowellite effect – but if you asked me to choose between the Top 40 of now and that of 1989 then it’s a complete no-brainer, just as I would never swap today for 1978 again if you paid me. As usual, the writer is really lamenting being 34 and tied down by the shit of an accumulated life rather than being fourteen, carefree, all fields round here &c. And if one more person cites bleeding “Starman” – a hit three years before our Lynsey was born – then I’m going to have to go all Pigmeat Markham on their coccyx. Argue for TOTP’s reinstatement by all means, but quit pretending that things were better in anybody’s old day. Otherwise we get TOTP2 with Steve Wright and the same old clips you've seen a billion times before to keep Mr Compliance happy = graffitied aesthetic mausoleum.

ELTON DEAN'S NINESENSE: Happy Daze/Oh! For The Edge

I’ve said things about Ninesense before, and it’s more than nice to have their two Ogun LPs – or most of them, but I’ll get back to that in a moment – back on CD, not just to remind today’s F-Ire types of their illustrious predecessors but also to revise my own views towards their recorded output. Certainly until a few years ago I was slightly cagey about both Oh! For The Edge and Happy Daze in terms of their worth as records; were they really representative of the roaring, apocalyptic band I saw on stage at the Third Eye Centre around the time of punk, or was there a degree of holding back? The question was further shaken up by the arrival of the Live At The BBC CD containing the two sessions they recorded for Radio 3’s Jazz In Britain, one of which turned out to be their only recording with Mongezi Feza in the line-up, and both of which contained tunes from their previously published albums, but in a notably rougher and more vibrant form.

Conceptually there was no ambiguity about the group; they were a pretty direct crossover between Keith Tippett’s old sextet and the Brotherhood of Breath and their music reflected that, both danceable and troublesomely spiritual. Oh! For The Edge sees them in action, albeit reduced to Eightsense by the absence of second trombonist Radu Malfatti, before what sounds like a sadly sparse audience (you can count the handclaps) at the 100 Club in March 1976, and the band appears to expand in order to fill the room (hear the still astonishing “Forsoothe” for evidence of this). Happy Daze was recorded in the studio some 16 months later, fresh from being performed at the Bracknell Jazz Festival. As a “suite” it doesn’t really hold up – the ongoing curse of prove-yourself-to-us-jobsworths in terms of grants and commissions; if you’re wondering why sixties and seventies recorded British jazz is so befuddled by “suites” which never quite cohere as a whole it’s because it was practically the only way to get funding – and indeed (as the BBC disc confirmed) all of these tunes already existed, but as an album it works a lot better than I remember it, and Tippett’s work on the ballad “Sweet F.A.” in particular remains dazzlingly, limpidly and mischievously exceptional. And Dick Whitbread’s collage for Oh! For The Edge is still one of my favourite of all album covers.

The problem is that, on the CD, side two of Oh! For The Edge has been truncated; in order to fit both albums onto one CD, that side’s key performance of Feza’s “Friday Night Blues” – some 12½ minutes long on the original record – has been cut down to its final five minutes or so, i.e. Elton’s alto solo (discreetly faded in) and the final theme statement. The trouble is that this imbalances the album completely; Feza’s death was a major torpedo to the scene which Ogun celebrated and documented and the whole of side two was structured as a tribute to him, with the relaxed swing of “FNB” being bookended by Dean’s solemn “M.T.” and the final “Prayer For Jesus.” Furthermore, by editing the performance, we miss a wonderful solo by Harry Beckett – Feza’s replacement in the group, whose solo pays explicit tribute to him – and (shame!) one of the few recorded solos by Mark Charig on tenor horn. The length is essential to accommodate the stretch and release, following on from the cathartic roars of “Forsoothe,” and it is a dismal reflection on the stupid state of funding that economics have dictated that Ogun cut down the album in order to accommodate everything on one CD (rather than a 2CD reissue, which really should have happened). So I’m afraid for the full picture you’ll need to keep an eye out for the vinyl original, complete with whatever absurd price has been pasted on it.

SHIT ROBOT: Simple Things (Work It Out)

It’s the same old story; he woke up this morning and his baby was gone. The opening descending cascade of whole tone cloudy synths depicts him struggling out of his dream. But this is a loneliness far more acute; unlike the Jagger of “Miss You,” this guy can’t even make it out of his house to strut down the street in assumed grief. A Mr Fingers weightless bass; memories of a lifetime passed, mendaciously ticking away his remaining minutes.

This guy is Ian Svenonious, once the mainstay of Nation of Ulysses, then of The Make-Up, and his is one of the most exceptional vocal performances of this decade. This isn’t simply a weary, bluesy loneliness, but something far more acute, and a feeling sinisterly recognisable. He can barely function. The 1987/9 beats (“Aspirin Trax”?) continue to count him down but he is stumbling. The vocal owes a good deal to Alan Vega and rather more to the Presley of “Heartbreak Hotel,” that original widowed sprite that just won’t go away from pop, has been sentenced to live forever. At regular periods he issues a ghastly, multiphonic shriek, which sounds like breath being reversed back into his lungs at double speed, but more often than not he quivers, shivers in Marcus Lambkin’s echoes. There may be simple things, but without “you” he can’t do them. The occasional quadruple smash of Roland snare drum and cymbal fails to propel him out into the air.

He thinks awhile about where technology has brought us, about machines which can sing, and all he has to do is open his eyes – but even that is fraught with impossibility. His teeth chatters, his nose groans in a way seldom seen since the Lennon of “Cold Turkey.” The requisite House piano enters, less regally than the Lincoln Mayorga of “Big Man” or Andy Williams’ version of “God Only Knows,” and the track is cooking as well as ticking but his internal absence of fire is unquenchable.

Eventually, the bassline reveals itself as “The Sun Rising” – or should that be “Can You Feel It?” (the Larry Heard one, not the Jacksons – but then again, MJ could and should have sung this) – and the singer’s distress multiples upon itself; he is reduced to Gene Vincent hiccups, Phil Minton avant-scatting, anything to emphasise his WISH for someone just to “come to my house” and “help me out.” But the only answer he gets is from Lambkin’s impersonal spellcheck robot intoning “Work it out! Work, work it out!” like a cross fitness instructor. His blood and spleen decorate the track like buckshot ballast, still freezing in that padded corner, wondering if his hand can ever reach the door. I’ve been there, he is clearly still there, the son of House in a mess of wired-up blues. The best DFA record since “Yeah.”

LEISURE PROCESS INTERNATIONAL: A Way You'll Never Be

Listen to words like “She looks so cold and splendid” and look at that cover and then talk about attendant irony. I knew the second half of 1982 wasn’t quite going as it should have done when Leisure Process failed to conquer the charts (at least the national ones; all four of their singles did pretty good business back home in Scotland). If “Love Cascade” from the beginning of that year suggested a Human League with Howard Devoto as lead singer, then their second single took the funk from the Ultratheque and transformed it into rolling, petulant waves of water.

Much of the success of “A Way You’ll Never Me” can be ascribed to the friendly tug of war which persists throughout the record – and the 12” version is absolutely vital to find – between singer Ross Middleton’s imperiously detached lectern and the juice into which the rest of the musicians are squashing his pronouncements. Middleton sounds aggrieved, more than mildly excited, during the verses (“B-b-baby’s got a brrrrrrrand new toy/She’s-a-cracracracracrackin’ up theeggshell boys”), before switching to solemn, Sunlight washing up liquid hymnals for the slowly mounting chorus. “Just contemplate her beauty/She sees through you and me.” He could be singing about a Green Gartside comma-inverted Ideal Girl, or about Thatcher, or about New York, but it is the disparity between his soaring ambition and the rambling ramraid of the music behind and beside him that makes this song work so well.

Middleton raps midway through and sounds like a 14-year-old (as he should, and as the song demands). “Someone young just gave to me/The gift of synchronicity” he announces, a year ahead of Sting, before Gary Barnacle – the other half of LP – breaks in with a moderately inflamed Davey Payne-esque R&B/skronk alto solo. After a final, frantic octave leap on “SPLENDID!” Middleton settles into a long, grumbling fade – why CAN’T you be like her/it/them? Producer Martin Rushent does his characteristic stereoscopic 1964 Linn drumkit thing and keeps the song’s spaces as wide open as the Hudson.

But the medals here go to the guest rhythm section, Mark King and Phil Gould, on loan from Level 42, then not quite having broken through to the mainstream and still being described by Morley as “pop ECM” (hear 1981’s “Turn It On” and argue otherwise), but with experience under their belts with “M” man Robin Scott, so they were quite accustomed and attuned to New Pop tactics. Gould’s drums throb throughout like a patient migraine while King gives one of his finest recorded performances, his bass banding rubbers around the track like an exploding Durex machine, the song’s tricky 11/8 rhythm admirably steered. Just four nigh-perfect singles – “Cashflow” and “Anxiety” followed in 1983 – and that was it; no album, no CD compilation (as yet – hint hint), and the enterprise petered out. Barnacle has continued to blow sax for just about everyone in British pop over the subsequent quarter century, and I’m not too sure what happened to Ross Middleton – there was a bit of “where has he gone?” hopeful enigma in the music press at the time but my guess is he went off and got a Proper Job – but this vivid quatrain is as valid and great a New Pop quartet as the Dollar/Horn tetraology.