A timely reappearance, this Complete Anthology of eighties anti-indie/not-quite-pop group Stump, given the recent passing of the star of Touch Of Evil and 55 Days In Peking; one album devoted to the early EP Mud On A Colon and the mini-LP Quirk Out; the second comprising their sole full-length album, 1988's A Fierce Pancake; the third the rags and bags they recorded as demos for an unimpressed Ensign Records before they fell apart, and since falling apart was in great part Stump's business this was hardly surprising.
The optimism-boggling wonder of course is how any major record label, even in the still relatively open market of the mid-eighties, thought Stump might be "pop" in any shape or form, apart from their perpetually eye-popping frontman, the genial Cork man Mick Lynch. Their trademark - as early classic "Buffalo" spelled out - was wobbly/undulating bass/guitar unisons around which drums/music and voice/words had to fit, a wavering sense of bitonality which owed markedly more to the early squat ethos of British post-punk than the usually cited influence of Beefheart. Over these washed-out waves of provincial fountain music Lynch would declaim shagged out dog stories, or exclaim chants, or be the best stand up comic in eighties pop (they did try). The music was purposely and sufficiently astringent to ward off any notion of C86 compatibility - even though they appeared on the NME's C86 cassette - and as it turned out, far too awkward even for the still wide boundaries of the mid-eighties charts. The atonal reverie "Chaos," its jagged path dotted by Lynch's chorus cries of "Mutiny! MUTINY!," the crepuscular cup cakes of "A Fierce Pancake," the landlocked sea shanty of "Eager Bereaver," the stalwart shambles of "Alcohol" - all floating eagerly in some isthmus attempting not to connect the Band of Holy Joy and Fatima Mansions - defeated would-be producers Holger Hiller and John Robie alike. Stump were like a huge pantechnicon intent on crashing into its own rear just for the heaven of it.
"Charlton Heston," as bassist Kev Hopper freely admits on his sleevenote to the Complete Anthology, was the nearest Stump ever came to "pop"; its sampled frog croaks almost on a par with the mid-section of New Order's "Perfect Kiss." Over the bumptious beats, which periodically change to unlikely rockabilly for the chorus/tag line "Then Charlton Heston put his vest on," Lynch sings his jolly tale as though Brendan Behan had spiked the brandies of both Rolf Harris and Val Doonican, a lyric which retells the story of The Ten Commandments as rewritten by Flann O'Brien for Charlie Drake to recite, with a nod to a hopeful Reagan/Thatcher fall ("The Pharaoh glowed with satisfaction/But then to his immense surprise/His empire fell before his eyes"). Then, after the inevitable destruction, a colouring book guide to the commandments themselves and contrasting them with the artificialities of de Mille ("Bushes that refuse to burn," "Thou shalt not bonk thy neighbour's wife"), taking in locust pie and painting Egypt red. Immensely and artfully silly, it is not known whether the real Charlton Heston, that staunch, ever-bronzing conservative, then in London to appear on stage as Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons, ever heard the song; but as far as pop was concerned it appeared on the lists for one week at #72 and then, like the band, drifted back down the Nile of their own making.
The optimism-boggling wonder of course is how any major record label, even in the still relatively open market of the mid-eighties, thought Stump might be "pop" in any shape or form, apart from their perpetually eye-popping frontman, the genial Cork man Mick Lynch. Their trademark - as early classic "Buffalo" spelled out - was wobbly/undulating bass/guitar unisons around which drums/music and voice/words had to fit, a wavering sense of bitonality which owed markedly more to the early squat ethos of British post-punk than the usually cited influence of Beefheart. Over these washed-out waves of provincial fountain music Lynch would declaim shagged out dog stories, or exclaim chants, or be the best stand up comic in eighties pop (they did try). The music was purposely and sufficiently astringent to ward off any notion of C86 compatibility - even though they appeared on the NME's C86 cassette - and as it turned out, far too awkward even for the still wide boundaries of the mid-eighties charts. The atonal reverie "Chaos," its jagged path dotted by Lynch's chorus cries of "Mutiny! MUTINY!," the crepuscular cup cakes of "A Fierce Pancake," the landlocked sea shanty of "Eager Bereaver," the stalwart shambles of "Alcohol" - all floating eagerly in some isthmus attempting not to connect the Band of Holy Joy and Fatima Mansions - defeated would-be producers Holger Hiller and John Robie alike. Stump were like a huge pantechnicon intent on crashing into its own rear just for the heaven of it.
"Charlton Heston," as bassist Kev Hopper freely admits on his sleevenote to the Complete Anthology, was the nearest Stump ever came to "pop"; its sampled frog croaks almost on a par with the mid-section of New Order's "Perfect Kiss." Over the bumptious beats, which periodically change to unlikely rockabilly for the chorus/tag line "Then Charlton Heston put his vest on," Lynch sings his jolly tale as though Brendan Behan had spiked the brandies of both Rolf Harris and Val Doonican, a lyric which retells the story of The Ten Commandments as rewritten by Flann O'Brien for Charlie Drake to recite, with a nod to a hopeful Reagan/Thatcher fall ("The Pharaoh glowed with satisfaction/But then to his immense surprise/His empire fell before his eyes"). Then, after the inevitable destruction, a colouring book guide to the commandments themselves and contrasting them with the artificialities of de Mille ("Bushes that refuse to burn," "Thou shalt not bonk thy neighbour's wife"), taking in locust pie and painting Egypt red. Immensely and artfully silly, it is not known whether the real Charlton Heston, that staunch, ever-bronzing conservative, then in London to appear on stage as Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons, ever heard the song; but as far as pop was concerned it appeared on the lists for one week at #72 and then, like the band, drifted back down the Nile of their own making.
