Wilko Johnson gone solo

 

Just as Dr Feelgood wasn’t the same, and certainly didn’t sound the same, without Wilko’s idiosyncratic guitar style, Wilko’s solo releases generally suffer from the lack of a good vocalist. He too often has a shrill yelping style of singing, which is all right for three or four songs on an album, separated by  songs with a better vocalist but listen to 12 or 14 of them consecutively becomes a teeth gritting challenge to say the least.

 

Wilko  was out of the blocks as solo artist quickly enough, though not as quickly as Dr Feelgood who released an album with new guitarist John Mayo within months after Wilko’s departure, with teh Solid Senders album in 1978. I expect that the band name suggested that it was indeed intended to be a band and not just a solo project but it didn’t last.

 

The Solid Senders featured keyboards, a decent vocalist and songwriters other than Wilko Johnson, and the album is pretty good. The rhythm section swings solidly, like the Feelgoods, and the addition of keyboards and another vocalist to gives us a varied set of originals and covers that Is highly enjoyable and is a more satisfactory follow up to Sneakin Suspicion than Be Seeing You  is and in a way shows a direction Dr Feelgood could’ve explored if sense had prevailed and they’d stuck together. The production is excellent too.

 

In 1981, the follow up was Ice on the Motorway, this time just a Wilko Johnson album with mostly bass and drums backing, and some keyboards, and it’s a great disappointment. The production is basic to say the least, and is almost no better than demo quality, with a disturbingly tinny guitar sound.  The tempos are also much too frenetic and Wilko’s thin, reedy voice is hardly the instrument to carry an entire album. He was good for a couple of songs per album, with Dr Feelgood and with the Solid Senders, but over the stretch it rakes some tolerance.

 

Wilko covers “Can You Please Crawl Through Your Bathroom Window,” “Long Tall Texan” and “I Put a Spell on You.”  He doesn’t bring much of interest to the party for the first two songs and the latter is a live version where he at last emotes the craziness the song demands.

 

There is perhaps a reason why Ice on the Motorway is not available on Apple  Music, and it might be the demo-level quality of the album. I listened to it for the first time on YouTube Music, in the week after Wilko’s death,  and was mildly disappointed.  I suppose it’s a must have for Wilko completists but it’s tough to listen to all at once.

 

Barbed Wire Blues (1995) is quite similar to Ice on the Motorway, with better production and with a more considered pace, yet also with Wilko voice that starts to grate about half way through the record.  One longs for another voice to mitigate the tedium of the continuous bleat. The songs don’t seem to be classics but they’re okay and Wilko’s riffs are as compelling as ever. 

 

With Going Back Home (2014), Wilko teamed up with Roger Daltrey to provide the gruff vocals while Wilko provides the trade mark riffs, and the performances provide a fair resemblance to Dr Feelgood, with 11 songs covering Wilko’s career, both with Dr Feelgood and as solo artist.

 

Amongst other tunes, they perform “Ice on the Motorway” and “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Bathroom Window”.  The production values on Going Back Home is far, far better than that of Ice on the Motorway, and Johnson’s guitar sound is not tinny but  tough and  powerful, as with peak Feelgoods, and  Wilko’s playing is not  with the frenetic nervousness evident on the earlier record, and one can hear what these songs should’ve sounded like in 1981.

 

My only quibble with teh album is that Wilko doesn’t sing at all, not even on songs, like “Sneakin’ Suspicion” or “Everybody’s Carrying a Gun” that I associate with him.  As I’ve said, the Johnson voice and vocal style over the length of an album takes some tolerance but it’s quite nice if he sings two or three of his own tunes to provide a contrast to the main vocalist.

 

I quite like the album though Daltrey, as good as he is, is not a match for Brilleaux on the songs associated with Dr Feelgood, because the song selection is excellent and the band  does them justice with the mixture of toughness and looseness that characterises R & B done well. 

 

Okay, I began listening to the earlier albums after I refreshed my memory with Solid Senders and Going Back Home, first Ice on the Motorway on YouTube and then Barbed Wire Blues on Apple music, which doesn’t carry the entire Wilko Johnson solo catalogue, and halfway through Barbed Wire Blues, I realised that I couldn’t bear to listen to more solo Wilko.  His voice ruins the experience.

 

So, I abandoned this project.  Wilko released a bunch of records over his lifetime, and there might be more stuff in vaults that will now see the light of day, but just as Dr Feelgood never improved  on their first four albums, Wilko never  did either. He ought’ve recruited a good vocalist, not quite a Lee Brilleaux imitator but at least someone who could share vocal duties to mitigate the Wilko yelp.

 

Wilko Johnson has bequeathed us his highly characteristic, quickly identifiable guitar style and some masterful songs in the idiom of modern R & B and blues,  and the latter should live on, both as performed by him with Dr Feelgood and on his own, and perhaps as covered by new generations of young guns who rediscover the blues and its UK offshoots.

 

 

Which Dr Feelgood albums should you own?

 The albums of Dr Feelgood can be grouped into three periods:

 

1.    Down by the Jetty (1975) to Sneakin’ Suspicion (1977);

2.    Be Seeing You (1877) to On the Job (1981);

3.    the rest.

 

1.    The Classic Period

 

The first four albums of the most important and the only Feelgoods albums you need to own. This version of the band is the original and classic version with Wilco Johnson, Lee Brilleaux, John B Sparkes and The Big Figure (John Martin.) and this group of records features the first two brilliant studio albums, a live album and a flawed studio album, Wilko Johnson's last contribution. Sneakin’ Suspicion is a controversial record because of circumstances of Johnson’s departure allegedly due to disagreements over songs for the record. 

 

The band had always recorded cover versions, partly because Walker Johnson did not write enough songs to fill 12 tracks and partly because the band probably wanted to record the songs they did. Apparently, by the time of the recording of Sneakin’ Suspicion there was already a rift in the band, specifically between Johnson and Brilleaux, with the other two as neutral as possible, and when any disagreements occurred they were amplified by the animosity between the two principal members, neither of whom wanted to give way regarding songs they wanted to record even if the other person was not as  keen, and neither were adult enough to be able to resolve the issues sensibly.

 

According to the Oil City Confidential documentary, Johnson wanted to include his composition, “Paradise” on the record and Brilleaux, and perhaps the others, did not think it was suitable for the band. In turn, they were pressing for the inclusion of Lew Lewis’ song “Lucky 7,” which Johnson didn't like.  Apparently, the compromise was, if you want your song, we insist on our choice.

 

Johnson played on the album, but it seems that “Lucky 7” was the straw that broke the camel's back, but I suppose that would be the easy hook on which to hang the breakup, and that there were many and more diverse factors involved.

 

Sneakin’ Suspicion is only half of a good record. Johnson's songs are the only worthwhile tracks and are far superior to the cover versions the band recorded, most of which sound like filler the band plays with no enthusiasm or interest at all.  Perhaps, nobody was keen on recording that album that should’ve been pushed back for a bit until Wilko had enough songs for it but commercial pressures from the record company, that the band capitalise on the massive success of the Stupidity live album by releasing new product asap.

 

It’s a classic case of many bad decisions made for stupid reasons whereas everyone should’ve stepped back for a breather, had a rest and reassessed and then moved forward. As it is, Dr Feelgood has left us two and a half good studio albums and an exciting live album.

 

2.    The holding pattern period.

 

Dr Feelgood recruited a new guitarist, John ‘Gypie’ Mayo, and carried on, relying on the momentum and name recognition created in the classic period. The band name had become a brand.

 

Mayo and Brilleaux took up the song writing responsibilities, though the band still relied on cover version too, and Dr Feelgood recorded three decent studio albums, Be Seeing You, Private Practice (1978) and A Case of the Shakes (1980), and had commercial success, and a terrible studio album, Let It Roll (1979), and two superfluous live albums, no doubt hoping to repeat the success of Stupidity.

Be Seeing You was released to establish the new version of the band, introduce the new guy and to give the band material to play live that wasn’t completely from the Johnson years, and is not bad but not a home run either. The original songs are pedestrian and for the first time one notices that Brilleaux is mostly just a shouter and not so much a singer.  

 

Private Practice had a hit single, “Milk & Alcohol,” and the most ambitious music the band had ever recorded, with improved lyrics and a more standard hard rock approach to the R & B roots and Mayo’s inclination to overdub as many guitar parts as possible.  The production values are high and Brilleaux does actually sing properly on some songs.  At the time, I preferred Be Seeing You, and found Private Practice hard to digest but lately I’m more appreciative and. compared to the later records, its ambition is laudable.

 

With A Case of the Shakes the band ventured into New Wave territory for its clothes, album cover design and approach to R & B and for me this is the last worthwhile Feelgoods’ studio album to own and probably the best of the three of the Mayo period.  The guitar style is less convoluted and more direct than on its studio predecessor and the lyrics are splendid and witty.

 

Let It Roll is lame. It’s another record that feels, and sounds, as if the band had no interest in going into the studio and just did the album as a contractual obligation. The band plays competently but Brilleaux’s vocals are terrible, and the choice of songs is dubious.

 

The two live albums are just concert souvenirs.

 

3.    The declining period.

 

Mayo left the band and eventually Sparks and Big Figure did too, and Dr Feelgood became Brilleaux with backing musicians, though some of them signed on for a long time, and the principal guitarist, Steve Walwyn, served for far longer than Johnson and  Mayo combined,  and nowadays there’s a version of the band that has nothing to do with the earlier versions except for the name. 

 

Brilleaux fronted the band until his death in 1992 and recorded a bunch of records with it, all of which one can only describe as workmanlike, pedestrian and non-essential, unless you are a Feelgoods Ultra.  In the classic period, Dr Feelgood had a distinctive sound and a songwriter of brilliance. In this late period, the band was indistinguishable, save for Brilleaux’s voice, from so many others in the same field. The musicians were experienced and competent and the songs were worthy, but there was no positive progression anymore and nothing compelling.

 

CONCLUSION

 

Get the first four records and stop there. If you’re curious about what happened next, add Be Seeing You, Private Practice and A Case of the Shakes and stop there. Don’t waste your money or time on any other Feelgoods records.

Some thoughts on Wilko Johnson

 RIP WILKO JOHNSON

12 July 1947 – 21 November 2022

 

One Sunday night in 1975, the DJ who presented a juke box jury type programme on Radio 5, South Africa’s national music station, introduced “Back in the Night” by Dr Feelgood, a band I’d never hear of before and it was the same for the members of the jury, called to judge a slate of mostly current pop records that sounded nothing like “Back in the Night.” 

 

I was hooked at the very moment the tinny, angular shuffle rhythm of Wilko’s rhythm guitar part and Lee Brilleaux’s basic, insistent slide guitar riff emerged from the old tub driven radio I was listening to. I can’t claim that the sound roared from the radio, because the single speaker couldn’t roar if its life depended on it and the song itself, as tough as the rhythm was, hardly had the full bodied Les Paul roar of the kind of hard rock I was accustomed to then. “Back in the Night” not only sounded nothing like the other tunes the juke box jury were called on to judge, it also sounded like nothing else on Radio and like nothing I’d ever heard before.

 

I must admit that my record collection was pretty sparse at the time, comprising of probably only The Beatles 1962 – 1966, and Neil Diamond’s Gold and Taproot Manuscript albums, and that my overall exposure to rock music was pretty basic: from the radio, from a couple of records I borrowed from the Municipal Library and from some records my mates had, but it was hardly eclectic and mostly standard commercial rock, much of what is now known as Classic Rock. I hadn’t yet begun learning anything about the blues much less listening to it or buying blues albums.

 

I was mostly ignorant of the broad details of rock’s history and completely ignorant of the wide variety of music out there. The term and concept of “pub rock” was thoroughly alien to me.

 

Dr Feelgood came as a shock to the system. Within a few days after first hearing “Back in the Night” I found the parent album, Malpractice (1975), the second Feelgoods’ album and immediately bought it and almost wore out the grooves over the next few years. In 1976 I bought the live album Stupidity (1976),  in 1977 the debut album, Down by the Jetty (1975) and then, released in the same year, the final Feelgoods album on which Wilko contributed songs, sung and played,  Sneakin’ Suspicion. 

 

Because I was fan of the band, I continued buying the albums with John Mayo up to A Case of the Shakes(1981) and then gave up. Without Wilko, Dr Feelgood had reverted to being a journeymen pub band, albeit with a bigger name and being able to play in larger venue. Mayo was a good guitarist and the band wrote songs that were okay enough but the spark of genius and eccentric quirkiness  that Wilko contributed was irrevocably gone.

 

Wilko brought this choppy, highly individualistic guitar style and intelligent song writing style to the band. Somehow, though, he never seemed to have enough material to provide, say, 12 songs per album and the band always inserted some covers. On Down by the Jetty, the two final tracks, “Oyeh!” and “Bonie Moronie/Tequila” are utter filler, especially the latter live track, and to this day I’m baffled why this performance was chosen

 

On Malpractice, even the covers are powerful and substantial and completely fit the template. That is not the case on Sneaking Suspicion where the Johnson songs are the only worthwhile ones and not one cover version is essential, never the controversial “Lucky Seven.” It also doesn’t help that Brilleaux seems to have lost the ability to sing and settled on the gruff bark he employed henceforth as his default style. the band would have been far better served by waiting until Wilko had more songs together, such as the tunes on Sneaking Suspicion and the songs released on Solid Senders (1978.)

 

Neither Dr Feelgood nor Johnson as solo artist, conquered the world, for that the music was too niche  and not necessarily radio friendly contemporary pop hits, but one will always wonder whether Dr Feelgood would’ve left a better legacy behind if Wilko had been with the band for a far longer stretch.

 

Wilko carried on, first with the short-lived Solid Senders group, where he was, seemingly, one amongst equals, and then a purely solo career backed by a drummer and bassist, continued working and writing, recording and releasing new material. On  much of the material one misses a proper vocalist.  Wilko is earnest and can carry a tune but his voice is tad thin and weedy for the genre.

 

I must confess that I’ve not followed Wilko’s solo career. Firstly, because I wasn’t aware of it to any great degree and the records, or CDs were not readily available in South African records stores (though I did buy Solid Senders) and now that I’ve listened to his post-Feelgoods  output, I can’t honestly say I’m sorry.  If the post-Wilko Feelgoods albums do not live up to much, neither does Wilko’s later records. They sound too lightweight.

 

Brilleaux died a long time ago, and now only the original Feelgoods rhythm section is alive, conserving the memories of those halcyon ‘70s heydays when Dr Feelgood emerged from the pubs, conquered the UK and were called the precursors of punk rock. 

 

Wilko’s angular, choppy guitar style is echoed in a great deal of post punk rhythm guitar and I suppose this would be his greatest contribution, musically. The punks and post punks were not into the blues; they just liked the fast paced, simple style of Dr Feelgood and, allegedly, the short-ish hair and more prosaic clothing. Dr Feelgood didn’t sound, look or dress like the dinosaur rock groups the punks wanted to eliminate.

 

For me, Wilko was a force in music, and will forever have a spot in the pantheon for his role, for a couple of years, from roughly 1973 to 1978 and then faded away into a low-key career path. His earlies work with Dr Feelgood will probably always be cited as highly influential and eternally powerful, but I can’t see that his subsequent career, when he was kind of coasting on the earlier reputation much like Dr Feelgood, will ever receive the attention or adulation of the breakthrough years. Most eulogies feature some story of the first time the writer saw or heard the band and it’s always, much like mine, about those years in the pubs or just as the band began moving out of the circuit, when Dr Feelgood was genuinely exciting because they were so different, so daring and so special. 

 

Wilko simply kept on doing what he did best for the rest of his life, and no doubt successfully so but he ceased being an innovator or an artist whose lates work one had to hear.

 

Having said that, he will always be revered. For me, he and Eric Clapton (while with Cream) were my top two guitarists of my teenage years and Dr Feelgood and Cream were the top two bands of that period of my life.  From 1977 my record collection expanded exponentially and quickly encompassed more rock bands, more blues artists, and reggae and funk, and I learnt much more about rock history and the important musicians to date, but however much I might have come to like Jimi Hendrix or Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley or Parliafunkadelicment Thang, Cream and Dr Feelgood remained at the centre and was the music I kept returning to, to this day. Malpractice and Disraeli Gears are definitely on my Desert Island Disc list. 

 

I will always be thankful that Wilko Johnson, Lee Brilleaux, John Sparks, and John Martin got together to form a band and that between Wilko’s unique guitar style and engaging lyrics, Lee’s ominous onstage presence and tough voice and the supple and swinging rhythm section, they produced something that was indeed a whole far greater than the sum of the parts, and I’m thankful that Wilko’s genius for R & B was the motor that drove the band to the heights it achieved.

Damn right, this is a pointless new Dr Feelgood record..

 DR FEELGOOD                  DAMN RIGHT! (2022)

 

 

Ironically, I’m writing this only two days after Wilko Johnson’s death, at 75, on 21 November 2022.

 

***

 

I was hooked on Dr Feelgood from the first eerie slide guitar notes of “Back in The Night,” wore out my copy of Malpractice (1975), bought every album up to A Case of the Shakes (1981) and then abandoned the band altogether because the music just got so damn ordinary, first when Wilko Johnson left, and when John Mayo also departed the original unique spark that had piqued my interest was finally gone. One by one, the remaining founding members but Lee Brilleaux left and when he died the band carried on regardless because, as I understand it, manager Chris Fenwick owned the rights to the band name and could exploit it as he saw fit.

 

This has led, eventually to this new release by Dr Feelgood, no more than a brand now, with not only none of the founding members but also without any continuity in replacement membership at all.  God knows why they need to release an album of new, original material unless it’s a simple marketing tool and more  merch to sell at gigs.

 

I recently listened to all those late period Feelgoods albums, with Brilleaux, and the overriding impression, regardless of how proficient the musicians are and of how much energy they try to bring to the songs, is that Dr Feelgood became a mediocre band, a far cry from the intelligent, quirky genius of Wilko Johnson’s songs.  Lee Brilleaux’s voice and ability to sing also seemed to deteriorate as the years passed and he was reduced to just barking out the lyrics. 

 

The original Dr Feelgood transcended the pub rock circuit where they made their name and bestrode the UK R & B scene like a colossus.  Eventually, though, the band, in its later versions, simply returned to being a pub band, albeit one with a name and reputation that was cemented in those Wilko Johnson years and had legs, thankfully for Brilleaux and whoever played with him, and Fenwick.  If Dr Feelgood had started with Mayo, or whoever replaced him, they would hardly have built the rep and name recognition the band still has, never mind producing any music worth mentioning.

 

That brings us to this new release.

 

The immediate issue on first impression is the glaring absence of the familiar Brilleaux growl that is a huge disconnect with the “authentic” version of  Dr Feelgood.  The singer enunciates clearly but his voice is too high, too thin and too nice for the braggadocio and menace that good R & B and blues requires.

 

It’s like the Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger’s vocals. And, come to think of it, it’s also like the Stones without Keith Richards, as the guitarist, however proficient he might be, brings little to the party. He riffs continuously throughout the songs yet without that rhythmic urgency, drive and funk that Wilko Johnson had.

 

The second impression, based on the careful, clean production and the equally careful, almost prissy playing, is that there is not much power here and no presence of the sweaty, gutbucket R & B on which the band based its sound and itself played.  Perhaps this iteration of Dr Feelgood is hot stuff on stage but in the studio they take too much care to be professional and proficient and lose the visceral excitement this kind of music is supposed to provide.

 

My main criticism is that the vocalist doesn’t have the right kind of voice for this music and there is no interesting quirk or dangerous weirdness in his delivery.  The musicians are obviously versed in this music and know their craft, have taken pains to write some decent songs, without engaging hooks or riffs to make them memorable, and do their best to bring us a quality product, albeit  journeyman quality.

 

The best one can say about the record is that it pretty much fits in with late period Brilleaux-led Dr Feelgood, minus the latter’s distinctive vocals, but it’s a far cry from the sound and feel  of the version of the band I still love without reservation. Not one song on this record stands out. You can appreciate each one individually but as a collection the one fades into the other and are soon forgotten.

 

I really don’t know why anyone wants to keep this brand going in this way. It’s understandable that the current band wants to release its own music but it’s hardly an instant classic debut for the ages. If your fix is decent, ordinary, competently performed pub rock, especially in a pub when you’re a couple of pints ahead of the game, this record would be a lovely souvenir.  If you want something more exciting, something that’ll get its hooks into you and never let go, this is not it.

 

The name and concept of “Dr Feelgood”  has a hefty legacy and tis album does not do it justice and will never carry on the legacy. It’s to Down by the Jetty, Malpractice, Stupidity and Sneakin’ Suspicion  what Cut the Crapis to The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope London Calling, Sandinista! and Combat Rock.

I.e. it’s a “no” from me.

 

Shuffling, I'm Shuffling

 SHUFFLING, I’M SHUFFLING

 

 

From the start of my record collection, I was an album kind of guy and hardly ever bought singles, partly because of a value for money approach that an album of, say, 12 tracks and clocking in at about 40 minutes was a far better deal than a single with only two tracks.

 

The first and only single I bought as contemporary release, was Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” and I only bought it because I loved the song and couldn’t wait until Christmas when I was going to get it as a present.

 

A couple of years later I bought some cheap singles from Sygma Records that had an entire table with old, unsold singles at bargain prices and I bought one single each  by Deep Purple, Foghat and Wet Willie  and two singles by Suzi Quatro. And that was it.

 

When I played a record, I  listened to the album from start to finish, and from 1981 taped all my records onto C90 cassette tapes so that I could listen to  an album as a continuous whole, with no need to turn over a record on a turntable, and so I came  accustomed to sequences of songs, the one following the other in a familiar, unchanging pattern and that eternal sequence became a kind of comfort zone of familiarity.

 

Many years later, when I got an iPod and then various iPhones on which I could load music, the “shuffle” function radically changed how I listened to and appreciated even albums I almost knew by heart.   

 

When you shuffle, say, 1000 songs off a collection of albums you not only get the benefit of, in my case, the best radio station on earth with an extremely eclectic mix of hard rock, blues, funk, soul, reggae, African music and pop but the best benefit, I found, is that began re-considering and re-appreciating songs played out of the context of a familiar sequence on a loved album.  The individual songs are heard in stark contrast to the preceding, often musically unrelated, and following tracks, and this generally means that I’m more alert to it than I would be if it were played in a familiar sequence where it blends in with the rest of the album and there is no special attention on it.

 

The effect is greatest and more rewarding with either leaser known songs off otherwise loved albums or albums that haven’t struck the same chord as the loved records, where I suddenly listen to this previously underappreciated song with fresh ears and more focus. Tracks that had seemed pleasant but otherwise not distinguished often  reveal intricacies in sound, arrangement, melody or lyrics that previously not been as apparent in the context of an album listened to in sequence. Even songs I’d thought of as mediocre now have new glamour, so to speak, and seem more worthwhile than in the context of the parent record.

AC/DC's high voltage dirty deeds revisited

 AC/DC’s HIGH VOLTAGE DIRTY DEEDS  REVISITED

 

 

I’ve never been an AC/DC fan and have owned only two albums, High Voltage (1975) and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (1976), their first and second releases, conveniently sold as a “two-fer” pack and, to be honest, I bought them only because they were dirt cheap.  It was somewhere between 1977 and 1981 and I knew of AC/DC from the odd radio play but was never particularly motivated to buy any of their contemporary releases and even these two albums, fond of them as I am, couldn’t make a difference.

 

I’ve just relistened to the two records for the first time in probably thirty years and was pleasantly surprised to find how well they stood up and how much I enjoyed hearing them again. 

 

At this time the band was obviously still deeply in thrall to blues based hard rock of the earlier generation of heavy bands and Bon Scott was still the lead singer. His sly, suggestive tone informs songs of high school smutty innuendo like “The Jack,” “Can I Sit Next to You Girl” and “Little Lover” on High Voltage, and “Love at First Feel,” “Big Balls” and “Squealer” on Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. The lyrics are so typical of hard rock, written by young men with excess testosterone and a somewhat immature and misogynist view of women, but Scott almost plays it for laughs, cartoonish even and this deflects some of the unacceptable nature.

 

I think AC/DC loss a huge asset when he died. Brian Johnson is an excellent hard rock vocalist but he hardly has the sly subtlety Scott brought to the party and that mitigated the clichéd hard rock  ethos. The band continued trading in sexual innuendo but where Scott sounded almost witty, Johnson sounds clumsily, awkwardly earnest.

 

On the other hand,  the songs about being in a hard rock band, such as “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock and Roll),” Rock ‘n Roll Singer,”  “High Voltage,”  “Rocker,”  “There’s Gonna Be Some Rocking Tonight” and “Ain’t No Fun (Waiting Around to be a Millionaire, ” not to mention “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” are quite good, sometimes self-deprecating and with Scott  still sounding as if he’s letting us in on a joke,  and there is little bombast, just old fashioned, no thrills, hugely entertaining,  hard rock. Malcolm Young is a monster on rhythm guitar, Angus Young’s blues-based leads soar and the rhythm section thrives on the solid, blues-based riffs. 

 

AC/DC went on to bigger and better things after these two albums,  including the next couple of records with Scott,  and have become a hard rock institution and an international treasure, I guess,  but I don’t think they were as much fun anymore. There are different pressures on a band when they realise the can have a career in their chose field and however skilled and proficient they  become, the early unselfconscious  innocence, so to speak, can never be regained.

 

 

 

 

The Extreme Metal Jape

 THE EXTREME METAL JAPE

 

 

I’ve recently watched a documentary on the origins of Norwegian black metal, which focused mainly on Mayhem, with comments from former and current band members and other musicians in the genre who were part of the movement back then or are in it now.

 

This led me to exploring other similar documentaries on YouTube, about  other black metal bands, the grind core movement, death metal, thrash metal, and others.  All of this was to refresh my memory, so to speak.

 

Some years ago  videos of bands at Wacken Open Air Festival, Hellfest, and other such events, appeared on my  YouTube feed, for no apparent reason, as well as some documentaries on extreme metal and its variations, and from this stuff I took away that I really like Tsjuder but that, on the whole, most of the music sound so much the same that, for the uninitiated, there isn’t much difference between black metal, death metal, grind core, Viking metal, or any of those subgenres that aren’t anything as melodic and anthemic as symphonic metal, and not even as tuneful, with recognisable choruses such as the thrash metal survivors Metallica, net to mention old school, classic metal and hard rock.

 

Most of extreme metal just sounds like fast, pounding drums and speedy, downtuned chord riffing with hoarse, screamed or grunted vocals and for the life of me, if I listened to the stuff blindfolded, I wouldn’t tell the difference between one band or genre and the other.

 

Having said that, I would dearly love to be part of the crowd at Hellfest, with the vast, roaring, blast of sound enveloping and  overwhelming me in the midst of a crowd  of metal fans.

 

I understand that metal musicians are highly technically skilled and pride themselves on this, working incredibly hard and long to hone their skills and that the apparent wall of noise camouflages intricate playing that goes well beyond simple three chord punk rock.  That is the serious part of the deal, but a lot of the rest, the outer trappings, seems to be ridiculous, a complex, involved joke only the initiates appreciate.

 

There is the dress code of black, with lots of leather, studs and spikes, the very long hair, the absurd face paint, the very specific style of guitar with angular shapes and always black and the really stupid Satanic trappings and lyrics or the pseudo-medieval costumes of the Viking metallers. I don’t know whether any of them believe in Satanism as a religious alternative to Christianity (usually) or whether it’s all a pose, but either way, it can only be a bunch of teenage youths who can come up with world view as a way to shock the middle classes.

 

On the guitars: it’s so weird to see these bands all play similar looking guitars (and it must be at least an unwritten law in the metal community that it’s not acceptable, or is at least an exception to the rule, that the guitars must have this specific, highly recognisable look) that I’ve wondered whether, say, at Hellfest, all the bands simply share the same three or four guitars and basses, with the musicians coming off stage handing their axes to the musicians coming onstage. 

 

If it wasn’t for the relentless brutal riffing of, for example Tsjuder, their visual impact on stage and the lyrical preoccupations  of the songs would easily come across as a parody, a grand spoof. Yet the musicians and the audience take the spectacle extremely seriously. There are a lot of bands and, I suppose, a large, underground audience out there, though it might not as underground as all that, considering the numbers.

 

I grew up with classic, blues based hard rock and metal of the ‘70s and, because of punk and new wave, ignored the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the hair metal bands and thrash metal bands of the ‘80s.  I heard odd  tracks by Metallica on the radio and saw the Slayer, Megadeath and Anthrax records in my local record store, but bot into Metallica only because of “Enter Sandman” and the Metallica (1990) album, but hardly listened to their thrash contemporaries.  The Cult and Guns ‘N Roses were my top reck bands of the ‘80s. The first Motley Crüe record I bought was a compilation of hits. I heard random tracks from Poison, Ratt, Headpins, Cinderella and others on a metal radio show, but was never intrigued enough to buy any of the music then, and now I don’t think I’d want to.

 

So, I came to the really extreme metal genres quite late in my life and I must say, apart from the sense that everything sounds so similar as to be materially  indistinguishable, I enjoy listening to a variety of bands, provided that it’s loud. I don’t care much about the lyrics, for the most part unintelligible, as I could care less whether they celebrate Satan (in whom I don’t believe), Viking warriors  or just a basic dystopian, mythic future.  All I want is loud, fast, or at least loud if it must  plod at a deliberate pace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kiss, kiss but no bang, bang

 KISS, KISS BUT NO BANG, BANG

 

During the ‘70s Kiss was mostly just a name and an image of four guys in make up masks to me.  “Rock and Roll All Nite,”   perhaps “Beth,”  and “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” (Kiss going disco) were on the radio every now and then but South African rock radio, such as it was, hardly saturated the airwaves with Kiss.  Ace Frehley’s solo project “Ne York Groove” had a decent amount of exposure and was a favourite of mine at the time. I saw some of the album covers, and read that Alive was regarded by some as one of the greatest live albums of all time (to that date, anyway) and read the quote, from Hit Parader magazine, that Kiss would be the best thing since sliced bread if they could only write number one hit songs. There was the fanatical Kiss Army who dressed up and wore make up to represent their favourite band members. The Kiss sage show was almost over the top theatrical, with the musicians teetering around in high heeled boots, lots of pyrotechnics, including Gene Simmons breathing fire and sticking out a huge, prosthetic tongue and high energy rock and roll. The story was that they dressed up from the start, when they were playing  high school gyms and small club and simply carried on doing it on bigger and bigger stages. Kiss were superstars in Japan before they broke big in the USA. They did unmask themselves for a bit, in the ‘80s, perhaps to regain attention on a fading band, but resumed the masks shortly afterwards.  The drummer left the band and was replaced by another character.  

 

For all this, and mostly because of what I saw as ridiculous costumes and because I didn’t really know the music and wasn’t that keen on finding out, I eschewed Kiss, even as I  began investigating the ‘70s hard rock of Cheap Trick, Aerosmith and Blue Oyster Cult.

 

Somehow, in the mid-‘80s I found a copy of the debut album, Kiss (1974) in a bargain bin somewhere.  When I listened to the record, I was pleasantly surprised and yet also a tad deflated because I’d expected so much more from this legendary band, but, I guess, it was the debut and better would come. The music was pretty much tough edged rock and roll, not particularly hard rock and not metal, with a little melody, big choruses and typical male centred hard rock lyrics about mythical bad girl stereotypes of the time.  Several songs off this debut are Kiss classics and the album is very listenable indeed and holds up well today, along with the aforementioned bands from the period, in that kinda dumb hard rock genre.

 

The first impression of Hotter Than Hell (1974) is that it’s less tough than the debut, with a much more sophisticated, smoothed out sound, and a resultant loss of edge, a much more deliberate pace, without an increase in heaviness, and a general air of an over cautious approach, probably to make the record radio friendly . Only “Let Me Go, Rock and Roll” breaks a sweat.

 

 I reckon, if I’d actually been a Kiss fan at the time, a casual one, and had bought Hotter Than Hell because I liked the debut album, I would’ve thought I’d wasted money buying the follow up and would’ve lost interest.

 

I think Kiss must’ve had the same thought and Dressed to Kill (1975) is out of the blocks fast and loud, albeit with the same kind of nudge, nudge, wink, wink teenage boy’s idea of a great rock lyric, where women are nothing but bad, as in hot, or just bad as in scheming, deceitful and troublesome.  After the fast start, though, the style and pace of the music reverts to verging on sludge and there is very little of material interest on the album until the closing track “Rock and Roll All Nite.”

 

Kiss and their management realised that the production values on their studio albums didn’t reflect the band’s live sound and believed that this defect, for a band that thrived on a loud, spectacular live performance, did them no favours and the next release was Alive (1975), intended to give the fans a taste of the high energy onstage performances of fan favourite tunes, and to establish once and for all that the studio albums to date  were not truly what the band was about. The lives cuts do not sound that much better than the studio versions and the joke was that most of the music was recorded in the studio afterwards, which means that you don’t actually hear what the band sounds like live at all. Presumably, the spectacle of the stage show was really what impressed the fans and not so much the music.

 

Destroyer (1976) kicks off with the anthem and ode to a hard rock burg,  “Detroit Rock City” and with the following songs it’s apparent that their ambitions to produce even more radio friendly hard rock have gone up a notch. The rough edges have been fully smoothed out. “Great Expectations” is a ridiculous, anthemic sleazy ballad dedicated to the band’s female followers; “Shout It Out Loud” is more sing-along party noise;  and “Beth” is the sensitive, piano driven, power ballad dedicated to the good woman at home. 

 

CODA

 

My optimistic target was to listen to more Kiss albums than these few, at least until the end of the ‘70s output but it was getting to be  harder work  than I’d anticipated mostly because the band just doesn’t rock hard enough and the songs aren’t particularly good or engaging. The slower riff heavy tunes don’t stomp, they just plod, and the faster tunes are just so frivolously lightweight, and most of the lyrical ideas sound like parodies, except that they’re probably not.

 

Kiss have had more releases after the end of the ‘70s than they ever had in that decade, but I don’t think there’s compelling reason to listen to all of them, unless one wants to a serious, in-depth retrospective analysis, or are a die-hard fan.  The ‘70s catalogue, when the band was young, ambitious, full of vim and vigour, probably represents their best in terms of ideas even if, over time, they became technically better musicians.

 

Kiss has had a long and successful career, yet another member of the classic rock careerist cadres of musicians who’ve managed to maintain a career in hard rock and have proved that rock is not a young person’s game after all. If you’re the Rolling Stones, you can keep on rocking until your late seventies and there is still so much interest in, and money to made for, ‘70s rockers that they can keep going for as long as they like, or can.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Clash revisited one more time, with feeling

 

 

I’ve recently watched Donovan Letts’ documentary on The Clash,  Westway to the World, for the umpteenth time, and afterwards, Viva Joe Strummer, which concentrates on the latter but retreads the material parts of the band history.

 

I was 17 when punk rock became a thing in the UK, and from mid-1977, when I was at university, I bought the New Musical Express every week, although it was a couple of months behind when it arrived in Stellenbosch, and avidly devoured its coverage of punk rock, and then New Wave and the genres and sub-genres that followed.

 

South African radio didn’t play punk rock and the records weren’t available in Stellenbosch and, therefore, if I knew a lot about The Clash, their views and of how rock critics evaluated their music, I never heard any of the band’s music until I bought London Calling in 1979.  The music on this vinyl double album was quite removed from punk rock and I heard an exhilarating mix of  rockabilly, reggae, ska, jazz and pop, along with punk elements. The NME had praised the album highly and, impressionable as I was then, barely 20, I would’ve have loved it regardless but the music was good, the variety was intriguing and the sound impressive.

 

After repeated listening, I developed favourites or, rather, there were tracks I started caring for less, such as “Lost in the Supermarket,” “Koka Kola,” “Lover’s Rock” and “I’m Not Down.”

 

On the other hand, the first 5 tracks, from “London Calling” to “Rudie Can’t Fail,” represent one of the best opening sides of any rock album.   “Guns of Brixton” is arguably the one track off the album that is the stone classic for me.

 

I never brought any other Clash albums until The Story of The Clash, Vol 1 in 1993, which brought me up to speed  with the best of the debut album, Give ‘em Enough Rope, Sandinista!  and Combat Rock. I’d listened to the latter on a Sanyo personal tape player on a night time car journey from Pretoria to Cape Town and hadn’t been impressed, partly because I was mostly in a sleepy, comatose state, I guess, but after listening to the album again, on digital streaming, almost 40 years later, my first impression remained valid.

 

I finally bought The Clash  (probably the version released in the US) in the early year of the 21^st century and then the live album From Here to Eternity.  I’ve also listened to Give ‘em Enough Rope and Sandinista! on digital streaming.

 

I wasn’t around in London, or the UK, when the punk movement flared up. never saw of those bands live and was never part of the general enthusiasm and fanatical appreciation and love for bands like the Clash, so all I have are the various albums and, for me, the first three studio albums are the only albums worth owning. The eclectic music that followed from their musical ambition, technical abilities and interest in exploring contemporary sounds and influences, leaves me cold.  I suppose one must applaud their progressive approach and the understanding that musicians can’t afford to stagnate and endlessly repeat old glories if they want to be true to an artistic vision and to build a legacy.

 

The thing is that The Clash developed into a direction I didn’t, and still don’t, appreciate. For me it’s a truism that the music young musicians make in the first five to ten years of their careers, will always be the most exciting, interesting and entertaining. As they age, mature as persons and also as songwriters and become more technically adept, the initial vigour and creativity slowly dissipates and, if a musician becomes a better technical songwriter, they often forego intuitive brilliance and rely on mechanical methods to create.  Joe strummer seems inordinately proud of the process, and in the abundance of songs,  of  recording Sandinista! but concedes that it might have been better if it had been judiciously pruned. Okay, so the musicians had many ideas and decided to make tracks of all of them and release them too, but this record confirms my contention that mature proficiency in songwriting is no guarantee of quality, other than in process and musicianship. 

 

The first three Clash albums are the only ones worth owning or listening to more than once but they aren’t 100% killer, even London Calling, which is supposedly one of the greatest rock albums ever.  I like the variety of the musical genres and styles but you can definitely divide the songs between the good and the mediocre and there are more of the latter than needs be.

 

Briefly, the Clash were hailed as the greatest rock band in the world, and the only gang in town, and so on, and the documentaries highlight those aspects that did indeed raise the band above and beyond the contemporary competition, and of course the myth making is glorious.  There are only two music scenes I’ve ever wished I could’ve been part of: San Francisco between roughly 1965 and 1967, and punk rock London in 1976 and 1977.  Regarding the latter period, The Sex Pistols started it all and The Clash ruled it all and there was plenty of mutton dressed as lamb but it seems to have been very exhilarating.

 

“(Only) White Man in Hammersmith Palais” is  my favourite Clash song, and it’s telling, I suppose, that it’s not a roaring punk rocker but a more thoughtful reggae number, that epitomises to me what The Clash really meant as musical and cultural force. Nowadays it might be castigated as cultural appropriation but it’s a tour de forcenonetheless from a garage band with pretensions, then ambitions and finally skills and a presence.