The Flaming Lips at Glastonbury

extracted from "Turn Left at the Womble-How a 48 year-old Dad Survived His First Time at Glastonbury"

The crazy, the fabulous...Flaming Lips!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looking at my watch, it was 9.45 and although it had been so hot during the day I was glad of the hoodie as I shivered involuntarily for a second. Looking towards the stage I could see a lot going on. There were about a dozen or so people up there fiddling with various bits of equipment. It seemed like a soundcheck with roadies rushing around taping things together but with an added hum and buzz of music. I glanced up and saw Wayne Coyne, wearing a cream linen suit hitting various drums and cymbals and testing mics. Had the show already started and was this some sort of improv thing? He was moving from piece to piece with a roll of gaffa tape in his hand, securing things down. Every so often he went to the edge of the stage, chatting with the crowd and shaking hands. This must have gone on for about ten or fifteen minutes or so and sums up why I love the Flips so much. The DIY ethic is not dead and there is obviously such a blurred line between the band and their fans, one that is clearly and actively fostered by the band themselves. They are still the band and we are still the fans and there will always be a separation but there is a distinct feeling and knowingness that we are all in this together, all for a common purpose. After a few last words and handshakes Wayne Coyne and the rest left the stage.

…then all the lights went down…

A deep, pulsating, throbbing noise emerged through the speakers, gradually getting louder and louder. From the backdrop at the back of the stage out squeezed firstly Kilph Scurlock, then Steven D, Michael Ivins and finally Wayne Coyne to a massive cheer from the crowd. I couldn’t at first place what they were playing-was it something from Dark Side of the Moon? It sounded a bit like it with that chiming instrumental but it slowly dawned on me that it was a track from Embryonic. A big transparent balloon was being inflated on the stage and before too long Wayne Coyne was clambering inside and being rolled over the heads of the crowd. At the same time the music was carrying on getting louder and more frenetic and dozens of coloured balloons were shooting out from the stage into the crowd. On the screens I could see Wayne Coyne bouncing inside the balloon, grinning wildly and being carried by everyone’s hands, at first deeper and deeper into the centre of the crowd and then back towards the stage. This was simply amazing and I could sense that it would be a magical night. There was, already, a genuine sense of happiness in the air. The mad jam of music carried on swirling until the balloon reached the stage and Wayne emerged out of it, bounding back on and picking up a megaphone/bullhorn mike thing. They then launched into Worm Mountain whilst he exhorted the crowd to “come on motherfuckers, come on!!!” and firing multi-coloured streamers over everyone’s heads from a sort of adapted water super-soaker type gun thing again and again, falling gently like ribbons in the night sky. Even more primary coloured balloons were thrown from the stage into the audience; orange, blue, white, red, yellow. Bouncing from hand to hand, syncing with the bouncing music, it was a magical spectacle.

Get/read/see "Turn Left at the Womble" here

UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Left-The-Womble-Glastonbury-ebook/dp/B0060YCKGW
US http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Left-The-Womble-Glastonbury-ebook/dp/B0060YCKGW

Totally Shuffled Day 212-Lori & The Chameleons

extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"

Lori & The Chameleons-Love On The Ganges- Zoo 7” single

 (This is "The Lonely Spy")

Lori and the Chameleons only ever released two singles. This track was the b-side to their first one, “Touch” in 1979, and their second single, “The Lonely Spy”, was released in 1980. Both the singles were such things of fragile beauty that it seems so sad that there wasn’t anything else. Just two singles and that was it. “The Lonely Spy”, just from the title alone, conjures up a vision of a forgotten secret agent, left to amble around a falling Communist State and stuck behind the Iron Curtain at the end of the Cold War with not much to do. It’s akin to one of the mythical “is-the-war-over-yet?” tales of Japanese soldiers discovered coming out of the jungle in the Pacific sometime in the mid- 1970’s. The music-and specifically the vocals-are sung in a Velvets/Nico era/Phil Spector-ish Wall of Sound style, by one Lori Larty. She was spotted walking down the street by Bill Drummond and Dave Balfe, and recruited as the singer for their band on the spot. Not on the strength of her singing capabilities (because they hadn’t heard her sing), but because she looked like a singer.

Based on the sole four tracks on these singles though, Lori was more than capable of carrying a tune. I do have a slight suspicion regarding her recruitment, simply because it was connected to Bill Drummond. On the other hand, it’s such a good story that I’ll suspend my disbelief and trust in the tale that after these two singles Lori Larty jacked it all in and decided to go to art college, thus causing the end of one of the most perfect pop groups ever. (It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that; (a) there never was a singer named Lori Larty; (b) that would never be anyone’s real name; (c) what would be the chance of picking someone at random off the street and who could sing so well;(d) no photographs of Lori Larty have ever come to light ; (e) Bill Drummond had form for such art pranks).

“Touch” apparently took Drummond and Balfe 18 months to write, and was based upon Lori’s holiday in Japan. I do like the idea of a finely crafted pop song that took so long to come to fruition; Brian Wilson/Smile style, burnished, honed and polished until it was perfect. But we know that no art can ever be perfect; all you can do is to try to get close to it.  Or reach perfection and then go past it, beyond it and slip slightly away. Perfection falling through your grasp. There’s a motto that states that a good artist knows just when to stop. Did Lori and the Chameleons stop at the right time when they were making “Touch”? I don’t know for sure, but to me it’s as close to perfection as any pop song could be. Was there anything else left behind by Lori and the Chameleons, undiscovered and left behind for us? Is there a reel-to-reel tape in the corner of a studio somewhere, unmarked but containing the greatest lost album of all time? Maybe there’s a box of albums, fully completed with magnificent artwork, sealed and gathering dust on a shelf of a warehouse in an industrial estate? That’s the mystery and magic of Lori and The Chameleons. 

Get/see/read Totally Shuffled..here

UK  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA

US http://www.amazon.com/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA

.... and the rest of Amazon I suppose as well, wherever you may be worldwide!

 

 

 

Totally Shuffled-The Birthday Party

extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"

The Birthday Party- Big Jesus Trash Can-Junkyard

I was quite prepared when this track just came up this morning to spend 500 words and a bit of time slating The Birthday Party. I listened to it while brewing a pot of coffee, having a smoke and mulling it all over. I could follow a route of seeing the Birthday Party as responsible (in part) for the emergence of goth; all that Old Testament imagery, wailing and gnashing of teeth, big back-combed matted hair, and tales of depravation, disgust, murder; black clothes and black imagery. On the other hand I could look at the intrinsic dark humour of The Birthday Party; how the fact that it is so very much over-the-top; that it’s really impossible to take it all with any level of seriousness that it’s actually a comedy record (not in a Barron Knights-style, but you know what I mean)-it’s so self-consciously dark and bleak that it’s as if they thought so hard to make it grim and then added (trowelled and heaped) another layer and more on top because it wasn’t at that level of grimness that they wanted.  

It’s basically so much darkness that you can’t help but laugh at the sheer, unremitting and relentless nature of it all. I was also thinking about how my British mis-conceptions of Australia have them down as a lager-drinking, sports-loving nation of people, and how that seems at odds with the personae of The Birthday Party. 

Did they break off recording this album at any time for a can of Fosters and to sit down to watch some Aussie Rules? Did their tour schedules have five day breaks so they could make sure they’d see the Ashes? (It would be quite a good image to see Nick Cave and the lads wandering around Sydney Cricket Ground, looking suitably dishevelled). I’ll bet they’re not openly into sports,but that a little bit of them cheers inside if England loses the Ashes. I suppose that my mis-conceptions of Australia could in some ironic way, mirror their views of U.S. as Australians in their mid-twenties when this album was recorded. All Southern Gothic-ness. There certainly doesn’t seem to me anything specifically Australian about The Birthday Party, and if I didn’t know that they were from the other side of the world, then I’m sure I would think that they were from America (or, bearing in mind their goth-ness, Leeds or Bradford).

I hadn’t listened to “Junkyard” for a bit and thought that for the purposes of this I should give it a go. So, with coffee to hand, I expected something that could lead me into all of the above. I really expected a tinny-sounding 80’s album that would be easy to scoff at. (After all, it would lead me neatly into something about post-Birthday Party Nick Cave). However, as I’m sitting here typing away, I’m pleasantly surprised and even a bit staggered, about what a powerful and brilliant record it still is. If I disregard all the daft lyrics, close my mind to all the Goth imagery and just listen to the music; within that framework of metallic, splintered guitars, Caves’ astonishing vocal range (he’s quite a good singer), and maelstrom of percussion, there’s something going on that leads me to unequivocally state that “Junkyard” is, thirty years on, a classically underrated record. 

Get /see/ read more from Totally Shuffled here:  

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA 

Turn Left at the Womble 2-Glastonbury mud

I thought it was a good time to post a short extract from the follow-up to "Turn Left at the Womble-How a 48 year-old Dad survived his first time at Glastonbury". A work in progress at the moment and due for competion sometine around Christmas or February or Easter. All a bit fluid at the moment.Unlike the Glastonbury mud. (See below).

Once through the gates there was an extremely lethal and odd puddle to traverse before heading towards the rest of the festival site. It was more like a small pond rather than a puddle and there was literally no way around it as it stretched the full width of the field as you got through the gates. It was the colour and consistency of hot chocolate but was a bit colder. It was hard to judge how deep it was and it was only by gauging how far it went up people’s wellies as they struggled through it that I could tell. It was the oddest thing though, not exactly muddy and just like a pond. Although  I saw many varieties of mud at Glastonbury that year, I never came across anything like this anywhere else.  Plenty of sticky mud, gloopy mud, slimy mud, muddy mud, but nothing like this Ovaltinely horror. (Oh, how quickly I became an expert on such matters. That’s what Glasto is all about-forget all the music, good times, reckless hedonism and the like-mud-spotting is the way to go kids.) I watched people carrying their rucksacks, cases of cider, tents, prams and children over their heads as they gingerly walked through the pond. It was like some surreal outtake from a Vietnam movie and instead of soldiers wading through the minor tributaries of the Mekong Delta with their rifles over their heads, here I was observing Glastonbury grunts doing something very similar. Maybe Oliver Stone could do a Glastonbury film. Or Coppola-“the horror, the horror” etc.

Turn Left At the Womble here:

UK:

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0060YCKGW 

US:

http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Left-The-Womble-Glastonbury-ebook/dp/B0060YCKGW