Thought about posting 96 Tears here but that can wait for another time. A late and lesser appreciated Smiths 45 instead. This almost seems designed as a throwaway. To show how easily The Smiths could do it by now. A readymade, and a tribute to the 7 inch single. Of course it didn't appear on a studio album. Singles that sound like this aren't meant to. Reached # 10 in the UK. Candy Darling on the sleeve. Another classic Morrissey cover star. The song itself is a homage to Shelagh Delaney, author of A Taste of Honey, one of the key Smiths texts. It ticks all the Smiths boxes. It's pure Glam, paying respect / filching lyrically from Bowie's Kooks and Alice Cooper's School's Out. Marr went glam too. His arrangement by turns Mick Ronson, T.Rex and Mott.
'In my mind I was going for a Mott the Hoople sound. But it ended up like Mott the Hoople as performed by the Salvation Army. Which is very Smiths. So I suppose it was a success in our own weird way but it's not one of my favourites.'
'Throw your homework onto the fire...'
I think it's great. It shows the rest how it can and should be done. Still.
Or perhaps rather a correspondence between Seymour Stein and Bill Drummond then manager of the Bunnymen documented here.
'Seymour Stein, who owned the New York based Sire Records, contacted me. He was interested in the Bunnymen. He thought 'Pictures on my Wall' sounded like Del Shannon and Ian McCulloch looked like a star. At that point in time Sire Records was about as hip as you could get. A Liverpool band signing to Sire was unimaginable. Stein sent an offer, a five-album deal. I didn't show it to the band; instead I wrote Stein a long and detailed letter, about how the album was bringing about the destruction of great pop music. That the rot had started with Sergeant Pepper and snowballed with the progressive rock scene. When Punk arrived to save the day it was seen (by me) to be a false dawn as soon as the Pistols released an album. I quote from my memory of the letter: 'The Pistols were supposed only to release singles that blistered the charts and split the nation in two, not albums that students could sit down and listen to and contemplate.'
The letter was pages long, in my almost illegible scrawl. I launched into a personal attack on Seymour Stein himself, telling him he had released two of the greatest white pop records of the decade, 'Shake Some Action' by the Flaming Groovies and 'Love Goes to a Building on Fire' by Talking Heads and that creators of such pop perfection should never have been allowed into a studio again, leaving their respective singles to resonate their wondrous glories for pop eternity, untarnished by the album-making tossers that created them. Both bands should have been forced to disband immediately. I told Seymour Stein that as far as I was concerned he could forget any idea of five-album deals, or any albums at all. That I would be more than willing to talk to him about The Bunnymen signing to Sire to record a single, although, I told him I didn't personally think they had it in them to record a truly great single. As for Del Shannon, the creator of 'Runaway', one of pop music's finest two minute thirty-seven seconds, how could Stein compare that to the dirge like 'Pictures on my Wall' ?.
Seymour Stein wrote back, and I paraphrase the letter from a somewhat corroded memory of it:
'Although I like to think of myself as a rather important man within the international music business, I am not powerful enough to change the whole basis on which the industry functions, i.e. singles are there to promote album sales. Album sales generate the cash that is the justification for the whole industry'. He was also flattered that I thought 'Shake Some Action' and 'Love Goes to a Building on Fire' were great records. He still wanted to sign Echo & the Bunnymen, and what did I think of the idea of Del Shannon producing them?'
The Bunnymen eventually ended up signing a deal for Korova in the UK and Sire for the rest of the world. Ian Broudie, formerly of Big in Japan and eventually the man behind The Lightning Seeds produced Crocodiles their first album. For their second, Heaven Up Here, the Bunnymen quoted from Runaway on the album's centrepiece Over TheWall. They did its spirit proud!
Kent is starting to get a bit shaky in terms of his personal state by this point of the seventies and it's sometimes reflected by the tone of the things he chooses.
1.Marvin Gaye - Trouble Man (Live)
2. Ann Peebles - I Can't Stand the Rain
Another of my jukebox favourites. Pretty much as good as anything I can think of. Lennon said it was the best song of the seventies.
So these aren't the best records ever made. In fact this is shocking. But if you're as prone to nostalgic moods as I am they have an other worldly charm. The song also seems oblivious to the fact that Cyril Knowles never really scored many goals for Spurs, 17 in 500 appearances. Perhaps that was the point. This reached # 14 in 1973.
'Donovan began as a carbon Bob Dylan. He was born in Glasgow and he was another drop-out, he spent a long time bumming around the country with his friend Gypsy Dave. He wrote songs, poems, and finally he arrived in London.
When Dylanesque came into vogue, he was launched on Ready Steady Go! wearing a cap and singing in an oddly familiar retard's whine. Inevitably, everyone and me leaped at him, accused him of cynically cashing in. What's more everyone and me was wrong.
For a start, he had none of Dylan's harshness. He was one gentle person, naïve and well meaning, desperately sincere, and he wrote limp little nursery rhymes all poetical minstrelsy.
The same things that made him interesting in himself, his innocence and real sweetness made his music unbearable. Always, he sounded angelic and folksy and fey, almost like an updating of one of those sentimental heroes in Dostoevsky, Alyosha or Prince Myshkin, the Holy Fools.'
You can see what Cohn's on about. But this song if you get beyond it's slightly precious trappings is great. Donovan is always precious. If you don't go for that he's not for you.
*Winifred Emma May (4 June 1907 – 28 August 1990) was a poet from the United Kingdom, best known for her work under the pen namePatience Strong. Her poems were usually short, simple and imbued with sentimentality, the beauty of nature and inner strength
Then, listening to Bobby Gillespie guest-host Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Session on BBC Radio 6 a few months ago, I was knocked sideways by King's own version, recorded when she was fronting a short-lived group called the City in 1969. (Other members included two erstwhile members of the Fugs: Charles Larkey (bass), to whom King was married at the time, and Danny Kortchmar (guitar), who later turned up on virtually every Californian singer-songwriter album of the early 70s.) The song is a revelation, foregoing the cosmic thrust of the Byrds for a gospel-soul plea that is both plaintive and stirring, and reminds you how great a singer – as well as songwriter – Carole King was in her long prime. No matter how well you think you know a song, a great singer can make you rethink its entire meaning. That's exactly what happens here and it is wondrous to behold.'
Annie Nightingale is pretty rude about the band while they skulk behind her before playing. You can talk, love. Have you seen the state of your non-matching outfit!
'And when a train goes by it's such a sad sound. It's such a sad thing.'
Howlin' Wolf has such a back catalogue but this song is always the song of his for me. Eventually it almost reached the Billboard Top 40 when re-released in 1964.
'Wolf said the song was inspired by watching trains in the night: "We used to sit out in the country and see the trains go by, watch the sparks come out of the smokestack. That was smokestack lightning.'
Pretty much as basic, straightforward and primal as it gets.
'Ah oh, smokestack lightnin' Shinin' just like gold Why don't ya hear me cryin'? A whoo hoo, whoo hoo, whoo.'
I love this clip of him performing the song in the sixties to an appreciative white audience in England in 1964.
There are records you play constantly and probably always will. You don't even think about it. It's a knee jerk response every few weeks. There are some you listen to every couple of months and they remind you why you love them. There are those you put on when you're feeling a certain way; tired, upset, wistful.Then there are those that you play every sixth months or so without realising what's made you think of them that immediately trigger a certain set of emotions, reactions and memories and you think, 'why don't I play this more'? For me Japan's last two studio albums Gentlemen Take Polaroids and Tin Drum both fall into the latter category. I thought about the band today and now this evening I'm listening to them on repeat with Chelsea and Atletico Madrid playing on the box with the sound turned off. Blue is not the colour tonight.
Gentlemen Take Polaroids came out in 1980 when the band left Ariola Records for Virgin. They were the finished article by then. It's fairly obvious with Japan that Bowie and Roxy are the two formative influences. Frankly nothing else really matters. By now they'd shed the New York Dolls look of their early records which had got them shunned.
Like many people I worked my way back to this record in the early eighties after the band broke briefly with Tin Drum, had big hits, including their defining moment with Ghosts, and then split leaving the field open for Duran Duran to plunder in their wake. Duran Duran seem to be gathering momentum nowadays in terms of their critical reception but I'm sorry. Nothing they ever did holds a candle to anything on these two albums.
If Tin Drum builds towards Ghost then Gentlemen is forever wending its way towards Nightporter, but it's an album where pretty much everything on it is completely stately. It's such a vision of Transcontinental, voyeuristic, detached tourism. The playing is so assured and innovative, David Sylvian's lyrics and vocals glacial and honeyed throughout. It never misses a beat.
The songs are five, six or seven minutes long but you simply don't notice. They glide by. The group has such a sense of timing and a gip on atmospherics by this point in their careers. No band that I know of could imbue records with silent moments of sheer space like they did. As I said Bowie and Roxy are in the album's DNA but strangely the record is by no means derivative at any point. They fashion something completely of their own out of the ingredients. These two are by no means their only influences. But it's fair to suggest that they're influenced by pretty much all of the things that Bowie and Roxy are influenced by. Then take it somewhere all of their own.
Gentlemen Take Polaroids, Swing, Burning Bridges, My New Career, Methods of Dance, Ain't That Peculiar, Nightporter, Taking Islands in Africa. More than four songs a side or eight altogether would over egg the pudding and Japan haven't got it in them to be vulgar. What they're getting at exactly is illusive throughout. That's the point with Japan, more so even than with their two key mentors. They're forever out of reach. They're all remote glamour but the paradox is that Sylvian has such a rich layered voice that listening to it can be an incredibly emotional experience. Listening to this record can make a lump well in my throat, particularly during Nightporter and Taking Islands in Africa. Roxy, much as I love them have never done that to me.
For some reason Japan never got their place in the canon. To quote Bill Drummond from a different context, 'A footnote's all they have got. In the annals of rock'. They were probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. Great respect to them in that they chose to split just as they were breaking big. They obviously didn't get on too well by this point. Their big legacy unfortunately was Duran who stole from them shamelessly. You can hear it all over their first two albums minus the heart and soul which is one thing that can't be pilfered. But Sylvian has done a lot of great stuff since and the Japan records still stand up despite at the same time sounding very much of their time
From Catford with love! Like a Batt out of Catford they'll be gone when the morning comes, gliding across Europe on an express reclining in the first class compartment. I could easily post every song on here. It's best heard in totality so here you go if you want to. Then go out and get it if you don't own it already. Play it for yourself if you do.
To my sister Alison, Jeff, Oskar and Felix. In their elegant home in a leafy avenue in Catford all these years later. David and the boys doubtless walked your street! x
I find the early Siouxsie & the Banshees an interesting band in the sheer, unashamed nastiness that's on display which seems such an important part of the artistic statement they were trying to make. I still really like a lot of their early records because for me they try to say something about the human condition that we spend most of our lives trying to deny and repress. The important original incarnation of the Banshees split in 1979 depending on how you look at it in spectacular or grubby circumstances. Here's an oral account of how it happened from Mark Paytress's authorised biography. Cast is Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Severin (bass), Kenny Morris (drums), John McKay (guitar) and Nils Stevenson (Banshees manager).
Sioux: If there's a song at the heart of Join Hands it's Poppy Day which was created as a soundtrack for the Remembrance Day two-minute silence. There was something hugely appealing about creating music for a silence. We used a lot of Fist World War imagery and that imbued the whole album. It was a very un-rock'n'roll subject for a record, but one that was incredibly powerful.
John and Kenny hated the artwork. As far as Severin and I were concerned, the image we used of soldiers on the sleeve was perfect... There was conflict in Iran and bombings in London and it all seemed to fit. It wasn't any pro-military message; we just wanted to catch the spirit of what things were like at the time.... Musically Join Hands was an uncompromising album and it still sounds modern today. We were lonely and isolated and that comes across in the music. It's an extreme record, but a very brave one and that's why I still have a soft spot for it.
The single from the album had been Playground Twist which was about as far removed from Hong Kong Gardens as we could get. It's about the cruelty of children and the whole aspect of being thrown out into the playground in winter in howling gales and left to fend for yourself. It's not the sort of thing you're supposed to write pop songs about.
Morris: We'd be on the tour bus and all sitting separately. Steven would be in his own seat, Nils and Siouxsie would be sitting together. Me and John would be sat at the back.... we were all very sad and all very silent. There was no point in talking. When conversation stops, everything stops. It was obvious that things were going wrong. We disagreed over so many things, and every time there was an issue we were outnumbered three to two.
7th September 1979. Capital Theatre Aberdeen
Sioux: We only played a couple of gigs before we got to Aberdeen. Cracks were already showing in the band. Although Steven and I weren't aware how wide they were.
Severin: It was a Saturday morning and we had an in-store signing scheduled at the local record shop. Yet again no-one had told John we were doing it, so he was in a strop by the time he got there. This was about lunchtime and we were supposed to be going down to the soundcheck The immediately afterwards, but the signing was a fiasco right from the off. There were loads of people waiting to get the new album signed but Polydor hadn't sent enough copies up to the shop, so we were having to sign copies of The Scream and the singles instead.
When we walked into the shop they were playing Join Hands, so of course the very first thing John did was say, ' I fucking hate this record.' He walked up, lifted the needle and put on The Slits album which had come out the same week. Siouxsie started fuming.
Sioux: Because Polydor had forgotten to get enough records for us to sign, we used these copies that had been stamped "For Promotion Only - Not for Resale", and John and Kenny started giving them away. I pushed John and had a go at him, calling him an idiot or something. Nothing too nasty.
Morris; I remember that moment so vividly, Seconds before it Nils said to me, 'The manager in the shop wants to take a photo,' Nils noticed my face was really down and said, 'I saw your face. I saw the way you looked.'
Severin: Then the most bizarre thing happened. It was almost like it was prearranged, like a union downing tools and going out on strike. Without a word, not even to each other, John and Kenny stood up and walked out of the store. It seemed like they were waiting for the signal and that shove from Siouxsie was it. Our initial thought was 'Fuck 'em - another day another strop, we'll see them at the soundcheck'.
Morris: We found ourselves outside. I remember crushing an empty can of Coke with my eyes welling. We walked down the street in tears, had a cup of tea and went back to the hotel. This is it. We'd had enough. It was always Sioux, Steven and Nils. That's the story. We were always outnumbered. Nils thought we'd never leave; What the fuck else would we do? Well he took us for granted. We were never interested in money. We were interested in taking an artistic stand against the establishment, musically and socially. It was about principles.
Sioux: We were supposed to meet at the venue for the soundcheck and John and Kenny didn't turn up. It didn't seem too out of the ordinary. I thought they were probably sulking in their rooms.. Then we found out they'd stuck pillows under the blankets with their tour passes on them and had just run off. Nils went to one of the train stations to see if he could catch them. But they'd gone.
Morris: We had about £200 between us and had to pay the taxi driver £50 to take us to the airport. John freaked. He kept looking behind us and saying 'They're going to send the police after us'. I said, 'John they're not gonna do that. We're not that important'.
Severin: From the venue we went back to the hotel and then back to the gig. They still weren't there and that's when it began to sink in that they really had run off. I was devastated. I thought my whole life had collapsed. The Cure who were supporting us were doing an extended set in the vain hope that John and Kenny might turn up but it was pretty obvious that they wouldn't.... I think it was Robert (Smith of The Cure) who said ' Well why don't we all go on and do 'The Lord's Prayer'? He'd seen us do it before, so he knew what to do.
Sioux: It actually felt really good to have played rather than gone away with our tails between our legs. I seem to remember telling the audience that if they saw John and Kenny they had my permission and blessing to kick the shit out of them.
Smith played for the rest of the tour with the Banshees which continued without McKay and Morris.
Morris: John and I were on the run. We were in hiding. If any punks had seen us or found us we could have been murdered.
Sioux: A couple of months later Blondie had a party at the Notre Dame Hall in London and I saw Kenny there...
Severin: I was sitting with this girl, a friend of Kenny's who was defending John and Kenny for leaving. Then she suddenly pointed Kenny out, sitting four or five tables away.. He was with three or four other people, so I walked up to him and whacked him. Nils had seen me approaching the table and was there in an instant, as was Siouxsie. Kenny half fell off his chair and went to stand up, and as soon as he did, Nils hit him. He fell down, and as he was lying on the floor, Siouxsie started kicking him. People from all sides were pulling us apart so it was over very quickly. Nils explained the situation to security and Kenny was asked to leave, not us, which made it even more satisfying.
Pop Music, Rock and Roll, whatever you want to call it, has always provided a haven for maverick, oddball eccentrics. In fact, for the most part the essential fabric of it has traditionally been made up by a collection of those types, the ordinary seems somehow out of place, almost objectionable there. Off the top of my head, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Gene Vincent, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Pete Townshend, Sun Ra, Ray Davies, Sly Stone, Arthur Lee, Syd Barrett, Roky Ericson, Lou Reed, Nico, Iggy Pop, Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, Jonathan Richman, David Bowie, George Clinton, Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith, Vic Godard, Edwyn Collins, Mark E. Smith, Kevin Rowland, Morrissey. This is a list that could go on and on but seems to get slightly thinner as you get to the here and now. But you do have some current exponents. Like Cornershop's Tjinder Singh, and even he's starting to get on a bit.
I'm sorry to pick on them, but who really needs Coldplay when you have fridges, pipes, sinks and cars to provide that mechanistic normality by which the rest of the world works. Cornershop could never really be a consumer durable. If they were a machine they wouldn't work properly. As a pop band they work perfectly even if most of the general public still haven't noticed them apart from their one wonderful Number 1 hit. Here's only one example of their greatness. From reasonably recent album Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast (perhaps on reflection there's a reason why more people plump for Coldplay though it's still a pity). I'll need to write more about them at some point.
To do what this song manages to do in less than two minutes is just remarkable. It might as well tell a whole life story in ten lines. Makes you want to go to Johnsburg, Illinois. Off Swordfishtrombones, one of the first truly great albums I ever bought.
'She's my only true love she's all that I think of look here in my wallet that's her She grew up on a farm there there's a place on my arm where I've written her name next to mine you see I just can't live without her and I'm her only boy and she grew up outside McHenry in Johnsburg, Illinois'
'In Liverpool, one time early in 1965, I was sitting in some pub, just next to the Odeon Cinema,, and I heard a noise like thunder.
I went outside and looked around but I couldn't see a thing. Just this noise of thunder, slowly getting closer, and also, more faint, a noise like a wailing siren. So I waited but nothing happened. The street stayed empty.
Finally, after maybe five full minutes, a car came round the corner, a big flash limousine, and it was followed by police cars, by police on foot and police on motorbikes, and they were followed by several hundred teenage girls. And these girls made a continuous high-pitched keening sound and their shoes banged down against the stone. They ran like hell, their hair down in their eyes, and they stretched their arms out pleadingly as they went. They were desperate.
The limousine came up the street towards me and stopped directly outside the Odeon stage door. The police formed cordons. Then the car door opened and the Rolling Stones got out, all five of them and Andrew Loog Oldham their manager, and they weren't real. They had hair down past their shoulders and thy wore clothes of every colour imaginable, and they looked mean, they looked just impossibly evil.
In this grey street they shone just like sun gods. They didn't seem human, they were like creatures off another planet, impossible to reach or understand but most exotic, most beautiful in their ugliness.
They crossed towards the stage door and this was what the girls had been waiting for, this was their chance, so they began to surge and scream and clutch. But then they stopped, they just froze. The Stones stared straight ahead, didn't twitch once and the girls only gaped. Almost as if the Stones weren't touchable, as if they were protected by some invisible metal ring. So they moved on and disappeared. And the girls went limp behind them and were quiet. After a few seconds, some of them began to cry.
In this way, whatever else, the Stones had style and presence and real control. They are my favourite group. They always have been.'
Probably top of all heaps in terms of instrumentals. A Number 3 hit in the States when it came out. Didn't chart in the UK at the time though of course it was a big club hit particularly in Mod circles for years thereafter. Undeniable!
Best split into two so here is part 1 1983- 88. When they were a true indie label with fringes and paisley or hooped shirts, leather trousers and pointy boots. Stars in their own heads but nowhere else. Some great, good and pretty poor records came out of all this. I'll concentrate on the ones I liked.
1. The Pastels
This lot are virtually deified by the indie scene. Most of the time I don't see it. Like this though.
2. The Loft
I imagine you're beginning to get the picture. Wistful, sensitive types. This song is full of the soppy kind of questions you ask yourself when your a teenager. Also full of beautiful chord changes. The first Creation record I really loved and I still do. It has a wonderful simplicity. Pete Astor the writer and singer of it redid it on the first Weather Prophets album. He should have left it alone.
3. Jesus and Mary Chain - Upside Down
The record that broke the label.
4. The Jasmine Minks
5. Primal Scream
Woo! They really didn't justify Bobby's bravado at this point. Still need to be here though as perhaps the definitive Creation band.
6.The Bodines
7. Felt
8. Nikki Sudden
9. My Bloody Valentine
The record that changed things and moved the label on to the next phase.
10. House of Love
A beautiful, howling record. Less than three minutes long. Part of what made it great.
'You wander around in your own little cloud. Where you don't see the whys or the wherefores.'
Downtown is great of course but somehow I've heard it too often. I'd go for this instead. Written by Jackie Trent and Tony Hatch who also wrote the theme tunes to Crossroads and Neighbours and so deserve some proper respect. This song has a wonderful, soaring bridge to the chorus. Beautiful melody and lyrics. Wikipedia tells me it shares a chord progression similar to Pachelbel's Canon. #5 in the States, only #12 in the UK but #3 in Zimbabwe where I was at the time in my nappies and #1 in Australia which is where Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens heard it. He later helped me find my way to it by listing it amongst his favourite songs in an article for Melody Maker in the eighties. He also wrote about The Modern Lovers Hospital. Great taste that man. You can hear the sensibility of both tracks he chose in his own songs.
An Australian band of the eighties who didn't try to be cool. An excellent article from The Quietuswebsite which describes well how at that pre-internet point you had to go about excavating forgotten music of the past and bands like The Cramps, Hoodoo Gurus and R.E.M. helped you go about it. There was something very unhip, almost childish, about this lot but they were really just about having fun, the record is a beautiful object and I'm very glad I bought it first time round.
Call To Arms: Hoodoo Gurus' Stoneage Romeos, 30 Years On Julian Marszalek , April 11th, 2014 06:09
Thirty years since discovering the band through John Peel's show, Julian Marszalek sings the praises of the debut album by Australia's Hoodoo Gurus, "an essential tonic for the pressures of an uncaring world"
Chance is indeed a fine thing. And it was pure chance that I tuned in to John Peel's show late one night in the opening overs of 1984 to be immediately captured by the record that came through the headphones. First it was the drone, rising with all the majesty of a phoenix from the ashes, before giving way to a crashing G chord that descended to a strummed E minor. And then the acoustic guitars, twanging licks, a tale of heartbreak and yearning with a chorus that made me want to punch the air. Part country, part power pop and wholly rock & roll, the effect was utterly seductive. I didn't want it to end, but I had to know who the hell this was.
"That was the Hoodoo Gurus from Australia," intoned Peel in his trademark monotone before adding, "And it's out now on the Demon label."
The single was located in Revolution Records in Windsor, a compact and bijou emporium specialising in the latest releases, obscure vinyl, part-exchanges and gig tickets. The cover was plain enough; no picture, just a black sleeve with a red label exposed through the hole on the front. Rushing home, I played the single and its B-side - a slab of glam ramalama called 'Be My Guru' - over and over again, with the full expectation that, like much of the stuff that Peel aired, Hoodoo Gurus would never be heard of again.
So it was with unrestrained joy that I discovered that Hoodoo Gurus' debut album Stoneage Romeos, released in March 1984, had made it to these shores. I can still recall the nod of approval from Revolution Records' owner, a hirsute and stocky individual who'd seemingly been bypassed by the punk wars and bore more than a passing resemblance to Oddbod, the strange creature that acted as Kenneth Williams' henchman in Carry On Screaming!.
Even before putting the album on, its cover was alluring and a statement all in itself. A homage of sorts to Hammer's ridiculously camp caveman b-movie One Million Years BC, it hinted towards the elemental joys contained within: day-glo colours, menacing Tyrannosaurus rex, cowering cavewoman, and a band logo that looked as if it had been drawn on the back of an exercise book during a particularly dull double maths session on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.
The back cover, similarly, contained equally lurid colours and a DIY aesthetic courtesy of designer Yanni Stumbles. The individual pictures of the band members resemble re-touched newspaper cut-outs, and their images tease as to what's contained within: drummer James Baker resembles doomed Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones; singer-guitarist Dave Faulkner sports drainpipes and Chelsea boots; bassist Clyde Bramley is draped in a western shirt, while lead guitarist Brad Shepherd, all spiked mullet and eyeliner, suggests the unholy lovechild of Siouxsie Sioux and Keith Richards. Much like the best rock and roll of the early 80s, Stoneage Romeos' opening salvo of 'Let's All Turn On' was both educational and supremely entertaining. The Cramps had set the bar with the release of Songs The Lord Taught Us (1980) and Psychedelic Jungle (1981) as well as a handful of singles that were eventually collected in the Off The Bone (1983) compilation. Fusing the unrestrained power of first generation 50s rock and roll with psychedelia and garage rock, and knowing sexual innuendo with schlock-horror imagery, The Cramps highlighted the missing link between rock's initial big bang and the punk explosion of the late 70s – those little known and obscure nuggets from the then much-maligned and still argued over decade, the 1960s. The Year Zero orthodoxy of punk would have it that nothing of worth – with the obvious exception of The Velvet Underground and The Stooges - had been recorded prior to 1976 (at least not by white rock bands), yet The Cramps' choices of obscure covers did much to make a generation realise that punk was nothing particularly new, and that the prevailing 60s image of dope-smoking, bellbottom-wearing hippies was just a small part of a much wider picture.
Those early albums by The Cramps were schools for scoundrels, with extra-curricular activity encouraged through seeking out original versions of say, The Novas' 'The Crusher' or The Bostweed's 'Faster Pussycat' (the latter of which alerted my teen self to Russ Meyer's film). And here, in a similar vein, were Hoodoo Gurus, who managed to pack all this information into one song. Ushered in by a restless bassline and slashing guitars, 'Let's All Turn On''s lyrics list a series of influences, further reference points to be sought out: "Shake Some Action, Psychotic Reaction/ No Satisfaction, Sky Pilot, Sky Saxon/ That's what I like, that's what I like…"
I can still recall trying to take it all in. Okay, so I knew 'Psychotic Reaction' and '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' (who didn't?) but 'Shake Some Action'? 'Sky Pilot'? Sky Saxon? What the hell were these? And so it went on: "Waiting for my man, baby/ Can the Can/ I Want To Hold Your Hand, remember Sam The Sham?/That's what I like, that's what I like…" Among the exhilarating lead breaks and backing vocals, a link was being formed from the music that I did know to a whole wide world I wasn't yet aware of: The Flamin' Groovies, The Seeds and so on. This wasn't just a song but a manifesto, a call to arms that would prove irresistible, and one that sets the tone for the rest of the album.
Having a manifesto is one thing but capturing the spirit of those trailblazers and delivering on it is quite another. Because that's what rock & roll at its best is supposed to be about: capturing that burst of uncontrolled teenage homones, exuberance, shooting first and not asking questions later, and flipping the bird to the crushing dullness of the 9-to-5 world and the inevitability of death and taxes. And this is precisely what Stoneage Romeos is all about. Drilling deep into this rich well of musical inspiration and that unabashed sense of teen hedonism, Hoodoo Gurus' debut spurts out eleven killer gems like oil gushing from a drill in the desert. Devoid of cynicism or ironic smirking, this is a spunky collection of songs with a cheeky glint in their eye and a knowing grin on their face. That it happens to be, on more than one occasion, laugh out loud funny, is simply icing on an already highly delicious piece of confection.
Even the album's pre-occupation with death – 'Dig It Up', 'Death Ship' and 'Leilani', for example – is approached with a comic book mentality meant to amuse rather than offend. Over a sleazy riff and grinding chords, the protagonist of 'Dig It Up' finds himself mourning at his girlfriend's grave ("My girlfriend lives in the ground / My friends ask why she's not around…") before considering a somewhat grim compromise ("You can't bury love / You gotta dig it up"). Elsewhere, 'Leilani' - a version of which was originally released a single in late 1982 - looks back to the RKO movies of the 30s and 40s, as a native chief's daughter is sacrificed to the appease the gods while her boyfriend looks helplessly on. Of course, all of this would be as daft as a brush were it not for the power of the music. 'Leilani' is motored on by stackheeled, glam-stomping beats, a droning hammered-on chord and guitars that resemble a barrage of baritone saxophones, all driving the narrative forward with such bloody-minded conviction that any notions of puerility are easily swept aside.
This is why closer 'I Was A Kamikaze Pilot' is such a glorious triumph ("I was a was a kamikaze pilot/ They gave me a plane/ I couldn't fly it/ Taught how to take off/ I don't know how to land…") – it's played straight and with a passion that belies its comic sensibilities. Single coil guitars are fed into toasty valve amps to create bright rhythms, bent strings and monstrously righteous noise that's aimed straight at the hips. This track in particular is a heady and potent combination, and one that still holds up now. But there are moments of tenderness, too. 'My Girl' is a paean to teenage heartache, with Brad Shepherd's twanging solo suggesting Duane Eddy had he been raised in the outback, while 'I Want You Back' benefits from an extra verse that was absent from the single version.
A contributing factor to the longevity and timeless feel of Stoneage Romeos is Alan Thorne's sympathetic production. Unlike so many bands blighted by 1980s production values, here James Baker's drums sound like drums. The snare cuts through on its own terms, each beat a whiplash to drive feet to the dancefloor while the guitars fizz, riff and slash with warmth and fullness that, at the time, was in all too short supply. Call it an alignment of the stars, call it alchemy, call it what you will, but the elements drawn together on Stoneage Romeos still resonate now. Indeed, since its release, not a year has gone by that the album hasn't found itself on the turntable round these parts; less due to nostalgia, more for the fact that it contains within itself a bottled essence of rock & roll, a powerful musical genie to be released on demand. The primal and elemental fun packed into Stoneage Romeos' grooves remains an essential tonic for the pressures of an uncaring world. If you're still unaware of this record's charms, then consider yourself urged to take the plunge now. You won't regret it.
