Kategoriarkiv: Litteratur

City Slang

Så hvem er Fred “Sonic” Smith, vil nogen måske spørge. Han var guitarist i Detroit, Michigan-hårdrock/protopunk-bandet MC5, hvis claim to fame er det voldsomt tids-heftige 1969-livealbum Kick Out The Jams. Senere lavede han sit eget band, Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, der kun fik nummeret ‘City Slang’ udsendt som single i 1978, men hvilken forrygende en det er. På det tidspunkt var han lige netop blevet kæreste med Patti Smith. Men allerede da hun to år før besøgte København og stod på scenen på Daddy’s Dance Hall med The Patti Smith Group havde hun et City Slang-badge på sin jakke. Det bemærkede en af koncertgængerne den aften. Han hed Søren Ulrik Thomsen og debuterede i 1981 med en opsigtsvækkende digtsamling som bar titlen…City Slang. The rest is Lars Hug and history. Her City Slang-eksplosionens epicenter…

Fred “Sonic” Smith ses her som nummer to fra venstre.

Strunge, 65 i dag

BERLIN

Kupeen stille alting…

Berlin, mit hoved…
Zigzag gennem erindringens by
der står som en stille dam med guldfisk.
Hybrider af ideer skinnende i en billig farve,
på bunden rådner årenes planter.
Mit hoved, Berlin, en planet i sig selv –
der er områder lukket for levende
og steder hvor alting brænder sammen.

Berlin, mit syn, glimt af gløder i natten,
cigaretternes grå lugt
og pistolernes metalsmæld i begge halvdele,
for fanden, mine knæ, Berlin, det golde guldlys
en kunsteufori, en glæde købt og ædt.
Berlin, mit ansigt, en by uden plan,
linier uden mål
for hvad skal jeg se hen til
og hvor skal jeg danse når musikken presses gennem filtre
mens køn passes til form gennem nylon.
Berlin, mit hjerte, en pumpe for blod, ikke andet!
Og blodets veje kan forudsiges
som turisternes rejser efter souvenirs.
Berlin, måske findes der et aldrigt fremkaldt billede
af en pige på Kürfürstendamm
det i et sekund så mig som mennesket i verden, Berlin
mit hoved er så uklart
hvordan skal jeg finde hendes læber i alt det støv?

Michael Strunge, 19. juni 1983

Martin Amis RIP!

Martin Amis, toneangivende engelsk forfatter bag tidsdefinerende antihelte-romaner som Money (1984) og London Fields (1989) døde fredag i Florida, 73 år gammel. Her Blur’s ‘London Loves’, hvis tekst skal være ikke bare lidt inspireret af sidstnævnte bog, en af Damon Albarn’s udtalte favoritter…

Reintroducing…Television!

Det er februar 1977. Det ukendte NYC-band Television stjæler NME’s forside, da ugemagasinets stjerneskribent Nick Kent har hørt deres debutalbum Marquee Moon, der netop er blevet udsendt i USA og nu er på vej til Europa. Læs hele hans euforiske anmeldelse herunder af et dengang sensationelt debutalbum i sin rock/punk-samtid, nu et anerkendt og etableret mesterværk, en af de meget, meget få plader, hvor alt går op i den højeste enhed og bliver et definerende værk (!) for sin nutid, tidsløs musik for al fremtid…


Cut the crap, junior, he sez and put the hyperbole on ice.
I concur thus. Sometimes it takes but one record – one cocksure magical statement – to cold-cock all the crapola and all-purpose wheatchaff mix ‘n’ match, to set the whole schmear straight and get the current state of play down down down to stand or fall in one, dignified granite-hard focus.
Such statements, are precious indeed.
Marquee Moon, the first legitimate album release from Manhattan combo Television however, is one: a 24-carat inspired and totally individualist creation which calls the shots on all the glib media pigeon-holing that’s taken place predating its appearance; a work that at once makes a laughing stock of those ignorant clowns, who have filed the band’s work under the cretinous banner of “Punk-rock” or “Velvet Underground off-shoot freneticism” or even (closer to home, maybe, but still way off the bulls-eye) “teeth-grinding psychotic rock” (‘Sister Ray’ and assorted sonic in-laws).
First things first.
This, Television’s first album is a record most adamantly, not fashioned merely for the N.Y. avant-garde rock cognoscenti. It is a record for everyone who boasts a taste for a new exciting music expertly executed, finely in tune, sublimely arranged with a whole new slant on dynamics, chord structures centred around a totally invigorating passionate application to the vision of centre-pin mastermind Tom Verlaine.
Two years have now elapsed since the first rave notices drifted over the hotline from down in the Bowery. Photos, principally those snapped when the mighty Richard Hell was in the band, backed up the gobbledegook but the music – well, somehow no-one really got to grips with defining that side of things so that each report carried with it a thumbnail sketch of what the listener could divine from the maelstrom. Influences were flung at the reader, most omni-touted being guitarist mastermind Verlaine’s supposed immense debt to one Louis Reed circa White Heat/White Light which meant teeth-gnashing ostrich gee-tar glissando and whining hyena vocals. You get the picture.
Above all, one presumed Television to be the aural epitome of junk-sick boys straight off the E.S.T. funny farm – psychotic reactions/narcotic contractions. Hell split the scene mid-75 taking his black widow spider physique and blue-print anthem for the Blank Generation, leaving ex-buddy-boy Tom Verlaine to call all dem shots, abetted by fellow guitarist and all purpose West Coast pin-up boy Richard Lloyd, a most unconventional new wave jazz-orientated drummer, name of Billy Ficca – plus Hell’s replacement, the less visually imposing but more musically adept Fred Smith.
It’s been a good two years now since Television got those first drooling raves – two long years which led one at times to believe that Verlaine’s musical visions would never truly find solace encased within the glinting sheen of black vinyl. The situation wasn’t helped in the slightest by Island Records sending over Brian Eno and Richard Williams to invigilate over a premature session back in ‘75, the combination of the band’s possible immaturity and Eno and Williams’ understanding of what was needed to flesh out the songs recorded, resulting in the taping of four or five horrendously flat skeletal performances which gave absolutely no indication regarding the band’s potential.
Following that snafu, Verlaine became, how you say, more than a little high-handed and downright eccentric in his dealings with other record companies and potential middle-man adversaries to the point where even those who quite desperately wished to sign him threw up their arms in despair of ever achieving such an end.
Reports filtering through the grapevine made Verlaine’s behaviour seem like that of a madman. Even when the ink had dried on the contract Joe Smith signed with the band for Elektra Records late last year; Verlaine was apparently still so overwhelmed with paranoia that he activated a policy of never properly enunciating the lyrics to unrecorded songs in performance for fear that plagiarists might steal his lyrics before they’d been set to wax.
The only number he dared to sing close to the microphone at this point was ‘Little Johnny Jewel’, the one-off cult single of ‘76, a bizarre morsel of highly sinister nonsense verse shaped around a quite remarkably lop-sided riff/dynamic which set off visions (at least to this listener’s ears) of an aural equivalent to the visuals used in the German impressionist cinema meisterwerk Dr Caligari’s Cabinet, spliced in half (the track took up both sides of a 45 – labelled Parts 1 and 2) by a guitar solo which bore a distinct resemblance to, well, yes to Country Joe and The Fish. Their first album you know. The guitar pitch was exactly the same as that utilized by Barry Melton; fluid, mercury-like.
That’s the thing about Television you’ve first got to come to terms with. Forget all that “New York sound” stuff. For starters, this music is the total antithesis of the Ramones, say, and all those minimalist aggregates. To call it Punk Rock is rather like describing Dostoevsky as a short-story writer. This music itself is remarkably sophisticated, unworthy of even being paralleled to that of the original Velvet Underground whose combined instrumental finesse was practically a joke compared to what Verlaine and co. are cooking up here. Each song is tirelessly conceived and arranged for maximum impact – the point where decent parallels really need to be made with the best West Coast groups. Early Love spring to mind, The Byrds’ cataclysmic ‘Eight Miles High’ period, a soupcon even of the Doors’ mondo predilections plus the very cream of a whole plethora of those psychedelic-punk bands that only Lenny Kaye knows about. Above all though the sound belongs most indubitably to Television, and the appearance of Marquee Moon at a time when rock is so hopelessly lost within the labyrinth of its own basic inconsequentiality that actual musical content has come to take a firm back-seat to “attitude” and all that word is supposed to signify is to these ears little short of revolutionary.
My opening gambit about the album providing a real focus for the current state of rock bears a relevance simply because here at last is a band whose vision is centred quite rigidly within their music – not, say, in some half-baked notion of political manifesto-mongery with that trusty, thoroughly reactionary three chord back-drop to keep the whole scam buoyant. Verlaine’s appearance is simply as exciting as any other major innovator’s to the sphere of rock – like Hendrix, Barrett, Dylan – and, yeah, Christ knows I’m tossing up some true-blue heavies here but Goddammit I refuse to repent right now because this record just damn excites me so much.
To the facts then – recorded in A & R Studios, New York, produced by Verlaine himself, with engineer Andy Johns keeping a watchful eye on the board and gaining co-production credits, the album lasts roughly three quarters of an hour and contains eight songs, most of which have been recorded in demo form at least twice (the Eno debacle to begin with, followed a year later by a reported superbly produced demo tape courtesy of the Blue Oyster Cult’s Alan Lanier, which, at a guess, clinched the band’s Elektra deal) and have been performed live innumerable times. The wait was been worthwhile because the refining process instigated by those hesitant years has sculpted the songs into the masterpieces that are here present for all to peruse.
Side one makes no bones about making its presence felt, kicking off with the full-bodied thrust of ‘See No Evil’. Guitars, bass and drums are strung together fitting tight as a glove clenched into a fist punching metal rivets of sound with the same manic abandon that typified the elegant ferocity of Love’s early drive. There is a real passion here – no half-baked metal cut and thrust – each beat reverberates to the base of the skull, with Verlaine’s voice a unique ostrich-like pitch that might just start to grate on the senses (a la his ex-sweetheart one P. Smith) were it not so perfectly mixed into the grain of the rhythm. The chorus / climax is irresistible anyway – Verlaine crooning “I understand destructive urges / They seem so imperfect … I see … I see no e-v-i-i-l-l.”
The next song is truly something else. ‘(The arms of) Venus De Milo’ is already a classic among those who’ve heard it even though it has only now been recorded. It’s simply one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard; the only other known work I can think of to parallel it with is Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ – yup, it’s that exceptional. Only with Television’s twin guitar filigree weaving round the melody it sounds like some dream synthesis of Dylan himself backed by the Byrds circa ‘65. It’s really damn hard to convey just how gorgeous this song is – the performance, – all these incredible touches like the call-and-response Lou Reed parody. The song itself is like Dylan’s ‘Tambourine’, a vignette of a sort dealing wiih a dream-like quasi-hallucigenic state of ephiphany. “You know it’s all like some new kind of drug / My senses are hot and my hands are like gloves! … Broadway looks so medieval like a flap from so many pages … As I fell sideways laughing with a friend from many stages.”
‘Friction’ is probably the most readily accessible track from this album simply because, with its fairly anarchic, quasi-Velvets feel plus (all important) Verlaine’s most pungent methedrine guitar fret-board slaughter, here it’ll represent the kind of thing all those weaned on the hype and legend without hearing one note from Television will be expecting. It’s good, no more, no less – bearing distinct cross-breeding with the manic slant sited on ‘Johnny Jewel’ without the latter’s insidiousness. ‘Friction’ is just that – throwaway lyrics – “diction/Friction” etc. – those kind of throwaway rhymes, vicious instrumentation and a perfect climax which has Verlaine Vengefully spelling out the title “F-R-I-C-T-I-O-N” slashing his guitar for punctuation.
It’s down to the album’s title track to provide the side’s twin feat with ‘Venus De Milo’. Conceived at a time when rock tracks lasting over ten minutes are somewhere sunk deep below the subterranean depths of contempt, ‘Marquee Moon’ is as riveting a piece of music as I’ve heard since the halcyon days of… oh, God knows too many years have elapsed.
Everything about this piece is startling, from what can only be described as a kind of futuristic on-beat (i.e. reggae though you’d have to listen damn hard to catch it) built on Verlaine’s steely rhythm chopping against Lloyd’s intoxicating counterpoint. Slowly a story unfurls – a typically surreal Verlaine ghost story – involving Cadillacs pulling up in graveyards and disembodied arms beckoning the singer to get in while “lightning struck itself” and various twilight loony rejects from King Lear (that last bit’s my own fight of fancy, by the way) babbling crazy retorts to equally crazy questions. The lyrics mean little, I would guess by themselves, but as a scenario for the music here they become utterly compelling.
The song’s structure is practically unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. It transforms from a strident two chord construction to a breathtakingly beautiful chord progression which acts as a motif/climax for the narrative until the music takes over altogether. The band build on some weird Eastern modal scales not unlike those used in the extended improvised break of Fairport Convention’s ‘A Sailor’s Life’ on Unhalfbricking. The guitar solo – either Lloyd or Verlaine – even bears exactly the same tone as Richard Thompson’s. The instrumentation reaches a dazzling frenzied peak before dispersing into tiny droplets of electricity and Verlaine concludes his ghostly narrative as the song ends with that majestic minor chord motif.
‘Marquee Moon’ is the perfect place to draw attention to the band’s musical assets. Individually each player is superb – not in the stereotyped sense of one who has spent hour upon hour over the record player dutifully apeing solo, riffs, embellishments but in that of only a precious few units – Can is the only band that spring to mind here at the moment. Each player has striven to create his own style. Verlaine’s guitar solos take the feed-back sonic “accidents” that Lou Reed fell upon in his most fruitful period and has fashioned a whole style utilizing also, if I’m not mistaken, the staggeringly innovative Jim McGuinn staccato free-form runs spotlit on the hideously underrated Fifth Dimension album (which no one, McGuinn included, has ever bothered to develop).
He takes these potentially cataclysmic ideas and rigorously shapes them into a potential total redefinition of the electric guitar. As far as I’m concerned, as of this moment, Verlaine is probably the most exciting electric lead guitar player barring only Neil Young. As it is, Verlaine’s solo constructions are always unconventional, forever delving into new areas, never satisfied with referring back to formulas. Patti Smith once told me, by the way, that Verlaine religiously spends 12 hours a day practising his guitar playing in his room to Pablo Casals records.
Richard Lloyd is the perfect foil for Verlaine. Another fine musician, his more fluid conventional pitching and manic rhythm work is the perfect complimentary force and his contribution demands to be recognised for the power it possesses. Bassist Smith is always in there holding down the undertow of the music. He emerges only when his presence is required – yet again, a superb player but next to Verlaine, it’s drummer Billy Ficca, visually the least impressive of all members standing – aside the likes of cherub-faced Lloyd and super-aesthetic Verlaine, who truly astonishes. Basically a jazz drummer, Ficca’s adoption of Television’s majestic musical mutations as flesh-to-be-pulsed-out makes his pyrotechnics quite unique. Delicate but firm, he seems to be using every portion of his kit most of the time without ever being over-bearing. As one who knows little or nothing, about drumming, I can only express a quiet awe at the inventiveness behind his technique
Individual accolades apart, the band’s main clout lays in their ability to function as one and perhaps the best demonstration of this can be found in ‘Elevation’, side two’s opening gambit and, with ‘Venus’, probably this record’s most immediately suitable choice for a single. Layer upon layer of gentle boulevard guitar makes itself manifest until Lloyd holds the finger-picked melody together and Verlaine sings in that by now well accustomed hyena croon. The song again is beautiful, proudly contagious with a chorus that lodges itself in your subconscious like a bullet in the skull – “Elevation don’t go to my head” repeated thrice until on the third line a latent ghost-like voice transmutes “Elevation” into “Television”. Guitars cascade in and out of the mix so perfectly.
‘Guiding Light’ is reflective, stridently poetic – a hymn for aesthetes – which, complete with piano, reminds me slightly of Procol Harum in excelsis. ‘Prove It’, the following track, is another potential single. Verlaine as an asthmatic ostrich-voice Sam Spade “This case … this case I’ve been working on so long” and of course that chorus which I still can’t hesitate quoting – “Prove it/Just the facts/Confidential”. From Chandler, Television move to Hitchcock – at least for the title of the last song on this album: ‘Torn Curtain’ is one of Verlaine’s most recent creations – a most melancholy composition again reminiscent in part of a Procol Harum song although the timbre of Verlaine’s voice is the very antithesis of Gary Booker’s world weary tones. A song of grievous circumstances (as with so many of Verlaine’s lyrics); the facts – cause and effect – remain enigmatically sheltered from the listener. The structure is indeed strange, like some Bavarian funeral march with Verlaine’s vocals at their most yearning. The song is compelling though I couldn’t think of a single number written in the rock idiom I could possibly compare it to.
So that’s it. Marquee Moon, released mid-February in America and probably the beginning of March here. I think it’s a work of genius and had Charlie Murray not done that whole number about “first albums this good being pretty damn hard to come across” with Patti Smith’s Horses last year then I would have pulled the same stunt for this one. Suffice to say – oh listen, it’s released on Elektra, right, and it reminded me, just how great that label used to be. I mean, this is Elektra’s best record since… Strange Days. And (apres moi, le deluge, kiddo) I reckon Tom Verlaine’s probably the single most important rock singer/songwriter/guitarist of his kind since Syd Barrett, which is my credibility probably blown for the rest of the year. But still…
If this review needs to state anything in big bold, black type it’s simply this. Marquee Moon is an album for everyone whatever their musical creeds and/or quirks. Don’t let any other critic put you off with jive turkey terms like ‘avant-garde’ or ‘New York psycho-rock’. This music is passionate, full-blooded, dazzlingly well crafted, brilliantly conceived and totally accessible to anyone who (like myself) has been yearning for a band with the vision to break on through into new dimensions of sonic overdrive and the sheer ability to back it up. Listening to this album reminds me of the ecstatic passion I received when I first heard ‘Eight Miles High’ and ‘Happenings Ten Years Ago’ – before terms like progressive/art rock became synonymous with baulking pretensions and clumsy, crude syntheses of opposite forms.
In a year’s time, when all the current three-chord golden boys have fallen from grace right into the pit to become a parody of Private Eye’s apeing of moron rock bands – Spiggy Topes and The Turds Live at the Roxy – Tom Verlaine and Television will be out there hanging fire, cruising meteorite-like with their fretboards pointed directly at the music of the spheres. Prove it? They’ve already done it right here with this their first album. All you’ve got to do is listen and levitate along with it.

Den lange rejse

Ja, kan det blive mindre rocknroll, den rygende bueskytte her fik om nogen disse øjne op for mulighederne i det danske sprog. Johannes V. Jensen blev født på denne dag for 150 år siden. Har du aldrig læst ham, eller kun kender Kongens Fald, så en anbefaling herfra af Den Lange Rejse, hans episke storværk om nordisk liv, drift og længsel. Hvis dét er for stor en mundfuld i denne fragmentariske tid, så slå eventuelt bare ned på digtet På Memphis Station, en majestætisk sansning af nogle timers ubærlig ventetid på en rejse langt hjemmefra. Ikke uden grund det blev til Nobels Litteraturpris i 1944. Stort tillykke, JVJ!

Bunnyman

Bunnyman er titlen på Echo and the Bunnymen-guitaristen Will Seargent’s nye selvbiografi, der skildrer hans opvækst i Liverpool, den første store kærlighed til musik, byens (post)punkscene, samt begyndelsen på det band, der siden – i nogle dyrebare år – skulle stå som verdens bedste. Her et større web-interview med Louder Than War-journalist John Robb i forbindelse med bogudgivelsen. Så interessant at høre et andet take på Bunnyworld og Liverpool-scenen end det, man til nu kun har hørt fra sanger Ian McCulloch…

At mindes Dan Turèll

Det er i dag blevet 25 år siden forfatter, digter, samfundskritiker og provocateur extraordinaire Dan Turèll forlod os. Første gang vi var i TV med LS, oplevede vi live Hans Otto Bisgaard i et interview med den sortneglede mand, hvor han på det skarpeste hudflettede populærkultur og det pågældende programs indholdsflade som sådan. Hvilket desværre, desværre blev klippet ud af det endelige program. En anden gang med Turèll var i Saltlageret, hvor han – i slet ikke upåvirket tilstand – omklamrede en irriteret William Burroughs, der tydeligt væmmedes ved ham. Her til nydelse Dan Turèlls så specielt sammensatte personlighed for fuld udblæsning…

Aldrig at få nok

‘I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again’, sagde den amerikanske forfatter F. Scott Fitzgerald. Med den livsudviklingsbevidste udtalelse som mulig indgangsvinkel leverer den amerikanske digter Ellen Bass (f. 1947) fra Philadelphia her dagens bedste ord…

Tillykke, Ms. Smith!

Mange har vi mistet i det år, der slutter i morgen. Men Patti Smith er her stadig. Amerikansk rockmusiks store gamle dame, der har taget os med på hele sin lange opdagelsesrejse fra de tidlige år med Joplin og Hendrix og digterne på Chelsea Hotel, gennem kærligheden til Mapplethorpe, over de voldsomme år med CBGB og Patti Smith Group, de stille år med familien og til sit comeback dengang i 1990’erne (hvor jeg stod og så på). Tak for stemmen og for ordene – tillykke med de 70!

Har du drukket måneskin, min ven?

Nogle kan forhåbentlig huske Nicolaj Munch-Hansen som den dygtige bassist i Slagterne. Han har spillet med et hav af mennesker inden for både jazz og rock og har nu også et album ude, hvor han er sammen med selveste Peter Laugesen. På Det flimrende lys over Brabrand sø er det Kira Skov (der i parentes bemærket er gift med Nicolaj) og Steen Jørgensen, der leverer vokaler – og på sidste nummer er det såmænd Laugesen selv, der får ordet. Her er en smagsprøve.