Wilko Johnson - He did it right, didn’t he?!

ART58Koen goes off piste with this splendid tribute to the late Wilko Johnson...

 

 As posted last week, Wilko shuffled off the mortal coil and now is probably causing mayhem somewhere in Paradise, which is a bit ironic considering that track was supposedly the cause for him leaving Dr Feelgood as Lee Brilleaux and the other Feelgoods had issues with a song about Wilko’s love for his wife and girlfriend…

Obviously they had never been in Thailand ‘cause there (here for me!) nobody would be bothered about it!

Anyway, I guess that most of the regular visitors here are familiar with Dr Feelgood and Wilko’s machine gun style of playing guitar, but a brief overview can never do any harm.

Wilko’s first job as guitar slinger was for Heinz (of all people!) at The London Rock N Roll Show, Wembley Stadium in 1972.

 

 

A bit later Wilko teamed up with Lee, Sparko, and The Big Figure and all hell broke loose. Four groundbreaking albums, Down By The Jetty, Malpractice, Stupidity (a UK no. 1 chart-topper) and Sneakin’ Suspicion, put Wilko and the Feelgoods firmly on the rock landscape from 1974 to 1977.  In that era of turgid progressive and fey glam-rock, their high-energy dirty R&B and be-suited appearance was a mini-revolution, bringing rock’n’roll back to the roots and giving inspiration to both the UK and US fledgling punk scenes. 

 

After leaving the Feelgoods,, Wilko formed the Solid Senders and signed to Virgin for an eponymous album. Then under his own name he released further albums, including Ice On The Motorway, Barbed Wire Blues and Going Back Home, and finding a live audience particularly in Europe and Japan for his frantic, exciting gigs. 

For a while Wilko became a member of Ian Dury’s Blockheads which lead to a partnership with Norman Watt-Roy, a much-revered bassist on future albums.

In 2009 Julien Temple released a pretty cool documentary about Dr Feelgood: Oil City Confidential (trailer below) which put Wilko back into the limelight.

 

Being an avid fantasy & sci-fi fan (unbelievable, right?) I watched Game of Thrones as soon as it came on screen (2010) and got a bit of a surprise when seeing the episode with the mute executioner Ser Ilyn Payne giving his ‘cold death-glare’, nobody else but Wilko of course!

 

Also in 2010 Wilko met Roger Daltrey (The Who’s lead singer as if you didn’t know that already! You didn’t? Get out of The Good Old Major's Hole right now!)  and decided to work together. Daltrey said, "It turned out we both loved Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. They'd been a big influence on both our bands. That heavy power-trio sound, backing up a singer; it's a British institution. No-one does that better than us."

As usual it took quite a while before this event actually happened…

In the meantime Wilko was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January 2013, but was well enough to press ahead with the collaboration when The Who finished their world tour. Going Back Home was recorded in the space of a week in November 2013 and it rocks from beginning to end, although seeing the video of "Going Back Home" (below) with flashbacks of both Wilko & Roger from years ago made me a bit uncomfortable, realizing how old we’re all getting…

 

 

In his review for Mojo magazine, Mark Blake wrote that "Johnson's chopping rhythm guitar and Daltrey's geezerish growl make perfect bedfellows." Blake described Going Back Home as a "joyful, celebratory affair", and I fully agree.

Luckily Wilko’s cancer was less aggressive (although very unusual) and following radical surgery he was later declared cancer-free.

Wilko continued touring and releasing occasional records until his death…

A great tribute documentary has just been made available on YouTube:The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson.

 

Although there have been several Dr Feelgood compilation albums, Wilko has only one: Back In The Night (Best Of) by Wilko Johnson (CD, 2002)

 

 

In 2010 The Best Of Wilko Johnson, Volume 1 ‎& 2 were released BUT the songs included are all rerecorded versions…

For our devoted Good Old Major's Hole’s members (I know, gross!) I’m in process of compiling a decent selection of odds & sods...

 

Just answer ART58Koen's laughably simple question in the comments below and his Wilko compilation could be yours!

Wilko Johnson 1947 - 2022

RIP Wilko.

Canvey Island's finest!

A nice guy and a stunning guitarist.

Blazing Apostles...can I help you?

One day, back in 1976...

...I was in a record shop and on the counter was a display box with newly-arrived copies of "Hot Valves" - a seven-inch EP (remember those?) by British band Be Bop Deluxe. 

Valves..."tubes" in the US

On a whim, I bought it, took it home, played it and became an instant fan. Sure, I'd heard of the band, but never actually heard them, and had always thought from photos I'd seen that they just weren't "my sort of band". 

SUITS??? WTF???

How totally wrong I was...

This four song EP was essentially a sampler, as well as a promo release for their new album, "Modern Music" and had a track from it, along with one from each of their previous three releases.  

The band would only last a couple of years longer, with one more studio album, which would see leader Bill Nelson starting to leave guitar rock behind and embrace the emerging "new wave" music. Had I known about Be Bop Deluxe sooner, I'd have loved to have seen them in person, as live recordings suggest that they were pretty "hot" on stage.

Be Bop Deluxe was essentially Bill Nelson's band - he handled lead vocals, guitar and wrote all the material - although the other members of the classic line up were certainly no slouches.

Nelson started off in the late 1960s, and early recordings reveal him displaying predictable influences for a rock hopeful of the time - some British type blues, a dash of psychedelia and the usual aspiring singer-songwriter's attempts to find a "voice". A solo album, "Northern Dream", attracted the attention of none other than John Peel, and the newly-formed Be Bop Deluxe recorded a session for Peel's radio show. This in turn led to a record deal with Harvest and the release of the first BBD album, "Axe Victim" in 1974. 

"Axe Victim" didn't exactly set the world on fire and Nelson broke up the band. A brief period with a line up using members of the fracturing Cockney Rebel ensued, but this was short-lived. Eventually, Nelson settled on a trio of himself, Charlie Tumahai on bass and Andrew Clark on drums. BBD's second album, "Futurama", followed and keyboard player Simon Fox was recruited for the tour promoting it, shortly afterwards becoming a permanent member. With the aforementioned classic line up finally established, the lush, multi-layered and driving sound that typified peak BBD came to fruition and they went on to make the "Sunburst Finish" and "Modern Music" albums, which most people agree represent their finest work, along with "Futurama".

Bringing prog levels of sophistication to the dense arrangements and production, and precise but exciting playing to songs that were, in the main, melodic pop, they built up a loyal fan base. What's more, they actually scored hits with singles and the albums, and toured extensively in Europe and the States.

 

 OGWT 1975 and 76

However, the music world was changing, and having somehow managed to bypass punk, the lure of  "new wave" music saw the band switch to a style that was more angular and far less guitar based. A final album, "Drastic Plastic" was toured, but the band then split up - never to play together again.

Really, as I suggested earlier above, the story of Be Bop Deluxe is largely the story of Bill Nelson. He was, and still is, a guitarist of rare talent, with a highly developed sense of melody which results in a style that owes little to the blues, and largely avoids rock cliches. With a lovely "fat" tone (admired by Sex Pistol Steve Jones) and a technique that I still find dazzling, he nevertheless always plays for the song. Not that he can't stretch out when he wants to - as live performances of  audience favourites "Shine" and "Blazing Apostles" show. He's certainly in my personal top ten greatest guitarists list. 

Young Bill
 

Above all, BBD's music is widescreen stuff - yes, it's often excessive but it has grandeur rather than pomp and there's clever use of dynamics to ensure that your ears don't get overwhelmed. There's a hell of a lot going on, so there's plenty of mileage in visiting the same track several times and tracking the many guitar and keyboard parts. There's stereo panning, backwards guitar, and all manner of other studio trickery to make listening an immersive experience.   

Nelson's BBD compositions relied heavily on science fiction imagery and, it has to be said, tended towards having pretentious titles, although the lyrics themselves often bear scrutiny... 

"And all the creatures born of ink and rage and lies
Crawled off my pen and ran across the page to die."

and

"I'm sitting in a cafe in Paradise. 

Naked as a razor - I'm as loaded as a dice."

Nelson went on to form "Bill Nelson's Red Noise". As with the final BBD album "Drastic Plastic", guitar solos took a back seat - so far back that they were in the boot (the trunk for people in the US). Synths were prominent, and Nelson's voice took on a strange and mannered quality. Subject wise, the songs seemed to move between expressions of paranoia caused by the modern world and the conflation of sex and electricity...I think. It was a good album, but it didn't grab me like the earlier BBD albums had. It sold in reasonable numbers and the band toured it, but they broke up soon after a second album was finished and then duly rejected by Harvest.

Old Bill with his large organ

Nelson then went solo. So far, he's released over 120 (not a typo) solo albums since 1981, as well as many collaborative efforts, so he hasn't been idle. He seems to have covered everything from ambient electronica to guitar instrumentals in that time and there are real gems to be found amongst the mass of music that he's made available. Occasionally, you hear a track that sounds like BBD, but so far there hasn't been an out and out attempt to release an album of them, although he came pretty close in 2016 with "New Northern Dream" - a title which brings things neatly full circle.

Fortunately, for their fans, a band that only released six albums (five studio and one live) has been well-served by a recent reissue campaign. All of them have been augmented by an interesting and illuminating array of remasters, remixes, bonus tracks, live tracks and demos - all presented in eminently fetishable box sets. 

 

  It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Favourite BBD album? Tricky, but "Sunburst Finish" just about edges it for me. It was Nelson's first production job (John Leckie co-produced) and it seems to capture his new found freedom and also the enthusiasm of the "new" quartet let loose to make its first album together. Listen to it as a pop album - only one song tops 5 minutes - but be prepared for surprises. It's also - just by a hair - their most over the top album production-wise. 

Hell, if you're going to go mad in the studio...

...GO MAD!!!

 

Refresh your Reggae

Another post from ART58Koen - the Hole's resident Reggae and Dub expert!

In the late 80s/early 90s CDs were still outrageously expensive (at least for my budget) and as a result, I bought (or was given by friends) much cheaper label samplers. This also turned out to be a great way to get exposed to lots of different music than I was used to.

As written once before, in a comment on Farq’s posts I think, the 2nd CD I purchased was the 1990 Island Reggae Refresher, a brilliant compilation of classic roots reggae tracks, which I still can listen to and enjoy from beginning to end.

Reggae Refreshers was a series of classic Island Records reggae CDs, Cassettes & LPs, available at a special price from 1990 onwards.

This sampler had a selection of tracks from (some, not all) of the first 26 CDs in this series, except for 2 tracks: Augustus Pablo - King Tubby Meets The Rockers Uptown and Dillinger – Cokane In My Brain (12 inch version!).

This CD resulted in me obtaining quite a few of those albums, great music, my only complaints were the total absence of information and/or bonus tracks…oh, the cover art of that Reggae Refresher sampler was dreadful, but the music made up for this.

In 1996 Reggae Refreshers 2 was released and many things had changed in the music re-issue business, thanks to the Blood & Fire label. They had started releasing new compilations with great cover art, excellent liner notes, and more. So Island followed up and consequently this 2nd refresher was much more interesting with obscure tracks (such as Faybiene’s ‘Prophecy’ in a 9+ min 12 inch mix!), Steve Barrow doing the liner notes, and Blood & Fire style cover art! 

 

There was only 1 screw up… Track 4, The Heptones – Mr President is described in Barrow’s notes and shown on the back cover, however on the CD Track 4 is listed as Bunny Wailer - Hypocrite! It’s a great track (from Bunny Sings The Wailers!), nothing wrong with it, but still… Perhaps a licensing issue? None of the reviews I found mention this, weird!

To reserve both volumes of this splifftastic Reggae sampler, just scroll down to the comments below and answer ART58Koen's question du jour!

 

Teddy boys don't knit

Well, that's not strictly true.  

At least one of them did - the much loved and much missed Vivian Stanshall...

Best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Viv had a very patchy career after the band broke up, but one which is fondly remembered mainly for his creation of the strange world of "Rawlinson End". First introduced during the Bonzos' "The Intro and the Outro" ('Great to hear the Rawlinsons on trombone'), this family saga developed into a sprawling mass of film, albums, pieces recorded for radio sessions, and various aborted scripts. It was a work in progress and, indeed, a third album was in the works when Viv passed away in 1995.

As well as this, Viv also made a couple of albums of original songs and it's a measure of the man to note how many "names" contributed to these. The first album, 1974's "Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead" featured Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi of Traffic, as well as Ric Grech, Neil Innes, Doris Troy and Rebop. Some of the tracks just seem to be excerpts taken from longer jams with Viv talking over the top of them. I've probably listened to the album twice...

 Seven years later, fans were rewarded with Viv's second collection of songs: "Teddy Boys Don't Knit" - hence the title of this screed. Yes, as the sleeve clearly shows, Viv used to be a teddy boy. It just so happened that he used to be a teddy boy who was fond of knitting...

Calling again on his many friends and admirers, "Teddy Boys Don't Knit" (TBDK from now on) featured a disparate array of talent, including Richard Thompson, Ollie Halsall, Neil Innes, Rosko Gee, John Halsey, Jim Cuomo, Rick Wakeman, Roger Ruskin Spear and John Kirkpatrick. The songs were written during a relatively calm and stable period in his life. He had settled down and was living in a Thames houseboat with his second wife, stepdaughter and an infant daughter. Indeed, a couple of the songs on the album describe family life chez the Stanshalls.

The other songs on TBDK deal with a wide range of subjects - a few of which are obvious, but most of them less so. Indeed, the lyrics take some figuring out, so it's fortunate that the sleeve notes include them, as well as short written introductions by the man himself. Even then, some of them are hard to fathom out. Although there are no "Rawlinson" songs as such, there are a few references to the saga hidden away in the verbal jungle.

Musically, there's a variety of styles on offer, ranging from blues ("Everyday I Have the Blows"), through vaudeville type songs, mock rock, and ersatz soul, to chanson. Everyone plays well throughout, but TBDK is definitely Viv's album with his voice and lyrics very much to the fore.  

 

It's one of those albums which grows on you. I hadn't listened to it for ages until I embarked on this screed, but I was struck by how much I enjoyed revisiting it. It's a bit of a curiosity that reveals a less slapstick side to the "Ginger Geezer" than that evident during his Bonzos tenure. What's particularly pleasing is that there's far less speech and more singing than the previous album, and the vocals are more assured. Although Viv had achieved some success writing lyrics for people like Steve Winwood, TBDK reveals a growing confidence in writing the music as well. Who knows what he might have gone on to do?

One thing's for sure, there'll never be another like him.

Let's hear it for another great Italian!

At some point, there just had to be a Zappa screed in the Hole. Now, thanks to Babs, here comes that screamin' sound again! 

Grace Slick, once said of Frank Zappa, “He’s the most intelligent asshole, I’ve ever met”.  Having once met Grace Slick, I can only conclude, it takes one to know one (in a future screed, I’ll do an ‘Airplane’ piece, including my by chance and brief meeting of Grace, and Paul Kantner). [Yes, please!: Ed] That said, I sort of agreed with her. 

  

A working breakfast at the UMRK

Be that as it may, musically I’ve always thought of Frank as an innovator, and a perfectionist.  He showed great respect to his audience, by investing a lot of rigor, time, and money, to ensure that when you saw a Zappa concert you would have an outstanding musical experience.  I myself have seen Frank many times, and not once was disappointed.

 

Another numie for Ronnie's window? 

 

Lyrically, however, his mix of scatological, juvenile, borderline misogynistic, political, and societal humor was where Frank rubbed some people the wrong way.  Many people also think he was anti-Hippie, but in my eye he was a Hippie.  He looked like one, spoke like one, and pretty much acted like one (and therefore passes "The Duck Test").  Okay, he didn’t do so-called illicit drugs, but he loved his, beer, cigarettes and coffee, all of which are technically speaking, are drugs.  One of my favorite Zappa quotes is:

"If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it."

The above quote is about as anti-establishment Hippie as it gets.

 

 Insert dog-doo snow cone here

 

Over the years, I’ve come to change my opinion of Frank as a person and lyricist.  From what I can gather, most if not all musicians he worked with fondly remember their time with Frank, and learned much from the experience.  Also, his family still speak very highly of him after all these years despite the fact that he comes off as a terrible father/husband, really speaks volumes. Frank was not what he appeared to be from the outside.  As for Frank’s lyrics, as the old saying goes, “To make an omelette you have to break a few eggs”.  Lyrically, Frank was first and foremost a satirist, and a satirist of a very high order.  Many people claimed to be “offended” by his lyrics, but he was an equal opportunity “offender” in that, no-one or anything went unscathed.  Myself, I find most of his lyrics to be well written and intelligent, while some are not in the best taste and eye roll inducing, but certainly not offensive, but as always, your mileage may vary.

 

 Magic fingers

 

So why this screed, you ask?

The other day, I was looking through my "archive storage facility for music" (and by "archive storage facility for music", I mean a dozen or so very large plastic bins, stored in my wine "cellar", and by "cellar", I mean on the fifth floor of a converted button factory in Manhattan where I live, but I digress), looking for Albert Ayler’s ‘Holy Ghost’ (a 9CD beautifully made boxed set) for a musician friend.  While looking for it, I found ‘Apocrypha (Thirty Years of Frank Zappa)’, a 4-CD bootleg box set from 1994 on Great Dane Records located in Milan, Italy (no really), and though it would fit perfectly into The Good Old Major's Hole.

"Music is the only religion that delivers the goods."

 'Apocrypha (Thirty Years of Frank Zappa)', has luxurious packaging: a book-style box with a faux leather appearance, and contains a large (40-page) color booklet with dozens of pictures and a very long and confusing 1988 interview. Liner notes appear on the far right on every right-hand page, complete with misinformation (the band line-up details are especially abominable: they are not complete, and they falsely state that the Bob Harris from 1971 and the Bob Harris from 1980 were the same person). All of which will be included in the download.

It should be pointed out, some of 'Apocrypha' has been officially released on ‘The Lost Episodes’ and the ‘Mystery Disc’  The duplicated tracks are from the same sources, but in some cases there are significant differences, and often longer. Other times, the official releases have been sped up or down about a half step, and contain overdubs.

If you’re a Zappa fan, you’ll love this set.

[I had this and lost it several years ago - it's great! - so I'll be very keen to answer Babs' question to get the link.]

 

Yes we can can

If you were a pop fan in the UK, there's a good chance that at some point you were a regular viewer of BBC TV's "Top of the Pops".  

TOTP, as it's often referred to, was a regular run down of the pop charts and ran from 1964 to 2006, making it the world's longest-running weekly music TV show. Even today, repeats are shown on the BBC.

Here's the playlist for the 30th September 1976 broadcast...

(31) Randy Edelman – Uptown, Uptempo Woman 

(22) Sherbet – Howzat 

(16) The Ritchie Family – The Best Disco In Town

(6) Tina Charles – Dance Little Lady Dance 

(23) Jesse Green – Nice And Slow

(35) Demis Roussos – When Forever Has Gone 

(1) ABBA – Dancing Queen (video)

 

British punk had yet to make an impression, the UK glam rock scene was all but dead, and disco was king. I don't know about you, but I think that's a pretty piss-poor bunch of songs...

However, I've purposely missed out the first act in that list - it was CAN (capitals preferred) at #29 with "I Want More".

Yes, CAN - who included students of Stockhausen, were early champions of World music, and were steeped in free jazz, musique concrète and the avant-garde - actually scored a UK pop chart hit. 

 

This did not sit well with many of the band's fans, who saw this mutant disco hit as a sell-out, after a series of albums that often seemed to me at the time to be carried around as more of a badge of "hipness" for their owners, than something to listen to. "CAN" became a trendy name to drop in certain circles. I can't remember hearing the band until many years later, although I was very aware of their name.

 

But what of their hit? Well, here it is, with three of the core quartet, from the 1976 TOTP show mentioned above. Guitarist Michael Karoli was in Kenya on safari, apparently, so a stand-in was roped in for the broadcast...

 

 

"I Want More" was recorded during sessions for their seventh studio album' "Flow Motion". The band had upgraded their recording process and now had 16-track recording to play with, and this is exactly what they chose to do - they played. Not just played music, but played about, which shows in the upbeat nature of "I Want More"; reflecting this new found freedom. Their choice of a disco beat might not have been what fans were expecting, but neither were the reggae rhythms which featured far more prominently than disco on the forthcoming album.

 

"Flow Motion" was seen as an abandonment of innovation, but fans and critics should have looked a bit more closely at what was actually being played, because it's now clear that it was all about the rhythm, although few seemed to appreciate this at the time. 

 

As well as the hit, there's a strange hybrid reggae/waltz, complete with Hawaiian guitar, a Turkish take on reggae, tribal beats and the album title song - a long, almost dub, reggae work out with lots of guitar over a one chord vamp. Above all, it's an accessible and fun album and showed a lighter side of the band. It's also the last Can album to feature Holger Czukay's bass playing, until the later reunions.

Having ignored the band totally during their heyday, I've since grown to appreciate them and I really don't mind the respite offered by their brief disco/reggae phase. If you want the intensity for which CAN were renowned, then there's plenty to be found in the earlier albums.

As for the band today, only Irmin Schmidt remains from the original four core members - Holger Czukay, Michael Karoli and Jaki Liebezeit are all dead. 

 

Someone will be along shortly to take your drinks order - after you've settled your bar bill - and also ask a question which may be to your advantage...