Animinimalism

If the quality of this bootleg was a little better, this would be one of the best captured performances of a band who at the time of this recording, Johnny Rotten, the man of the then moment, chose to be his anathema.

Rotten no doubt picked on Floyd due to their iconic status; representative of all that was pompous, pretentious and past.

Slightly ironic I always thought, as Animals (still my favourite Pink Floyd album; with 'Pigs' being one of my all time favourite songs [nice version on here, with improved guitar solo]) was just as interesting a response to the shitty-seventies as Never Mind the Bollocks - and in their themes and attitudes actually quite similar.

Although Waters preferred to spit at the audience rather than have them spit at him.

Pink Floyd - Pink Floyd Plays the Animals, Oakland Colosseum '77 (1990)

Part One

Sheep
Pigs on the Wing
Dogs
Pigs on the Wing 2
Pigs
Shine on You Crazy Diamond (part one)
Welcome to the Machine

Part Two

Have a Cigar
Wish You Were Here
Shine on You Crazy Diamond (part two)
Money
Us and Them
Careful With That Axe Eugene

CD rip to mp3s
Part One includes artwork
One
Two

Sentimental Tosh

It does inhabit a special place near my sentimental heart does this old vinyl boot; as it was recorded on the night of the first 'proper' gig I ever went to.

Genesis at Earls Court! The ticket was two quid; seated three rows from the back (the stage was a good bus ride away); I missed the supporting 'Legendary' Richie Havens (I had no idea who he was), but did manage to buy a plastic pint of piss from the couldn't give a toss corporate bar, and at aged thirteen, back in nineteen-seventy-seven, buying alcohol (or at least a close approximation of) over a bar was like scoring Dilaudid from old Doctor Benway himself.

The gig was massive. Even from my lack of vantage point.
This was the time when Genesis were carrying their gear around the world in five articulated lorries!
They were using lights from 747s; erecting five gigantic hexagonal mirrors above the stage to allow for lasers and lights to be bounced around; there were slide shows and moving images; and at one point ('Supper's Ready': "A flower...") humongous psychedelic flowers emerged from the floor of the stage and danced in time to the music.
A right blooming spectacle.
And I was sick on the way home...

Loved it!

As for the recording...
Well, Living Revelations is certainly one of the better vinyl bootlegs made from this period: decently pressed with a good quality of sound.

The Daddy from this period (or should that be 'Mama'... [think I've had toooo many mince-pies...]) is essentially the official release Seconds Out, but I prefer this.
It's still lush, but not over the top.
The recording sounds more spacious, especially during the opening 'One For The Vine', a track not included on Seconds Out, which was a weird omission when you hear this version, because it sounds hot; I guess it just didn't fit that more 'Greatest Hits' kind of album that Seconds Out really was.

Other tracks of interest include a good recording of 'Inside and Out' from the Spot the Pigeon e.p. and a Collins' voiced version of early Genesis favourite 'The Knife'; which he fair belts out, it must be said.

Genesis - Living Revelations (1977)

One For the Vine
Inside and Out
Firth of Fifth
Dance on a Volcano
Los Endos
Lamb Lies Down
Musical Box (Close)
The Knife

Decent vinyl rip@320kbs
Rare one this.
Those with nostalgic bent go here

'Ave A Banana

The Christmas post is always a tricky one.

But not this year.

Unfortunately, it seems Chas n Dave are no more.
Dave's retired you see.
Leaving Chas in a bit of a quandary...

Does he carry on?
'Chas'.
Not quite the same really, is it?

So as you're shoveling down another mince pie; imbibing yet another eggnog, do think of poor ol' Chas.
And have one on him!
In fact let's raise our glasses to the phenomenon that was Chas n Dave:
"To Chas n Dave!"
I've posted this album back to front, with the live tracks (originally Side 2) first: they really are the business as far as this album is concerned.
Recorded live at The Bridge House, Canning Town, London, with an extremely lively audience, it makes for a right ol' cockney knees' up.
Who can honestly resist singing along with 'The Sideboard Song' or having a go at the quick bits during 'Rabbit'?

The long track (Side 1 of the original), 'Stars Over 45', does tend to grate after a while, and the 'on 45' beat really gets on your tits; but they do manage some interesting takes on old London music-hall styled songs; and who else but Chas n Dave would have the balls to mash 'What A Rotten Song' with 'Give It To The Girl Next Door'?

The audacity!

I'm sure Alan Lomax would have been fascinated.

Chas n Dave - Christmas Jamboree Bag (1981)

The Sideboard Song
Some Day
Poor Old Mr. Woogie
Down Where The Swanee River Flows
Rabbit
Roll Over Beethoven
Stars Over 45

Excellent vinyl rip @320kbs
Have yourself a right cockney knees' up here

I'll be putting up some posts over the holiday period that deviate from my normal fare; as I'll be dealing with more mainstream concerns.
With a twist, of course.
Watch this space...

Hey, Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to All!
Shanti, roy

Hard To Swallow

Here's a little taster for some newly released PIL material.

Originally sourced from a BBC Radio 1 session for the Mark Goodier show back in the early nineties, here are four tracks from a particularly heavy incarnation of Lydon's tribe.

Promoting the album That What Is Not, the band sound tight and energized; and with two guitarists the effect is a very metal accompaniment to Lydon's bitter, confessional lyrics.

The stand out songs are essentially the best two tracks from the album.
'Cruel' which is a real blinder of a PIL track, in this setting sounding truly bombastic, and must be considered one of the best post classic PIL tunes; and 'Acid Drops', a track that cleverly samples early Pistols without double dipping.

Lydon fluffs a line during his performance of 'Acid Drops', but being the showman he is ad-libs his way out of it so well you wonder whether the slip was really a slip at all.
You just can't trust these Situationists!

PIL Session for BBC Radio 1 (1992)

Cruel
Acid Drops
Love Hope
Think Tank

Excellent rip from cassette @320kbs

These tracks have now been released as part of The Plastic Box collection.
So if you like these it's probably worth getting a copy of that.
Very reasonably priced...

Taster Session here

Holy Shit!

This has existed in various forms around the web; but just in case you've missed it, never bothered or knew not of it, here it is in all its full definitive glory, ripped from cassette @320kbs, digitally enhancing the original DAT recording, allowing you to flatten off the hiss and play it very, very loud indeed.
The only way to listen.
Not much to say about this really.
Except it is one of the best live collections of avant-noise-punk songs from one of the best bands of their genre(s).
And as far as the Surfers' oeuvre goes, this captures them at their absolute peak; their very best; their most surreal and their most creative.

Gibby's mastered his Gibbytronix; Leary's axing iconoclastic; the monster rhythm section's bombastic.

Lewd, crude, extreme, offensive, but often sublime.
Live music didn't get any better than this.

Butthole Surfers - Double Live (1989)

Part 1

To Parter
Psychedelic Jam
Ricky
Rocky
Gary Floyd
Florida
John E Smoke
Tornadoes
Pittsburg to Lebanon
The One I Love
Hey
Dum Dum
No Rule
U.S.S.A.
Comb

Part 2

Graveyard
Sweatloaf
Fast
I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas
Strawberry
Creep in the Cellar
Suicide
Jimi
Lou Reed
Kuntz
22 Going On 23
Something

Excellent cassette rip @320kbs
To parter one here
To parter two here

Good Grief!

Originally released on 10" vinyl in 1989, Widowermaker was the third e.p. from the Texan masters of hardcore and avant-punk.

Opening spectacularly with the incredibly arranged 'Bon Song', featuring a 'Sweet Leaf' inspired repeated hacking cough and some super bong-tastic sound effects.

'1401' appears to be a song about Gibby's eyes rolling back into his head as the consequence of some kind of glass inflicted injury; resulting in a lyrical synaesthetic response... well, you've got to sing about something...

Leary is on top form on this recording, and he plays a stormer during the distinctly anthemic 'Booze Tobacco'.
A kind of Oi!, psychobilly number, with a dash of Jungle chucked in for good measure.

'Helicopter' is in a far more traditional vein as far as the Surfers' sound goes. Reminiscent of tracks from such classic albums as Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac and Locust Abortion Technician; but less chaotic, less no-wave and therefore a little easier on the ears.

Butthole Surfers - Widowermaker (1989)

Bon Song
1401
Booze Tobacco
Helicopter

Excellent vinyl rip @320kbs
Take a hit here

Fist of Fun

Whilst in the era of the kipper tie and the chequered nylon flare, I thought I'd post this little gem from 1975.

Notorious for it's objectifying cover the music is barely discussed.
And that's a real shame, because this is a great album, and it features one of the great alchemical pairings in music; betwixt guitarist Ollie Halsall and vocalist Mike Patto.

Halsall and Patto first performed together in the reasonably successful, 60's psychedelic pop band Timebox (definitely recording the best version of 'Begging', a track normally associated with Frankie Valli's Four Seasons; although now probably more identifiable to Madcon, since their recent version).

Timebox evolved into Patto, and a distinct change of style was adopted, as jazz and lengthy solos were thrown into the mix; pioneering a sound and mood that helped to establish prog rock.
They also came up with some great album titles: Roll 'em, Smoke 'em, Put Another Line Out and Monkey's Bum among them.

After Patto came Boxer.
Halsall and Patto joining up with ex-Van Der Graff Generator [!] bassist Keith Ellis and session drummer Tony Newman.
Below the Belt was their first, and definitely best, album.

It kicks off with the raucous 'Shooting Star', Halsall performing his trade mark percussive style playing, creating hard edged chords that capture so well that British hard rock sound, ubiquitous in the mid-nineteen-seventies.

(Ollie Halsall was much admired within guitar circles, one of those guitarists' guitarists, if you know what I mean.
As a session musician he worked with all manner of artists, attaching himself to various cliques and circles, including the 'Canterbury Scene', eventually joining Kevin Ayres out in Majorca, becoming part of what was known as the 'Deià scene'.
He also worked with ex-Bonzos, Viv Stanshall and Neil Innes; eventually joining up with old Timebox band mate John Halsey to record much of the guitar on Innes' project The Rutles; known within the parallel world of The Rutles as Leppo, the Fifth Rutle.
Sadly Ollie died stupidly young [43], but many consider him to have left a real legacy, and many paid homage in their own imitation of his idiosyncartic style)

The sound may have been common, but few bands of that pre-punk period sounded as good as Boxer.
What with Halsall's excellent playing, there was also of course Mike Patto's voice.
And what a voice.

Imagine if Bon Scott had been raised by jazz-loving birds, and fed honeydew and nectar...
Well, that's what Mike Patto's voice sounds like.

Don't get me wrong, Patto could belt it out when he wanted to, and he certainly has his moments on this album; but he's got that sitting down kind of voice, one that only keyboard players seem to have.
(I don't include singing drummers in this proposition; drummers who sing are an abomination and should really be outlawed.)

Unfortunately Patto was another star who left this realm far too prematurely; ridiculously so in fact, he was thirty-six years old, for fuck's sake!

The jazz tropes are definitely there in Boxer's sound, but Below the Belt is essentially a hard-rock album; however, it is that slight infiltration of jazzyness that makes this album still sound great; not at all generic of its period.
It's certainly given me a lot of pleasure over the years; and it's still spun pretty regularly on my turntable.

As for the cover... well, what can you say; it was the seventies.
Not that that's any excuse, it is essentially blatant misogyny as marketing, and it's difficult to view it any other way.

(Interestingly, Patti Smith's Horses with it's fantastic Mapplethorpe portrait of her on the cover was released in the same year as Below the Belt; images that couldn't have been any more different, showing that representations of women in rock music were beginning to break away from the stereotype.
Does anyone else remember those Top of the Pops compilation album covers? Mad!)

The vitruvian woman, just in case you're interested, is model Stephanie Mariann.
But I haven't got her number, I'm afraid...

Decent vinyl rip @320kbs
Beat yourself up here

Shut it! You Slags!

Bitchin soundtrack from one of the greatest TV shows British commercial television ever produced.

When I was a lad The Sweeney used to be the talk of the playground; everybody watched it.
In fact, at its peak in the mid-nineteen-seventies nineteen million people (that was a third of the British nation) watched it; not bad for a cop show shown on a Thursday night.

Strung together with authentic hard boiled London dialogue and the cant of the time ('You're nicked', 'Scum', 'Slag', 'Toe-rag', 'Bastard', 'Guv' and the inevitable 'Shut it!'), as well as some beautifully profound soliloquies from the sublime Jack Regan (John Thaw), my favourite being:

I sometimes hate this bastard place.
It's a bloody holiday camp for thieves and weirdos; all the rubbish.
You age prematurely trying to sort some of them out.
You try and protect the public and all they do is call you fascist.
You nail a villain, and some ponced-up, pin-striped, Hampstead barrister screws it up like an old fag packet on a point of procedure.
Then pops off for a game of squash and a glass of madeira.
He's taking home thirty grand a year, and we can just about afford ten days in Eastbourne and a second-hand car.
Ah, it's all bloody wrong my son.

All of this wonderfully sampled dialogue accompanies some right solid seventies' funk and thug.
Wah-wah guitars, sleazy organs, wicked percussion, and generally some of the best incidental music ever written for television is all to be found on this excellent collection.

Despite the programme's Britishness, the music borrowed heavily from U.S. Blaxploitation movies, which was somehow most appropriate, perfectly accompanying the gritty, hard boiled themes the series absolutely reveled in.

Some of the musical highlights include Herbie Flowers' & Barry Morgan's 'Movement 1'; the atmospheric chase themed 'Flying South'; the very black 'Funky Pusher' and the very visual 'Freak Out'.
But as a whole, the album makes for a great exciting listen.

Various Artists - Shut It! The Music of the Sweeney (2001)

Salute to Thames - Johnny Hawksworth
The Sweeney (main Theme) - Harry South
Flying South - Brian Bennett
Movement 1 - Herbie Flowers & Barry Morgan
Hogan's Thing - Simon Haseley
Bora - Simon Haseley
Funky Express - Duncan Lamont
Big Shot - Keith Mansfield
Contact - Peter Reno
Thug - Brian Bennett
The Journey - Duncan Lamont
No Man's Land - Jacques Arel & Pierre Dutor
Regan's Theme - Dennis King
Steam Heat - Barbara Moore
Funko - Irving Martin
The Apartment - Duncan Lamont
Funky Pusher - Wally Asp
Freak Out - John O'Brien-Docker
The Grey Man Moves - Gordon Grant
The Heist - Brian Bennett
The Investigator - Brian Bennett
Wheel Man - Keith Papworth
The Big Fuzz - Johnny Pearson
Sideral Rhythmic - Jacques Arel & Pierre Dutor
Pop March - Johnny Pearson
The Sweeney (Closing Theme) - Harry South

Cheers to Hackenbacker for the turn-on to this.

CD rip to mp3s
Get yourself bleedin' nicked here