one faint deluded smile

Friday, January 14, 2005

Teenbeat Reprise

Leg End

So it's 1974 and I'm way past Glam (or at least I think I am until I hear it all again in the 1990's). So it's lucky that Virgin records are around to satisfy my cravings for something a little more esoteric. I think this is how it went:

- bought Rock Bottom by Robert Wyatt and completely fell in love with it.
- oh, he's on the 1st Rotter's Club album. So I got that as well and, wow, someone from Henry Cow (what a great name!) is playing on it.
- so I bought Leg End and that's all I really needed to become completely obsessed for quite a few years.

mp3: Nirvana For Mice

It's the duelling horn arrangement that always drags me in. And then the slightly weird way they initiate changes - by a handclap. Sure, it's got a lengthy jazz style sax solo but the music behind it seems so off kilter that I can forgive dear old Tim Hodgkinson. And then it ends on an unexpected vocal refrain of "sweet mystery of life i will remember". I never knew what it was all "about" (songs were supposed to be about something, weren't they?) but that hardly mattered.

mp3: Bittern Storm Over Ulm

As soon as I saw the blackened sock of their 2nd album "Unrest" I anticipated something stranger. It starts off with this Fred Frith extrapolation of The Yardbirds' version of "Got To Hurry" and it remains one of the tracks I constantly go back to for a bit of quick energy. More handclaps, lots of guitars and poop-de-doop saxes ending on a sharp violin squeel. It still sounds like the same band but skewered on a sharp stick. Unlike this track, half the album is improvised in the studio with lots of overdubs - influenced entirely by hearing The Faust Tapes.

mp3: War

A side on the Greasy Trucker compilation followed and then they backed Slapp Happy for "Desperate Straights" (another of my favourites). But then the supposedly combined bands produced "In Praise Of Learning" - their most obviously political record : "Art is not a mirror - it is a hammer", indeed. And, ofcourse, the red coloured sock is a major giveaway. This 1st track sets the tone with a heavy prominent bass line, Dagmar's throaty yelping and a more strident instrumental section. The LP then goes on with the daunting, lengthy "Living In The Heart Of The Beast" and I wonder whether I'll still like this in 30 years time (apparently I still do).

mp3: Udine (edit)

So Virgin kick them off the label and they release a double live cd "Concerts". Most of it is like this track and it became an imprint for the kind of improv I continue to love. A gorgeous descending bass line with scratchy organ, marimba, vocal and guitar overlays. One man's noodling, I suppose...

mp3: No More Songs

Without a recording contract they continued to play live to pay the bills: this is a bootleg recording from a 1976 radio concert in Stockholm that I hadn't heard until 2 years ago. They'd just learnt that Phil Ochs (who wrote the original) had died so they decided to end the concert with this hastily practised version. It shows up Dagmar's lovely Slapp Happy style voice and the complete professionalism of the group.

mp3: Gretel's Tale

So eventually they haggle and haggle and haggle and go and do the Art Bears thing and right away record their last LP "Western Culture". One side is a piece by Tim H. and the 2nd is (mainly) by Lindsay Cooper of which this is a small track. It's very reminiscent of the 1st album again but without a lot of the grace that "Leg End" had. It's many people favourite but definitely not mine. By this time I'd moved onto This Heat, The Pop Group and Pere Ubu so it barely rattled my cage.

Once again - go to Chris Cutler's terrific website for the complete lowdown on the band's history.

You can buy all of the remastered version of these wonderfull albums (bar "Concerts" - apparently an enlarged version will happen sometime) from ReR.

4 Comments:

  • I tried to download the 5 Henry Cow tracks but somehow I always get a 404 "file not found" error. Is this a bandwidth issue or is there a problem with the links? I can see the "Leg End" cover image so I suppose there is something wrong with the links. Thanks for your great posts by the way. I never seriously listened to Henry Cow but I have always been intrigued about this band. Is there a connection to Hatfield & the North? I remember liking one track by them very much. No clue what the name was. "Rotter's Club" was an album by them wasn't it? By the way I wanted to write this as an e-mail but it was rejected. The "n.o.s.p.a.m." part has to be deleted from the address, hasn't it?

    By Blogger Alexander, at 6:45 am  

  • alexander - thanks for this. the links weren't in correctly but now are.

    > Is there a connection to Hatfield & the North?
    only tangentially in that they were both on the early virgin records roster and, as all these bands recorded at "the manor" studio, they cross pollinated and played little roles on everyones elses LPs. 'the rotters club' is probably the best of their albums - it's all a little too much lite jazzy for me but still good in it's own way.

    > The "n.o.s.p.a.m." part has to be deleted from the address, hasn't it?

    yes, it does. not sure why it shouldn't work. the address should be nnn @ bigpond dot net dot au

    thanks again for tuning in.

    By Blogger Phil, at 7:10 am  

  • thanks for fixing the links. some interesting tracks. that's all i can say after one listen on the shitty laptop. i think i have to get an ipod to listen properly to all those mp3s i download. on the laptop speaker i can hardly hear those handclaps. can you also fix the last link to gretel? yes i got your e-mail response. sometimes catherine's e-mail is not behaving as it should.

    my fave is "bittern storm over ulm" i guess. that's how i like my jazz-rock. slightly off-kilter but not too much though.

    By Blogger Alexander, at 10:25 am  

  • I presume I've missed those tracks by now, but I have a couple of them anyway. And what of it? Any excuse to go out to the local record store and get some of this classic 70's Brit avant-rock is okay by me.

    Rock Bottom by Robert Wyatt is an easy album to fall in love with... or even to fall in love to. :-) "Sea Song" is a classic.

    By Blogger brendan, at 8:48 pm  

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