Thursday 30 September 2021

Exile On Moan Street is now a teenager

Six million eighty three thousand and two hundred and twenty one hits later 
Mona is celebrating

Wednesday 29 September 2021

Yesterday's sunset scribble finished

Was inspired by a friend's bedroom light...it's funny that eyes and skulls are the only things that I can draw from memory. 
Too much staring at Grateful Dead art as a youth probably

Tuesday 28 September 2021

'Hendrix is like Beethoven, Vivaldi is more Des O’Connor'

Andrew Catlin: Shane MacGowan (Barcelona)

Never seen this photo from Andrew before. Brilliant. One night Andrew did snap me working at the Dingwall's bar. Only as I hassled him probablyso he could have just faked it . Know his brother Fritz the 23Skidoo much better. But he's a damn fine photographer
 
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Sound System Projection (27/9 - 30/9 Southbank London)

Wednesday 22 September 2021

Richard H Kirk was prolific, hungry, angry and funky to the end

The Bug On RHK

Futura: Cast of Characters (Kaikai Kiki Gallery Tokyo 24/9 - 14/10)

Reusable Reality Mix (A Short Introduction To The Solo Recordings of Richard H Kirk)

Tracklist: Datacrime - The Number of Magic - Mapou (as Sandoz) - Human Spirit - Freezone - Celestial Dawn Imagined - This Pill (as The Third Man) - Chant To Jah (as Sandoz) 
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C is for...Cabaret Voltaire

Taxi Mutant

Exile Arts & Crafts Dept (Keeps me off the streets)

Images from the Secret Stasi Archives or: what does Big Brother see, while he is watching?

Cabaret Voltaire: Forging The Future

Tuesday 21 September 2021

Leaked Apple Training Videos Show How It Undermines Third-Party Repair

Made in Sheffield, beloved in Manchester

Cabaret Voltaire - Live 'La Edad De Oro' (1983)

 
1 - In The Shadows
2 - Animation
3 - Just Fascination
4 - Over and Over 
5 - The Dream Ticket
6 - Product Patrol

Rest Easy Richard

 
21/3/56 - 8/8/21

Richard H Kirk R.I.P.

The Deviants - Midnight Shift/Uncle Harry's Last Freakout (Hyde Park, London, 20/9/69)

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How Music Can Literally Heal the Heart

Saturday 18 September 2021

You Better Run From Me: A Moor Mother Mix

Tracklist: 
1 bebe's kids, APOLLO - Pink Siifu ft Moor Mother 
2 Circuit City Act 1: Working Machine - MM 
3 Vex'd - The Bug ft MM 
4 Catalyst - Zonal ft MM 
5 MMXXX - Eartheater ft MM 
6 Splinters - Reef The Lost Cauze ft MM & Kahlil Ali 
7 Gang For A Day - MM & Billy Woods ft Franklin James Fisher 
8 Creation Myth - MM 
9 Race Function Limited - MM ft Brother May 
10 Off Script (MM Remix) - The Body 
11 Ya Mom's A Cop - The Hirs Collective ft MM 
12 Nightshade - MM & Olof Melander 
13 Not For You (MM Remix) - The Hirs Collective 
14 Pick Up Your Burning Cross - Sons of Kemet ft MM & Angel Bat Dawid 
15 The Kill (MM Remix) - Gonjasufi 
16 This Week - MM 
17 End of My Bloodline (Remix) - Screaming Females ft MM & Sammus

Tuesday 14 September 2021

Why Japanese peasants signed their list of demands with all their names in a circle (Edo Period1603-1868)

THREAD

No Rush Mix

Tracklist: 
1 Rabbit Hills - Michael Chapman 
2 Feel So Good - Spacemen 3 
3 Stuck In The Middle With You - Gerry Rafferty 
4 Sad But True - Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit 
5 King of Nails - Sparklehorse 
6 Disappearing - Low 
7 Turn To Red - Killing Joke 
8 Forever Starts Now (Killing Joke Dub) - Gang of Four 
9 Monkey (Bob Mould Remix) - Low 
10 Original - Leftfield 
11 Fool's Gold - The Stone Roses 
12 I Think I'm In Love (Chemical Brothers Remix) - Spiritualized

Wednesday 8 September 2021

Fat White Family - Live in Hell (Glastonbury 2015)

Tracklist: Touch The Leather / Heaven on Earth / Whitest Boy on the Beach / Cream of the Young / Wild American Prairie / Goodbye Goebbels / Bomb Disneyland

I Went Up I Went Down Mix

Tracklist:
1 I Went Up I Went Down - Pink Faries 
2 Song From The Bottom of A Well - Kevin Ayers 
3 No Version - Zonal 
4 The Motor City's Burning - Hugo Race & Michelangelo Russo 
5 Don't Wake Me Up - Jesu 
6 River of No Shame - Alan Vega 
7 East Easy Rider - Julian Cope 
8 Feet Fat White - Family

Tuesday 7 September 2021

Ken Thomas R.I.P.

Ok I'm very late to this news  having just found out today.
Ken  after working on recordings by the likes of Queen, Bowie and PIL as engineer went on to produce some of my very favourite bands from back in the day including 23 Skidoo, PsychicTV, The Au Pairs, Wire, Test Dept and Clock DVA and then producing amongst others Sigur Rós, Gavin Friday and M83 later 
I remember going up to Manchester to see PTV's second gig and the first with a full band: Genesis P'Orridge, Peter Christopherson, Paula P'Orridge, Alex Ferguson, Jonh Balance (Coil) and Jon Gosling (Mekon) 
Originally it was supposed to have been held at Prestwich Mental Hospital but council complaints meant it was transferred to The Ritz 
The debut line up had been just GPO and Sleazy as part of the Burroughs' Final Academy in Brixton just over a year before
At the Manchester gig Sleazy's set up malfunctioned and to be honest if it wasn't for Ken's mixing that night I think it would have been a complete shambles. 
At the end of the night I was chatting to some girl and it turned out she reviewed the gig for Sounds (I think it was). Now if anyone should have a clipping of that...
You can watch the film of the performance below 
'Don't forget Ken, make it hurt'

(ASIDE] I bought a tee shirt with a brilliant design of heretics burning at the stake with the words 'Nice People These Burn Again Christians'  at that show. I had it for a long time until someone stole it off my washing line here in Melbourne years later. I'd already cut the design out and sewn it on to new tees twice as that one got a lot of wear back in the day

I'm ready. ZÖJ badge on and counting down to their online show tonight (8PM AEST)


Tonight from 8:00 PM (Australian Eastern Standard Time)


+ No Man's Land: Pippa Bainbridge (vocals, guitar, loop, effects)/ Swiss van Kalken (bass guitar, found percussion, loop, effects) 
+ Gillian Howell (clarinet +)/Tony Hicks (clarinets + saxophones)/Alice Bennett (electronics/sound manipulations and flute)/Miranda Hill (bass + violine) 
+ ZÖJ: Gelareh Pour (Qeychak & Voice)/ Brian O’Dwyer (Drum kit). Video: Saeed Sourati 
Stream 

The Make It Up Club has been presenting weekly curated experimental, improvised, and avant-garde music and sound happenings in Melbourne since 1998

Monday 6 September 2021

The dying art of the hatchet job

The Clash - Police & Thieves / Complete Control / (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais

From their debut album The Clash cover Junior Murvin's Police & Thieves which Lee Perry had produced and co-written. 
For a band of punks that 'real' musos said couldn't play their instruments they certainly made that song their own.  While Clapton's racism had certainly spurred me on to help out with organising RAR in Glasgow I knew that Clapton had NOT shot the sherrif but we certainly knew ALL about police and thieves
Then the band brought Mr Perry himself on board for production duties on Complete Control and here we are what 45 years later and I really am still not sure what was added by him apart from a splash of delay when Joe intones that he does't trust you. That you shouldn't trust him and that Mick is his guitar hero...  The JA/London connection  brought cachet though and from that led to them getting namechecked in a Bob Marley song.
Last track, no involvement from Scratch here. Included in the mix because White Man is the greatest Clash song of them all, and was written about the gig that this poster below was advertising
There is no doubt that perhaps the younger members of the nascent spiky haired brigade were getting their first introduction to reggae rhythms and The Clash would no doubt go on to turn a lot of people onto other styles of music especially through London Calling and of course when they toured they were always bringing out superb support acts. 
In Britain alone after the White Riot tour that brought The Jam, The Buzzcocks, The Slits and Subway Sect to Edinburgh as 'punk' was banned in Glasgow by the city councillors.  Then when the ban was rescinded we had Hell and The Voidoids at The Apollo. Then further tours brought Suicide, Joe Ely, Mickey Dread, Prince Hammer even  Futura painting a backdrop on stage while the band played. 
In the US they took Bo Diddley, Grandmaster Flash, Lee Dorsey, The Undertones, The Chamber Brothers and The Cramps to name just some of the support acts
See you knew that they were fans of music of all varieties. 
I mean do you actually think that Clapton listens to any music these days...oh and er Eric this is the way that song is done

Sunday 5 September 2021

Nico - Live in Tokyo (1986)

 
There was a time in early eighties London when you could not escape seeing Nico live. 
She was probably often still billed as Nico from the Velvet Underground on the posters but truth be told by now she was the legendary Narco from the London Underground. (That's stolen unashamedly from 'Nico: Songs They Never Play on the Radio' by James Edward Young which is one of the funniest books you will ever read.) Nico would be on this bill and that one and there are esimates that she played live in the region of 1200 times between 1980 & 88.
Sometimes you had no idea that she would be taking part that night as when Rip Rig & Panic had a gig at the Wag Club on a very sultry summer night and yeah Nico joined them for a couple of VU tunes (thinking Sunday Morning and Heroin) and that WAS something special. 
Anyway I decided to move to Amsterdam in 84 and look there is Nico playing The Paradiso again. And again...
My friend Laurie's abiding memory of a visit to Amsterdam in the early seventies was having his acidtrip totally turned into a freak out by witnessing her performing Janitors of Lunacy live at the...you guessed The Paradiso. 
My ex- wife even had a flying visit to her home town here in Melbourne when we were living in London and yep...there was Nico performing at The Prince of Wales in St. Kilda. That was with Dr John Cooper Clarke in tow and the tales of their life in their Brixton flat in Young's book are fugn hilarious. Highly recommended
I also had Dick Witts' biography of her but I just realised that didn't make the move to Exile Towers. With the stolen book list also including Vivien Goldman & David Corio's Black Chord it is really easy for me to know who took them. (Nico fan and a photographer you say and only steals hardback copies. Hmmm) 
Not only is she a khunt she is also a very rich khunt too 
People eh

Leslie Winer’s Music Was a Mystery in 1990. She Still Likes It That Way

'I’m like a crazy lady at the edge of the village,' Winer said of her willingness to pioneer what became a new sound. 'Never thought of any of it like that. Just the fun of making new tracks'

Video by John Maybury 
...and here's a mix of her work I put together the other day

OH MY FUCKING GOD, GET THE FUCKING VACCINE ALREADY, YOU FUCKING FUCKS

'genuine homeopathic products'

Good luck with that

Oh FFS! Seriously?

'I never saw value in reading, and then I realised that I could be an intellectual weapon if I read'

Self Portrait (Triptych)


(Exile Towers - Aug/Sept 2021)


If Texas leaders want to protect life, where are masks, vaccines, resources for kids?

The Bug - Instrumentals Dubs & Versions Mix

Tracklist: 
Those Tapes Are Dangerous / Destroy Me (Version) / Rootsman VS The Bug (Version) / Killer Queen Dub / Fire Version / Zim Version / Opi Teng / One Shot Version / Living Dub / No Version / Void Version / Dem Version / Angry Dub / Bad Riddim / Box (Instrumental) 
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The Bug with Manga St Hilaire - Live Railway Hotel Brunswick Melbourne (15/3/15)

 
Recorded on hand-held Tascam
Here's the night self reviewed by Kevin: 
Tonite in Melbourne was messy, it was raw, dirty, tense & nasty..LOVED IT, despite and maybe because, the lying fuck of a venue owner promised the promoters, his building was 'Fully sound proofed' prior to the event, when the dude was desperate to have the show hire his venue….but then the idiot kept bringin out bigger bouncers over time, throughout the set to try and intimidate me and the promoters to turn down the voliume..….which actually just added fuel to my fire..lol. (Although i gotta say i was sorry for the don dadas/show promoters Ben/Tom from ‘Echo Chamber’ who had to feel the heat and were forced to compromise somewhat…) i made mistakes, tech probs occured, It wasn’t as overwhelmingly loud as our normal sets, it didn’t have the light assault we normally employ, YET it absolutely rocked, cause the good ppl of Melbourne that showed, gave us maximum energy…Big yourselves up indeed……It was a psychotic rollercoaster at the 'Railway Hotel' last night …we dug it, and Manga was almost literally on fire as he rinsed the mic.. Major shout to the 'Echo Chamber' crew for sortin last night's show at 4 days notice, it was an incredible effort, + cheers for fillin the house with a sick crowd & the sweetest reggae/bass/junglegrime sounds…. I guess me and Manga really did fuck up Melbourne...It was pure madness..Crowd were incredible..Max energy. Madman victory ! Hilarious that Manga saw two women literally rip off their bras and throw them in the air, whilst i saw another girl literally clinging on to the bassbins for most of the set..The people they expressed themselves proper....hahaha.. Sorry it couldnt have been as intense an experience as we generally like to detonate, but actually it was still a blast..! And yo, can the fucker that stole my shades, plz return them, as my weakass blue eyes will fry in the sunshine down under.... (Great selfie by Manga)

‘Panic made us vulnerable’: how 9/11 made the US surveillance state – and the Americans who fought back

She Is Beyond Dub

Saturday 4 September 2021

BOMBART - Pop Group Dub Special with Dennis Bovell

A monthly one hour sound collage on Radio Alhara by BOMBART (Peter Harris and Mark Stewart)

Give Me An Inch & I Will Go For Your Throat Mix

A Leslie Winer compilation 
I got a tiny little phial of ‘come to me’ and a gallon of ‘get the fuck out'
 
Remote Viewing


New Age Doom & Lee 'Scratch' Perry - Life is an Experiment

From New Age Doom's upcoming album, 'Lee 'Scratch' Perry's Guide to the Universe' released November 5, 2021

Looking Good Diving (In A Buffalo Stance)

1986 Looking Good Diving (With The Wild Bunch) 1988 The common denominator is Neneh's partner Cameron McVey

Rip Rig and Panic - 18 mins of Commonwealth Institute gig (1983?)

 
Oh man I have never seen this footage before. 
Taking me back to London in the early-mid eighties when I caught this band SO many times live. 
From their first gig billed as The Ex Pop Group at The Planetarium in Kings X to the last one wherever it was. I honestly can't remember. Hardly surprising but I did record a LOT of their shows on my Walkman. Every London gig they played plus others outside the city including an amazing improvisation by Springer on the organ at York Cathedral when they were strolling around town before playing at The Territorial Army Hall, where they had been double booked with Wall of Voodoo. WoV got a wee bit stroppy so RRP played first and then fucked off. 
I hope the person who nicked all those tapes knew exactly what they were getting tho I suspect not 
*Sigh 
Neneh's dad joins them in Tokyo in 83

(Play full album) Fuck The Shit That Was It to paraphrase their first poster. 
They really were just the most amazing band and so many good times was had though I did nearly get arrested while working for them in Manchester. 
Neneh had been driving the tour van around a car park in the city centre and as Neneh couldn't drive the van basically bunny-hopped around it. Driving off to the venue at some student place I seem to remember they went upstairs and I started to get their instruments together to take into the venue too, when suddenly there was quite an angry knock on the back door and there was one of James Anderton's finest wanting to have a word. 
Now while there was really only one member of the band who smoked grass boy did he smoke a fuck of a lot and I knew that the van stank of grass. Really strongly stank. Anyway I opened the door and watched this  cop's face as he probably got very high just from the waft. 
Yes it was all about Neneh's er 'erratic' driving and was put down as just giving her a driving lesson. 
I have to say I'm surprised they didn't have me arrested for being the world's worst roadie to be honest!
And I still fugn miss Sean
Not that long ago Tessa from The Slits posted that her and Sean's daughter having her own kid meant that Sean would have been a Grandad and that is happening to me in November despite my protestations that I am far too young
Thinking of Sean quite often leads to thinking about this night when Gareth and him invaded the stage at a Birthday Party gig at North London Poly. Photographic evidence turned up in the last year or so...
 
Now why this happened I think was because Mr Cave had expressed his admiration for The Pop Group when first arriving in London but I do seem to remember he didn't think much of How Much Longer...when that album was released. 
Probably and I'm being honest here, it was all a bit agit-prop and at the time I think Cave had other things on his mind than enjoying the underlying heavy funk rhythms of the Pop Group live.  
Anyway that may be where the animosity, and it was very mutual, came from. 
So after this two man invasion (and it was a very polite one, just jumping onto the stage and then sitting on the drum riser and having a wee chat amongst themselves) it got even funnier (tho perhaps Cave remembers this differently)
After the gig it suddenly came to me that I had never seen him so flustered and impotent onstage before. 
Now as fate transpired we all found ourselves in the same underground carriage heading to wherever we were all going on the last train of the night. 
At this point in the story you have to understand that there was a reason why Steve Beresford (anonymously) described Gareth to the NME as someone you sometimes just wanted to put across your knee and give a good slapping to
So being the last train on a Friday night the carriage is jam packed and lo and behold Cave is spotted behind a newspaper trying to ignore the Rip Rig contingent when Gareth creeps up and sets fire to the bottom of the broadsheet newspaper in Cave's hands. 
Oh man I actually still think it was absolutely hilarious but that is probably my inner twenty two year old self smiling. 
My sixty one year old self wonders why didn't Tracy Pew intervene that night onstage or was this during the time of his incarceration back in Australia dating this gig to between February and August 1982?

Feel Like Making Dub (Mark Stewart's Essential Dubs) Mix

Tracklist: 
Jahovia Dub - The Twinkle Brothers 
Judge I Dub - Tappa Zukie
Feel Like Making Love (Version) - Elizabeth Archer & The Equators 
Psalms of David / Version - Prince Far I 
Diverse Doctrine(Version) - Ras Ibuna 
Ire Feelings - Rupie Edwards 
Sons of Dub - Junior Delgado 
Baltimore / Version - The Tamlins 
Ketch A Dub - Devon Irons 
Moulding Dub - Ijahman Levi 
Brooklyn Vegan asked Mark Stewart to make a playlist of his favorite dub tracks, and he happily obliged with 10 essentials, including plates from Prince Far I, Rupie Edwards, The Tamlins, The Twinkle Brothers, Elizabeth Archer & The Equators, and more. This list also includes Devon Irons' "Ketch Vampire [Ketch a Dub]" which Mark calls "the best production from the late great Lee 'High Priest' Perry, the duke of dub." Mark dedicates the entire list to Lee "Scratch" Perry 
Via 
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The Pop Group - Words Disobey Me (Dennis Bovell Dub Version)

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Mark Stewart's Essential Dubs

Stinky Grooves Guest Archive #003: Adrian Sherwood & On-U Sound Crew 1995

In Adrian's own words this was an anarchic show on an anarchic tour. Technically it's not a Stinky Grooves as we didit on a differnet night to fit them arriving in from the UK and parts unknown. In the studio are Adrian Sherwood, Audio Active, Tackhead/The Maffia minus Mark Stewart who wasn't up for it after 40 odd hours of flying & sundry other folk, studio was cloudy and I think the most crowded I can remember. The sub suffered. Whole crew were shattered and did an amazing job, lovely vibes

Mark Stewart: Secret Thirteen Mix (290)

'Pull up! This is the new style. Flip the script. This one's for the inmates. The process, the process, the process church of the final judgement. Like my life these tunes are crunked, chopped & screwed. A deep listening reflection on this processed world we live in. No sleep till Bristol. As Prince Jazzbo said ‘one step forward, two step backward.’ Let the drums of defiance ring across this land.' 

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Live at Dolce Vita, Lausanne, Switzerland 25/5/85 Passivecation Program / Hypnotised / Liberty City / The Resistance of The Cell / As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade / We Are All Prostitutes  / Jerusalem / Blessed Are Those Who Struggle / encore... 
Skip McDonald replaced by Steve Beresford on keyboards joining usual Maffia rhythm section of Doug Wimbish and Keith LeBlanc. Adrian Sherwood at the mixing desk. 
I actually caught this tour at The Paradiso in Amsterdam. So good. The time I had caught Mark & The Maffia previously it had been the first album's Creation Rebel line up at their first or second gig at Kingston Uni in London.Tackhead having been formed after I left London  
...and then I found this. Mark & Maffia playing in Den Haag back in 2009. I actually managed to get my son who was studying in Utrecht at the time onto the guest list for this gig. he dutifuly made it down there and when I asked him how he enjoyed it he replied that it was 'old man music dad'! Kids eh? Finally there is a new album coming from Tackhead and Mark is in the mix and people who have heard some of the sessions are saying good things. Yet another reinvention of sound for them You can hear some of the new tracks on David Asher's On-U Sound Sunday Roast shows
Finally one of the nights that Tackhead destroyed The Old Greek Theatre here in Melbourne on their first Australian tour back in 1989