Guerrilla Handbell Strikeforce

Monsieur et Madam Kent (and a hanger-on)

Laurence R

"That drives a lot of The Dark Stuff. Another thing that drives it is the thing that we were talking about: the big hard man, the tough man. Keith Richards, Jerry Lee Lewis, Iggy Pop: big tough men. Let’s see how tough they really are. What is a real tough man: is it someone who goes out and can drink and drug more than anyone else, but who doesn’t really look after their own children?

Or is it someone like Neil Young, who has two children — one in particular — who suffers chronically from cerebral palsy. And he has devoted his life to making his son the centre of his life; to making him as loved and as wanted as possible. He’s tried to create things to help his son communicate with other children. There’s a big difference. That’s what a man is, to me; that’s what a fucking man is.

And Neil Young also goes out and he does the stuff. Every show he plays. He’s not going to turn up and be too drugged out to perform. Now that’s what a man is; it ain’t this guy that goes out and is completely in the bag all the time. And whoopee, man: wow, you can drink more than everyone else, you can take drugs more than anyone else. But, look at his family life: that’s where it counts for me."

(Nick Kent on 'manliness')

"For me, the bane of the seventies was white guys trying to play funk music — and that includes the Rolling Stones — and white guys playing reggae music (and that also includes the Rolling Stones)."

(Nick Kent on the seventies)

Robert Kirby RIP

Heard about Robert Kirby's sad passing  a month ago & completely forgot to post anything...

Born in 1948, Kirby met Drake at Cambridge University in early 1968 and put together a string section to accompany the singer-songwriter at live appearances.

When Drake recorded his debut album, ‘Five Leaves Left’, in the summer of 1968, producer Joe Boyd had already lined-up another string arranger – but the singer rejected his arrangements and insisted Kirby was brought in.

He then returned to arrange the strings on 1970’s ‘Bryter Layter’ and during the following decade he arranged the strings on more than 40 albums. Many of them were by folk artists such as Ralph McTell, Al Stewart and Vashti Bunyan, but he also worked on Elton John’s ‘Madman Across The Water’, David Ackles‘ ‘American Gothic’ and John Cale’s ‘Helen Of Troy’.

Kirby also spent three years playing keyboards in The Strawbs in the mid-1970s, but at the end of the decade opted for a career in marketing.

He made only occasional returns to the studio in the 1980s, most notably on Elvis Costello’s ‘Almost Blue’. However, as Drake’s cult status grew in the 1990s, he returned to the limelight.

Paul Weller invited him to arrange the strings on several tracks on his 2000 album ‘Heliocentric’. Further invitations followed to work on albums by The Magic Numbers, Linda Thompson and on Vashti Bunyan’s comeback, more than 35 years after their previous collaboration.

Kirby also added new string arrangements to several tracks on ‘Made To Love Magic’, the compilation album of Drake out-takes and remixed tracks, released in 2004.

Here from the 1969 debut album “Five Leaves Left” is a prime example of both their work.

“River Man” – Nick Drake

Betty came by on her way
Said she had a word to say
About things today
And fallen leaves.

Said she hadn’t heard the news
Hadn’t had the time to choose
A way to lose
But she believes.

Gonna see the river man
Gonna tell him all I can
About the plan
For lilac time.

If he tells me all he knows
’bout the way his river flows
And all night shows
In summertime.

Betty said she prayed today
For the sky to blow away
Or maybe stay
She wasn’t sure.

For when she thought of summer rain
Calling for her mind again
She lost the pain
And stayed for more.

Gonna see the river man
Gonna tell him all I can
’bout the ban
On feeling free.

If he tells me all he knows
About the way his river flows
I don’t suppose
It’s meant for me.

Oh, how they come and go
Oh, how they come and go

Much, much more

@'The Helpless Dancer'

Robert Kirby 

(16 April 1948 - 3 October 2009) 

I have always loved Nick Drake's work since discovering him on an Island Record compilation: have it in my head that it was 'Time Has Told Me' on 'Bumpers' but...

This would have been about 1974 or so and obviously I never saw Nick Drake perform but I do remember an Elvis Costello gig at 'Festival Hall' in London in the early 80's where a lot of his work had been orchestrated by Robert Kirby and it was sublime...

...& now

British rock journalist Nick Kent being interviewed at the Crossing Border Festival 2009 in The Hague.

@'Flickr' 

Syd Barrett obituary by Nick Kent

Crazy diamond ... Syd Barrett

Syd Barrett's musical career lasted barely seven years - from 1965 to early '72 - and the past 32 years saw him resolutely refusing to record new music or venture near a concert stage. But Barrett, who died of cancer last Friday at the age of 60, will go down in history as one of the most uniquely inspired creative talents to have sprung up from the pop revolution that gripped Britain in the late 20th century. More specifically, he was the golden boy of the mind-melting late-60s psychedelic era, its brightest star and ultimately its most tragic victim.

Like many other questing spirits who came to age in the mid-60s, he was inspired by taking LSD to create truly daring, other-wordly music - first for the original incarnation of Pink Floyd, then as a solo singer/songwriter - but the drug ended up fatally fracturing his psyche and turning him into a solitary recluse unable to function within the music industry and society in general. The story of his personal meltdown has been told and retold as a cautionary tale for indiscriminate druggies to the point where Barrett's status as rock's most illustrious casualty often threatens to outweigh his actual creative contributions to the form. This is not as it should be.

Barrett started making music in his early teens, not long after the death of his father, an esteemed doctor. He became a regular fixture at Cambridge folk clubs but was generally more attracted by music involving electric instruments. He played in several amateurish blues bands around Cambridge until he won a scholarship to a prestigious London art school in 1964. The following year Barrett started playing with a former Cambridge schoolfriend, Roger Waters, who was studying architecture at London's Regent Street polytechnic, and two of Waters' fellow students, Richard Wright and Nick Mason. Although he was the youngest member of the group, Barrett quickly became its leader and key driving force. He wrote the songs. He sang them, too - as well as playing guitar. He even came up with the name: Pink Floyd, taken from a blues album he owned involving two obscure musicians known as Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

Live, Barrett's Floyd quickly earned a reputation as London's most radical musical experience. The four-piece invented a new way for a rock band to express themselves, with eccentric pop songs suddenly melting into long, spaced-out improvisations that would directly open the door first to the UK psychedelia movement and later to the oft-derided form we now call prog-rock. Barrett's guitar-playing was singular enough, always opting for spine-tingling "eerie noise" over virtuoso string-bending, but he was most gifted as a songwriter.

This became abundantly clear when the group released their first single at the outset of 1967. Arnold Layne was a Barrett composition that was both light-heartedly mischievous and creepingly sinister, evoking a figure from his Cambridge past, a disturbed individual who often stole women's underclothing from local washing lines. David Bowie - then a struggling singer/songwriter - was just one among many who found Barrett's groundbreaking blending of "light" and "dark" subject matter in popular song lyrics deeply liberating for his own personal muse. Last May, Bowie took the stage with David Gilmour, Barrett's Floyd replacement, to perform Arnold Layne as a homage to Syd -and also a personal thank-you for the considerable influence Barrett's music has had on him.

Barrett continued his masterful marriage of light and dark emotions on the group's next single, See Emily Play, and also alchemised the whimsical new bohemian spirit of the summer of love into an entire album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. But the dark aspects of his art soon eclipsed the light and euphoric side of his vision. In the late summer of '67 he wrote several disturbing new songs, one of which, Jugband Blues, appeared to be a stark autobiographical cry for help from a man desperately struggling with schizophrenia. The rest of the Floyd refused to release the other compositions and stood on horrified as they watched their guiding light turn int a catatonic human train-wreck. In early 1968, they booted him out of his own group.

This should have been a wake-up call for Barrett, but instead he sank even further into a world of drug-induced dislocation. Yet he continued to write songs that more and more sounded like open psychic sores, as this illuminated but desperately isolated soul struggled to make sense of his condition. He made two albums from this material - The Madcap Laughs (1970) and Barrett (1971) - with considerable assistance in the studio from his ex-Floyd cohorts Waters, Wright and Gilmour. But neither record sold many copies when released and Barrett returned to his mother's house in Cambridge to live like a hermit. He briefly played concerts with a local band called Stars in early 1972 but a negative review of one show caused him to jettison any further musical ambitions and become a full-time social recluse.

Yet his ghost has continued to exert an ever-more potent fascination over rock musicians of all generations. That Pink Floyd themselves were haunted by the tortured spectre is confirmed by Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall, their three most momentous post-Syd recordings. David Bowie re-channelled Barrett's dislocated, quintessential English style of vocal projection into songs such as The Bewlay Brothers. In early 1976, just before John Lydon joined the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren tried (unsuccessfully) to convince the band to perform a couple of Syd's songs in their repertoire. The Damned, meanwhile, attempted - in vain - to get Barrett to produce their second album. Then came the new-wave bands such as the Soft Boys who feverishly appropriated the Madcap's surreal take on the modern pop-song aesthetic. He became a spiritual pied piper of 80s indie rock and by the 90s his madly spellbinding music was being referenced by everyone from Blur to the Brian Jonestown Massacre. In the new millennium, one needs to look no further than the recorded works of the Libertines and Babyshambles to hear that Syd's crazy diamond music is still bewitching and informing the creative choices of rock's latest generation of bohemian spirits.

A private funeral is apparently being planned that will pointedly exclude all Barrett's past musical compadres. No matter. All of us who were ever deeply touched by his unique gifts and his tragic life story should bow our heads and offer up a minute's silence to this remarkable individual for the way he enriched our lives. And pray that he is finally fully at peace.

@'The Guardian'

For those of you unlucky enough to not have been readers of the music press back in the late 1960's or early 1970's  there were some astonishing pieces by people like Lester Bangs and Nick Kent and it was a time when you could 'dance about architecture'.
(My tuppence worth: It was actually Eno in the seventies who said it first.)

I would suggest that 'The Dark Stuff' would make a wonderful present to yourself. 
His original article in the NME on Syd written at the time of his death is one of his best pieces.

Nick Kent interview regarding the reissue of 'The Dark Stuff'
'Diluting the Essence'
@'3A.M.'

Icon

Hermine Demoriane

 'Veiled Women' / 'Dub'
Written with Nick Kent. The Subterraneans version
HERE

Two and a half questions w/ Robert Henke

The story on the liner notes of Silence – where is that from?
I wrote it by myself. I like to play with my imagination, and fragments of stories help me finding a topic or a common color for an album. Sometimes when making music these stories just arrive and if I am in the right mood I dive into them and let them grow and write them down. I think very much in film scenes.

In your mind, who is the protagonist of the story told by Silence.
There are many possible options. One story could start like this: The protagonist is a biologist. He is in his thirties, very bright as pretty much everyone at the station. He used to work for a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland, but he is from another country. Whilst working for the company he felt more and more unhappy. He is an idealistic person, and wanted to move things, change the world etc… Instead he got stuck in administrativa. In his spare time ( and sometimes during working hours too…) he was following his special topic, research on some bacteria which usually is found next to super hot spots on the ground of the ocean. He got in contact with a researcher from Australia, Carl Miller. Miller at some point told the protagonist that he got a very interesting job offer for him: Joining an international team of high profile researchers who are supposed to work in a newly built laboratory high up in the mountains of Patagonia. The lab is privately financed by a group of entrepreneurs who are confident that they can find out some very interesting immunologic mechanism of a particular plant which might have a dramatic impact on the creation of new pharmaceutical products. The protagonists relationship in Basel is not really working out anymore, he is bored by his job, and he likes the adventure. So, he takes a plane to Melbourne to meet with Miller.

That was two years ago.

At the beginning it all went very well, Miller had a good hand with finding the right people, everyone liked the idea of living in this kind of film like scenario and they indeed found out amazing things. However, living up there in total isolation became more and more an issue. The project had to be secret, and the security was tight. For the outside world everyone working there pretty much vanished from the planet. And then that stupid accident happened …

@'Headphone Commute'

Their review of 'Silence' (definitely in my top 10 of this year)

HERE

Love it

'twitteren' (to twitter) and 'ontvrienden' (to unfriend someone) are the Dutch words of the year.

(Thanx Ings)

The Teardrop Explodes - Passionate Friend

In his autobiography Head-On, Cope describes what was going on from his perspective:

 

******

"We piled into the Toppy studios for what was to be a 'live' broadcast. Of course, we were still going to be lip-synching but it was screened directly to its regular 10 million viewers.

Gary [Dwyer, drummer] and I took huge hits of LSD during the afternoon and our dressing room had a vague narcotics lab feel about it, what with Droyd and Bates and the head of [record label] Phonogram TV punishing large quantities of powder.

We lurched over to our set. I was going to perform the whole song on top of a grand piano, in bare feet with leather pants and a shit embroidered top that I'd made from a Columbia hotel pillowcase.

I climbed on to the piano and freaked. No way. I could barely stand up on the ground. Up on the piano I felt like Basketball Jones, the cartoon kid from the Cheech and Chong video who keeps getting bigger and bigger. I looked up into the ceiling of the studio, the lights twinkled like distant stars. From my elevated position on the piano, studio technicians and members of other groups looked grotesque.

The acid heightened the fake tans of everyone in the room and only accentuated the paleness of the Teardrop members. Of course, if they'd had a chance, Alfie, Jeff and Gary would have been sun-worshippers, but I had to keep those bastards in check.

We ran through the camera rehearsal and loped back into the dressing room. The next few hours were spent smoking spliff and everyone trying in vain to persuade me from wearing the orange pillow case. 'Okay, Copey, five minutes and you're on'. Uh? Wow, Batesy was right. I sat, head down, with the front of my leathers undone. Sweat coursed down my belly and I mopped it up with my shitty top.

I was paranoid as hell. The BBC make-up woman had scared the shit out of me. They had asked me if I'd just come back from the Bahamas and said they loved my tan. Of course, irony is lost on someone who's tripping his brain out, so I figured that I must be turning brown.

'I'm not too dark really , am I?'

'Fuckin ell Copey, you're dead pale, honest'. Gary was trying to make me feel better, but what did he know? He was tripping too and I didn't want people placating me. It was time to go. I wasn't ready. We had to go. I wasn't ready. Why aren't you ready? I don't feel tall enough. Well, you're gonna be standing on top of a piano. Is that tall enough for you. Eh?

They led me reluctantly out to the studio floor. It was total chaos out there. People were running around and freaking out and winding everyone else up. I suddenly felt very becalmed. A group called Buck's Fizz were doing their thing on the other side of the studio. They were a two-boy, two-girl, fun group with cutesy expressions and dance routines. We were to follow them.

[The Buck's Fizz song was One Of These Nights. The TOTP performance doesn't seem to be archived online, but it must've been pretty darn similar to this one]

I watched fascinated. Then as time moved slowly on I felt sucked into their scene. God, they were brilliant. I wanted to be in Buck's Fizz. I rushed over to Gary and hit him with the idea. The two of us should join. Imagine an acid-soaked dance group with showbiz routines, it would be incredible.

It was two minutes to our performance. We had to be exact as it was live, so no mistakes. Bates dragged me to the grand piano. Shit, it's like an ocean liner. The piano was exquisite and moved gently past me as I walked around it. Little girls ran over towards me as I climbed aboard the piano. I smiled my most ridiculous and inane grin and, after much manoeuvring, scrambled to the top of this vast and polished plateau.

The finish of the piano was unbelievable. I waded in its high gloss black syrup, my bare feet sinking deeper and deeper into the surface like hot wet tar on a newly completed road. It was all I could think about. 'Don't jump around too much, Copey. It'll cost us a fortune if you wreck that thing'. Oh, thanks a lot, Batesy. Thanks fucking loads. That's just what I want to hear when I'm tripping on live TV.

The boom camera swung away from Buck's Fizz as their song faded out. Everyone was in position and I forgot to duck as the camera crane whizzed past my head, nearly knocking me from my dubious perch. Okay, I'm not in Buck's Fizz. I'm not. Better remember.

'The friend I have is a passionate friend, but I can't see you buying...'. Passionate Friend doesn't have an intro or anything. It just starts - vocals, drums, guitar, everything. All together. In a split second, I was fighting for my life up on the piano. I looked back at Gary who was off his head. His blond quiff was hanging straight out over his face, jiblike and starched and strong like a newly creosoted fence. I wanted to climb on to it and walk along its length, like a sailor walking the plank.

Around me, the song waged war with itself. So much going on. How can I keep this together? Who cares, I'm doing fine. I looked down at Jeff, thousands of feet below me at the piano keyboard. He looked ridiculous to me, like the phantom of the opera or some such shit.

Now, Passionate Friend is also one of those songs that has a reprise. See, the whole song builds to a climax then we come to a stop, and start the whole thing again. Suddenly, I was miming, 'the friend I have is a passionate friend, but I can't see you buying...'. Hold on, I thought. What's all this? My mind did double-takes and I battled for some sense of reality. Maybe this was the real start of the performance. Maybe I'd imagined the first half of the song. What the hell is going on?

I felt the song disappearing into a tunnel. It was fading out and the Top of The Pops audience was cheering. I felt as though I had been up there for days. But I'd done battle and I seemed to have won."

@'Bristling Badger' 

via 'Fifi' w/ thanx!

(Just because...)

Scientists crack 'entire genetic code' of cancer

Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers - skin and lung - a move they say could revolutionise cancer care.

Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Wellcome Trust team.
Scientists around the globe are now working to catalogue all the genes that go wrong in many types of human cancer.
The UK is looking at breast cancer, Japan at liver and India at mouth.
China is studying stomach cancer, and the US is looking at cancers of the brain, ovary and pancreas.

These catalogues are going to change the way we think about individual cancers Wellcome Trust scientist Professor Michael Stratton

The International Cancer Genome Consortium scientists from the 10 countries involved say it will take them at least five years and many hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete this mammoth task.
But once they have done this, patients will reap the benefits.
Professor Michael Stratton, who is the UK lead, said: "These catalogues are going to change the way we think about individual cancers.
"By identifying all the cancer genes we will be able to develop new drugs that target the specific mutated genes and work out which patients will benefit from these novel treatments.
"We can envisage a time when following the removal of a cancer cataloguing it will become routine."
It could even be possible to develop MoT-style blood tests for healthy adults that can check for tell-tale DNA patterns suggestive of cancer.
Russian roulette
The scientists found the DNA code for a skin cancer called melanoma contained more than 30,000 errors almost entirely caused by too much sun exposure.

Most of the time the mutations will land in innocent parts of the genome, but some will hit the right targets for cancer Wellcome Trust researcher Dr Peter Campbell

The lung cancer DNA code had more than 23,000 errors largely triggered by cigarette smoke exposure.
From this, the experts estimate a typical smoker acquires one new mutation for every 15 cigarettes they smoke.
Although many of these mutations will be harmless, some will trigger cancer.
Wellcome Trust researcher Dr Peter Campbell, who conducted this research, published in the journal Nature, said: "It's like playing Russian roulette.
"Most of the time the mutations will land in innocent parts of the genome, but some will hit the right targets for cancer."
By quitting smoking, people could reduce their cancer risk back down to "normal" with time, he said.
The suspicion is lung cells containing mutations are eventually replaced with new ones free of genetic errors.
By studying the cancer catalogues in detail, the scientists say it should be possible to find exactly which lifestyle and environmental factors trigger different tumours.
Treatment and prevention
Tom Haswell, who was successfully treated 15 years ago for lung cancer, believes the research will benefit the next generation:
"For future patients I think it's tremendous news because hopefully treatments can be targeted to their particular genome mutations, hopefully... reducing some of the side effects we get".
Cancer experts have applauded the work.
The Institute of Cancer Research said: "This is the first time that a complete cancer genome has been sequenced and similar insights into other cancer genomes are likely to follow.
"As more cancer genomes are revealed by this technique, we will gain a greater understanding of how cancer is caused and develops, improving our ability to prevent, treat and cure cancer."
Professor Carlos Caldas, from Cancer Research UK's Cambridge Research Institute called the research "groundbreaking".
"Like molecular archaeologists, these researchers have dug through layers of genetic information to uncover the history of these patients' disease.
"What is so new in this study is the researchers have been able to link particular mutations to their cause.
"The hope and excitement for the future is that we will eventually have detailed picture of how different cancers develop, and ultimately how better to treat and prevent them."

@'BBC'

Robert Henke on Max

More here.

Can - Silent Night

Xmas pressie download from Mute Records

HERE