culturecrammer

Cleveland’s finest pay tribute to the granddaddy of Dada

No one approaches a Pere Ubu record expecting an easy ride. But David Thomas’s musical adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s notorious proto-absurdist play Ubu Roi – from which the band took their name when they formed in 1975 – makes for perverse listening even by their own standards.

This is probably as it should be. After all, the original provoked a riot in the theatre when it premiered in Paris in 1896. Ubu is Jarry’s bourgeois everyman – a grotesque, Punch-like figure, gluttonous, infantile, cruel and cowardly. Egged on by his equally unpleasant wife Mere Ubu, he spearheads a plot to murder the King of Poland, accedes to the crown, and sets about becoming the worst kind of despot.

What follows is a vicious political satire that parodies a number of Shakespearean plotlines including Macbeth and Hamlet. For a flavour of its surreal, farcical energy one need only consider the cast of characters, which includes the Polish princes Boleslas, Boggerlas, and Ladislas, The Whole Russian Army, The Whole Polish Army, assorted Lackeys of Phynance, something called The Disembraining Machine, and A Bear.

The songs on Long Live Pere Ubu! form part of a six act radio play adapted from Jarry’s text by David Thomas, joined here by ex-Communards vocalist Sarah Jane Morris as Mere Ubu. Needless to say, a seminal avant-garde work does not good music guarantee (apparently Paul McCartney read Jarry’s play while writing the lyrics for “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”).  But once you tune into its crazed frequency, Ubu! is an absolute scream.

Warm-up track “Ubu Overture” sounds like the reverberations of Satan’s tuning fork punctuated by filthy belching noises: “Merde…erer!” Thomas growls in a voice pitch with wickedness. “Song Of the Grocery Police” finds Mere Ubu in Lady Macbeth mode, exhorting her whimpering husband to regicide: ‘Kill them all / Have a ball,’ she urges, as he hankers pathetically after a ‘big sombrero’.  The darkly hilarious “March of Greed” is an inane stomp featuring a call-and-response routine between Ubu and his court of arse-licking sycophants. ‘I agree to everything,’ he shrugs happily as they cheer him along the fast-track to tyranny.

There’s no mistaking we’re back in the Ubu sound world – but along with the signature electronic dissonance and stabbing, post-punk guitar, there’s a touch of the gallows theatricality of The Birthday Party and the dustbowl holler of Tom Waits at his scratchiest. Most of all though, Ubu! resounds with the influence of Captain Beefheart circa Doc at the Radar Station or Ice Cream for Crow.

“Big Sombrero (Love Theme)” sees Ubu opening a ministerial meeting with the command: ‘Bring me the shitter hook / Bring me the finance book!’  Beneath Thomas’s coruscating, gravel-throated vocal there’s a cacophony of pig squeals and shrieks, hydraulic whirring noises, the sound of cold machinery in terminal dysfunction. ‘Now bring all of the judges in,’ he barks, announcing plans to tax the dead and declaring that dissenters will be tossed ‘into the pig-pincher.’

By “Bring Me The Head”, Ubu’s power is total – as his wife reports: ‘No more finance, justice or law / Into his belly he’s gobbled them all.’  For “Road to Reason”, a funky thrash of wire-wool guitar and frantic theremin, Thomas reverts to his trademark bubblegum baby voice to observe with satisfaction: ‘Everywhere you look you can see burned down houses and people bent double under the weight of Finance.’

The heart-knocking “Watching the Pigeons” describes Ubu’s defeat at the hands of the Russians, while “Snowy Livonia” underlines the pathos of the dethroned Ubu’s escape to France with a sad little refrain on electric piano. Perhaps the most deliciously twisted episode of all is “The Story so far”, eight minutes of sweating dream delirium that takes us on a trip into Ubu’s subconscious.  It ends with Ubu threatening his wife with an elaborate torture ritual whose delights include ‘penetration of the little wooden stick…extraction of the brain through the fingernails…not to mention the opening of the bladderine…’

On its own terms, as a bold experiment in fusing spoken word with post-rock, post-punk and ambient electronica, Long Live Pere Ubu! is an unqualified success.  Thomas’s adaptation of the play’s skewed, dark poetry is brilliant. But does it work as a pop record?  Intermittently, yes. Parts of it would clearly be more effective as theatre, and its weakest moments take it perilously close to Frank Zappa’s tiresome burlesques. At it’s best though, it’s trippy, twisted genius. Hardcore Ubu fans will love it.

Sarah Jane Morris’s self-consciously theatrical vocals do the album no favours. Her singing is mannered, thick with flabby jazz singer cliches. By contrast, the way David Thomas brings Ubu to life with his choked, sad, infantile little gurgle makes the character human, and therefore all the more disturbing.

As in all the best epics, at the end of the chapter there’s a new horizon. For the album’s closer, “Elsinor and Beyond”, we join Ubu as he sets sail on his escape boat. Perking up, the banished tyrant turns to his wife and says:  ‘I sense that many fine adventures lie ahead of us.’  Full speed ahead, Mr Thomas.

It’s Monday morning. Between the tracks on one of London’s greyest City-bound commuter routes, rain pummels rubbish. On a poster above the platform, trying to look amiable in an absurd pair of aviator goggles, is the man who invented punk rock, perhaps the most invincible icon of rock and roll’s anarchic spirit still living. Today though, he and several of the commuters have something in common, a bond if you will: they’re insurance salesmen.

The ad campaign for Swiftcover motor insurance has made Iggy Pop the poster boy of Sellout. With Pop’s long-suffering torso plastered across advertising hoardings, TV spots and online commercials, it’s as if the scarred hide of rock and roll itself has finally been scalped by The Man like a trophy pelt.

This campaign shouldn’t work. For starters, you’d think that any punter who attaches meaning or value to Iggy Pop would hold Swiftcover in contempt for trying to appropriate him and go out of their way to deny the company their custom. And as for the nonplussed masses to whom Iggy means nothing, surely they’re left wondering why a cadaverous talking scrotum is bounding around the screen trying to sell them an insurance policy?

But bafflingly, this unholy union has been a runaway success. As Tina Shortle, the company’s marketing director explained with satisfaction: ‘Iggy Pop and swiftcover.com have made motor insurance interesting for a change, increasing awareness of swiftcover.com and sending our sales soaring by almost a third.’

Then in April came a delicious irony: the Advertising Standards Agency ruled that the TV ad was misleading after it emerged that Swiftcover refused to cover musicians because they were deemed too high risk (a not unwise policy – the Stooges’ own drummer Scott Asheton once nearly killed the whole band by driving their tour bus into a low bridge, taking off its roof). After an embarrassing media hoo-ha Swiftcover revoked this rule. Despite the controversy Tina Shortle said the firm would stick with Iggy, adding: ‘Swiftcover.com chose Iggy Pop as the face of its advertising because he loves life.’

Let’s just remind ourselves who we’re talking about here. This is a man who, in his deranged and glorious prime, resembled nothing so much as the reanimated corpse of your smack-addled, transgender granny on steroids. Perhaps Tina would revise her view of Iggy as a life-affirming go-getter if she were transported back to 1973 and found him tapping a vein backstage, visions of swastikas in his head, blood coursing down the cigarette-burned, bottle-slashed horseflesh of his chest?

As for Iggy, I’d like to believe that he was compelled to do the Swiftcover deal for tax reasons (Bowie covered ‘China Girl’ in 1983 so that his friend, then facing bankruptcy, could use the royalties to pay off the taxman). After all, even the late Bill Hicks, who famously declared musicians who did commercials ‘off the artistic roll call forever’, made an exception for Willie Nelson on account of the staggering sums he owed to the IRS.

Whatever the reason, let’s hope it was worth it, because if the online messageboards are anything to go by, the ads have cost him at least as much in kudos as they’ve earned him in cash. Assuming Iggy even thinks about himself as a global brand, it’s hard to imagine a surer way to ransack everything he ever stood for. Iggy Pop has something no man can buy. He is the godhead, the totem of punk rock, his place in rock history everlasting and unassailable. What does he do with this priceless asset?  He sells it. In one 30-second piece to camera, he neutralises the charge of his iconic presence so that, like a soiled prophylactic, it can never be used again.

It’s tempting to interpret this breathtaking disregard for his own legacy as Iggy’s way of sticking two fingers up at the world in a cynical, rock and roll kind of way. But that doesn’t rub. After all, in interviews Iggy’s spoken of how, as the lonely, alienated teenager James Osterberg growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, music was the key that allowed him to escape the stultifying life his parents had planned for him. He of all people understands the soul-saving, talismanic power of rock and roll. Would he have been quite so inspired if his heroes (Sun Ra, Fats Waller) had appeared on his parents’ TV set selling washing machines?

Of course, none of this is new to pop culture. It’s what the Situationists called recuperation, the process whereby radical ideas and images become safe and commodified – or as The Clash more pithily put it, ‘turning rebellion into money’ – and it’s been going on at least since Elvis.  But with Iggy’s ad, it’s hard not to feel that one of rock and roll’s last outposts has fallen. Iggy was a cultural marker, a bright orange buoy bobbing on the perimeter of the corporate no-swim zone.  Now, thanks to Swiftcover, the heart-pumping bass intro of  ‘Loose”  will never sound the same again; nor will we hear the opening chords of “The Passenger ” without Iggy jiggling around our minds’ eye like a children’s’ TV presenter, rhapsodising about ease of access to his policy documents.

I have a theory that the marketing people know this. In fact, it may be time to posit the existence within the PR/advertising industry of a radical cell of cultural counter-insurgents – a kind of marketing Special Ops – tasked with mopping up every last pocket of resistance from the denuded landscape of our I-Pods. For this crack unit of arch-postmodernists, the cultural meanings we hold most dear are mere surfaces of play from which to launch their next assault on all that is vital and alive.  They specialise in appropriating songs or artists that represent attempts to comment on or transcend the culture, as if to prove beyond doubt that all will be consumed in a vast, suffocating tarpaulin of banality. That’s why Alice Cooper is flogging Aviva insurance and Johnny Rotten is busy spreading for Country Life butter. These loveable old dears are now quaint relics from a bygone age of signification.

Similarly, Blur ‘s “The Universal”, a song that serenades the falling away of meaning in a world of homogenous satellite TV consumerism, now soundtracks an ad for British Gas. After this, to hear Damon Albarn sing ‘Yes, the future has been sold,’ is truly to bite into the dark centre of a bitter chocolate bar called Irony. As for the car companies, from Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” (Volkswagen) to The Fall’s “Touch Sensetive” (Vauxhall), no song is safe.

So it’s in this same spirit, and to hurry the total annihilation of all forms of cultural resistance, that I nominate the top five candidates for future assimilation, in reverse order:

5. Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

We owe it to the memory of Kurt Cobain to use this deodorant ad-inspired grunge behemoth on a beer commercial, thus dispatching it back to the kingdom from whence it came.

4. Public Enemy – “Fight The Power ”

This anti-establishment classic is just the thing to bring a touch of revolutionary frisson to your brand. Prise it free of its context and suddenly it’s all about your right to wear a new line of trainer called ‘Black Panther’, fresh from the sweatshops.

3. Pink Floyd – “Money”

I demand that Roger Waters’ anti-capitalist tirade be used immediately to introduce us to a new kind of credit card.

2. Joy Division – “Atmosphere”

Ian Curtis’ visionary swansong lost its cherry to First Direct at the turn of the millenium. But its austere beauty can still produce goosebumps. To finish it off, let’s make “Atmosphere” soundtrack a heavy rotation, moody black-and-white ad for a unisex fragrance of the same name.

1. Bill Hicks

This is the one spoken of in hushed tones in the corridors of their tall glass buildings.  Fifteen years after his untimely death, the scourge of sellout is now ripe for recuperation.  Re-animate him via some CGI trickery, and Bill’s cool rebel stance could sell anything you’d care to name to the under-35s.

There’s a slight breeze coming in from the ocean, and neon lights are fizzing on across the bay. As the sun falls into the sea, glamorous night creatures step from water launches and out from under beach canopies. Waiters in white bow ties dispense luminous cocktails.  With the languid nonchalance of a man on his third Malibu, Lionel Richie beckons to us, offering to take us deep into the balmy nocturnal dream-world of pop, the night that never ends:

“Well, my friends the time has come / Raise the roof and have some fun / Throw away the work to be done / Let the music play on (play on, play on, play on…)”

The cheesy echo, cod-Caribbean vocals and get-your-groove-on lyrics are just some of the guilty pleasures to be had from All Night Long, which gave Richie a US Number 1 hit in 1983. 

Released a year after Thriller set new standards for pop-soul production, All Night Long saw Richie and Commodores producer James Carmichael deliver an undulating, teflon-smooth sound worthy of Quincy Jones at his finest.  At six minutes 25 seconds for the album version, All Night Long is a long pop song.  In fact it’s a multi-layered epic, seemingly comprising several songs in one, full of gear shifts and detours celebrating the studio-as-instrument.

But it is also a work of supreme economy in which nothing is wasted and every part serves the whole.  Behind its laid back, sun-kissed vibe it is slick, hair-gelled, and shoulder-padded. The song sounds like it should have soundtracked a pilot episode of Miami Vice and what’s more, it did. Everything about the sound of this record is white leather interior: air-brushed, classy in a quintessetially 80’s way. It’s a pulsing orgasmatron of studio effects, shimmering strings, synthesised horn stabs and complex percussion, all designed with machine-tool precision to get your feet moving.

Yet this is authentic black music, not white yuppie soul, and like all the best pop songs it transcends its own calculations.  Nowhere is this more apparent that the remarkable chant section, in which Richie does his damnedest to convince us that a roving street festival has just broken into the studio.  We hear shouting, crowd noises, the blaring horns of a carnival parade, a xylophone suggesting a Trinidadian street band:

“Come join our party, see how we play!” Richie urges, before the song launches into a call-and-response exchange seemingly pieced together from snatches of Creole, Trinidadian and Swahili:

”Jambo nipe senti moja
(Yeah, jambo, jambo)
Way to party o’ we go’n',
(Oh, jambalai…)”

Then we’re thrown back into the chorus one last time, before the song starts its long final coda: “Everyone we meet, they’re jamming in the street, all night long,” sings Richie.  By this point the song is soaring, symphonic, ecstatic.  Inside the music, the denizens of its exotic pop ultraworld are intuitively connected in a community of rythmn, the very streets conga eels of twitching funk.

All Night Long imports the spirit of traditional black communal celebration into a shiny global pop product and, in the best Motown tradition, does so with all the slickly engineered proficiency of a Chevrolet coming off a GM production line.  This is what helped make the record an international hit, as resonant in Soweto as it was in LA.  At the same time, dressed in its period aspirational glamour, it brilliantly fulfils one of pop’s core functions, providing a paen to the seemingly inexhaustible mysteries and excitements of the adult world as seen through the prism of adolescence.

All Night Long played a key role in the mammoth success of the smash album Can’t Slow Down, sharing groove space with Hello, a track whose video memorably cast Richie as a jheri-curled tele-stalker pestering a blind college girl. It is a matter of some regret that Lionel Richie would never recapture the glories of All Night Long, prefering instead to concentrate on cementing his growing reputation as the black Barry Manilow.

But for now, Lionel is beckoning again from his impossible island, a kind of funk Prospero, inviting us to join the party one more time. Waves of synth-wash are lapping the shore and the sky is as pink as your drink. Close your eyes and listen to the man.

 Kiwi punk legends return with a laid-back pop record that isn’t afraid to experiment

Back in the ‘80s and early ’90s, when the hermetically sealed worlds of indie subculture and mainstream chart music almost never met, the New Zealand music scene represented a kind of parallel pop universe.  This was a land where the brushtailed possum roamed, mountaintops glistened and idiosyncratic indie bands like The Chills and Straightjacket Fits penetrated the Top 20.

The Clean, formed in 1978 by David Kilgour and his brother Hamish, were perhaps the band most instrumental in kickstarting this scene.  It was one of their fans that founded the now legendary Flying Nun Records, and it was the unexpected success of their debut hit single “Tally Ho!” that helped turn the nascent label into a viable propsition.

Influenced by the Velvet Underground and New York punk, The Clean tempered their terse, stripped down metallic guitar sound with a quirky pop sensibility that would later inspire bands like Pavement. Their first album since 2001’s Getaway, Mister Pop marks a much-anticipated reunion, apparently recorded in the basement of a church in their hometown of Dunedin.

The result is a mixture of wide-eyed pastoral pop and playful experimentation. Instrumental opener “Loog” sets the tone; a beguiling slice of organ-led ’60s psych-pop that caresses its airy, swirling soundscape with coo-ing female backing vocals. Tongues are pushed firmly into cheeks for the jaunty, Byrdsian pastiche of “Are You Really On Drugs”, while “In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul” is a breezy reflection on the vacuities of nine-to-five existence, complete with swooning slide guitar.

But it’s with “Asleep in the Tunnel” and “Back in the Day” that the magic starts. Here we’re in Go Betweens territory, with songs that seem to speak to you in confidence, carrying that particularly comforting quality seemingly unique to Antipodean bands.  The effect on the listener is like being re-united with a long lost, favourite shirt.

“The forecast is for snow / You might not make it home”, sings Kilgour on “Asleep”, cocooning us inside its warm, briskly strummed acoustic. “Back in the Day”, with its spangly guitar and twanging, resonant bassline, could almost be vintage Lloyd Cole. We even get a spoken outro: “Out here in the ice fields it seems like / Extreme is the new extreme”, Kilgour observes as the track winds down like a watch:  “I’m not here for a long time / I’m just here for a good time…”  By contrast, “Moon Jumper” is a mesmerising five-minute instrumental drone that borrows heavily from the Velvets and Faust, its shifting textures and percussion brilliantly sustained.

 With “Factory Man”, an insipid ditty that could have been penned by Ray Davies on an off day, the record once again strays into pastiche, but the next two tracks are highlights. The instrumental “Simple Fix” is a delightful smorgasboard of acoustic guitar, piano, whistles, glockenspiels and baby noises, all of which float along on a panoply of percussion instruments from the back of the music school storeroom. This gem of skittering, improvisational loveliness sounds as if it should be soundtracking The Royal Tenenbaums.

Then we hit the home straight with the groove-locked roadrunner rythmns of “Tensile”, a kind of Kiwi ode to the Autobahn complete with pitch-bending keyboards and deadpan, vocodered vocal.

“The town looks best at night/ As we drive by”, the band rasp metallically in their best Kraftwerk voices, while underneath the thrumming, driving bassline, gently fuzzed guitars add to the nocturnal road movie feel.  The album’s brief outro “All Those Notes” rounds things off with a wistful, reconciled air:  “When the sun comes up we’ll be older”, Kilgour reflects ruefully as the music ebbs away.

The Clean are growing older with grace and humor on this humane, smart, and unpretentious record. It’s a patchy affair, and at times its throwaway insouciance can leave you longing for something as intense and incisive as early classics like “Point That Thing Somewhere Else”. Yet at their most inspired The Clean have lost none of their ability to leave you with a life-affirming glow. Mister Pop isn’t going to set anyone’s world alight, but it might make yours a fractionally nicer place to be.