Beatlephobia

That the Beatles were a cultural phenomenon is beyond doubt. The cult of Beatlemania, and the immense impact that the group had on an America suffering from post-JFK trauma are things that almost certainly will never be repeated on anything like the same scale if at all. Their iconic status as the embodiment of the 1960s is etched indelibly into history. But on purely musical terms, has there ever been such a deified sacred cow?

We live in a world run by the “baby boomers”. The post-war generation that Harold MacMillan famously claimed “had never had it so good” are the ones at the top in politics, business and culture. They are ageneration that never knew the deprivations of the depression or the world at war. They grew up in an environment of full employment and readily disposable income. The sixties were their coming of age, and as time moved on, they have raised up their own teenage heroes to the status of demi-gods.

Joining the ranks of middle aged baby boomer rock critics as arbiters of good taste is a younger generation raised on a diet of grim Britpoop and indie music. This was the stuff that was left when the corporate labels took the fruits of post-punk experimentalism, ripped out all of the interesting bits and left us with twenty years of guitar bands who relentlessly cut, paste and recycle the music of 1964 to 1968 with the occasional punky flourish. 

In between was a generation who were too young to remember the sixties and whose clarion call was “No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977″. Guess I’m talkin’ ’bout my generation here. To us the Beatles were just an old group with no special significance attached, and we were encouraged to look forward not back. Many people I knew then had a record collection that had year zero as the first Ramones LP, with just a couple of things like the Velvets and the Stooges as a concession to the past. I was never so dogmatic as that and eagerly explored music of all eras. This was in part due to a childhood love of Motown and seventies pop-soul that I never lost during my teenaged punk and post-punk years. I discovered, and became a fan of, groups as diverse as Love, Springsteen, Fairport Convention, Can and Van Der Graaf Generator. One group that left me absolutely cold, though, was the Beatles.

I don’t know what it was exactly. The inane lyrics didn’t help. The mumsy image of the Beatle-suits. Those cloying, sugary harmonies. The limp and lifeless covers of Motown classics. OK, so that’s the early period. But they never lost that wholesome “Family entertainment” aura, even when they were allegedly consuming industrial quantities of psychedelics. It didn’t exactly turn them into the Thirteenth Floor Elevators did it? Sergeant Pepper is more Sunday Night at the London Paladium than at the Fillmore West. The Beach Boys could be twee, but even the execrable Friends album doesn’t have anything as nauseating as “Yellow Submarine” on it. That’s from Revolver. The greatest album of all time (copyright dullard music critics everywhere). Even the Monkees, a plastic version of the Beatles created for teen TV managed to be more exciting than the real thing. How’d they do that? And how many times have I been listening to some soul compilation or other to have it all but ruined by some lame Lennon and McCartney song. Wilson Pickett: “Mustang Sally”, “In The Midnight Hour”, “If You Need Me”.”Hey Jude”. Aretha Franklin: “I Never Loved A Man”, “I Say A Little Prayer”, “Think”. “Eleanor Rigby”. Do I need to say any more?

Browse any music reference section in a bookshop or library and the shelves groan under the weight of books espousing the “correct” views on what are the musical highpoints of the rock era. Among the untouchable artifacts are the run of Beatles albums from Rubber Soul to Abbey Road whose qualities are unquestioned and uncritically lauded in a form of cultural Stalinism. As the years have passed, the group’s malign influence and invulnerable status has, if anything, grown. From the annual Mojo covers, to the dreary tribute bands like Oasis and their ilk, the Beatles are continually rammed down our throats like castor oil. Is it supposed to be good for us? ‘Cause it tastes like shit to me.

What surprises me is that there are not more voices raised against this conventional wisdom of the Beatles as some kind of peak of twentieth century artistic endeavour. Friends ranging from jazzbos and underground rock fans to soul and dance heads have opinions of the group that run from “they’re alright, I s’pose” to outright antipathy. So who are all these Beatles fans? And can they piss off and take their bloody group with them please!

Album: HAUSCHKA – Room To Expand (Fat Cat / 130701 CD1306 2007)

Hauschka is an alias of German pianist and composer Volker Bertelmann, a third of Music AM (alongside Luke Sutherland and Stefan Schneider). His music under this moniker consists of sparely accompanied piano pieces which adopt the “prepared piano” technique most famously utilised by American avant-garde composer John Cage. This process involves the transmutation of the way that the instrument sounds by inserting objects into its mechanism – whether this be by wrapping the strings and hammers with rubber or foil or wedging objects between strings. This disrupts the pure tones of the instrument and introduces discordance and a certain amount of unpredictability to the sound. For example, the track “Kleine Dinge” features something that gives a percussive slap every time a certain note is played. Bertelmann has constructed the piece’s melody in such a way that this becomes an almost metronomic beat.

Prepared piano pieces can be a fairly dry and overly intellectual listen. Room To Expand is far from being either of these things. Hauschka’s particular strength is taking an experimental method of making music and coming up with something that is warm, moving and melodic (if in an unorthodox way). The album can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of whether they know or care how the music was constructed.

Mixed Up Records

In the last half decade Glasgow has seen a haemorrhaging in the music retail trade after shop after shop has closed its doors. Some have been missed more than others, but the number of independent traders is now down to single figures in the city. The second-hand sector has been particularly badly hit. One survivor in seemingly rude health is Mixed Up Records.

Situated on Otago Lane by the River Kelvin in the Woodlands area of the West End, Mixed Up is an eclectic shop, particularly strong in dance and jazz but with a healthy selection of rock, soul and classical records too. Twelve inch vinyl is the dominant format, in both single and LP form. The relatively small CD and seven inch sections are, nevertheless, of a high quality. The stock is well laid out and competitively priced. There seems to be a decent turnover of records, so fairly frequent visitors aren’t faced with the same old stuff. It’s worth scrabbling around on the floor looking through the many £1 bargain bins as some interesting things can be found nestling amongst the Genesis and Dire Straits albums.

Probably the best of Glasgow’s remaining used record emporia, Mixed Up is well worth a couple of hours in the busy schedules of hardened vinyl nuts. Next door is the engagingly chaotic but impressively stocked Voltaire and Rousseau secondhand bookshop and the Tchai Ovna Czech tea room is just a few paces away. Mixed Up has a new website, but there is little there bar contact details at present. 

Mixed Up Records
     18 Otago Lane
     Glasgow
     G12 8PB

0141 357 5737

Website: www.mixeduprecords.com

Atlantic 45 of the week: Kandeda Montgomery – Where Have You Been Today, James Rector? / July 5th (The Cuckoo) (Atlantic 2672 1969)

Every week I will print an entry from my forthcoming book “US Atlantic Singles 1947-77″. This week is the turn of protest folk singer Kandeda Montgomery’s solitary release for the label:

2672 KANDEDA MONTGOMERY
Where Have You Been Today, James Rector? (Montgomery) / July 5th (Montgomery)
Billboard Pop: none
Billboard R&B: none
Recorded: 1969.
Released: Oct 1969.
Other issues: none.
Available On: Currently unavailable.

Kandeda Montgomery was a folk singer/songwriter from Illinois. She has a couple of songs (not these) in the Vietnam War Collection of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. It was unusual for Atlantic to issue such an explicitly political single as “Where Have You Been Today, James Rector?”.

James Rector, 25, was a student who was shot dead by police during a demonstration against the Arab-Israeli war on May 15th 1969 at the People’s Park in Berkeley, California. Under the orders of State Governor Ronald Reagan, armed police were sent in to fence off the park. A riot ensued, and deputies from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office used lead buckshot to fire indiscriminately into the crowd. 128 protestors were wounded including carpenter Alan Blanchard who was permanently blinded. Both Blanchard and Rector were watching the proceedings from a roof, and were not directly involved in the fracas. Rector had suffered internal injuries caused by his shotgun wounds and died on May 19th. By this time Berkeley was under occupation by the National Guard, and Rector’s memorial service was tear-gassed. On May 30th, 30,000 people – one third of the population of the city – marched in protest against Reagan’s occupation, and the murder of James Rector.

Album: NEIL YOUNG – Live At Massey Hall 1971 (Reprise 43328 2007)

It was typical of the man’s contrariness that the Performance Series of archive live Neil Young recordings should start with volume 2 – last November’s 1970 Fillmore East electric set recorded with Crazy Horse (Reprise 44429). Young obsessives grumbled that the acoustic set from the same night should have been included, but perhaps the reason it wasn’t is that just four months down the line a solo show recorded at Toronto’s Massey Hall on January 19th 1971 is the second release in the series (volume 3).

Young observes on the accompanying blurb that his producer David Briggs was keen that this set should be issued as the follow up to After The Goldrush, but was vetoed by the singer. He admits that, in retrospect, Briggs may have had a point. He may indeed because this set is very impressive from both a sound and performance perspective.

There are seventeen songs in all, around half of which were as yet unrecorded at the time of the concert. Young plays acoustic guitar or piano on the tracks, but the sound is remarkably full for such a spare set up. And the performance is faultless, with hardly a fluffed note throughout the hour or so playing time. It’s a well-paced set, too, with new material and old favourites mixed in well. It’s worth noting that songs like “Ohio” and “Helpless”, which are cheered to the rafters, had only been out for around six months or so. Even the songs from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere were not much more than a year old, and yet they are greeted like the classics that they’ve since become. Things moved a lot quicker in those days.

Young proves a fairly amusing raconteur with his between song banter without threatening to develop into a stand-up act. The audience have that peculiar (and irritating) North American habit of cheering halfway through a songwhen it dawns on them that it’s one they know, and any lyrical mention of anything remotely Canadian seems to trigger a Pavlovian response from them. The fact that half of the material would have been new to them is a blessing, because they tend to shut up and listen then!

It seems that Neil Young has been talking about opening up his huge archive of unreleased material for around a quarter of a century now. The Performance Series is the start of this, but what will really get the hardcore salivating is the little slip of paper included with this CD that announces: “Coming in 2007. Neil Young – The Archives Volume 1, 1963-72.” An 8 CD and 2 DVD collection of unreleased archive material that includes a 150 page book. A trailer appears at www.repriserecords.com/neilarchives

Atlantic 45 of the week: Little Johnny Jones – Hoy Hoy / Doin’ The Best That I Can (Atlantic 1045 1954)

Every week I will print an entry from my forthcoming book “US Atlantic Singles 1947-77″. This week is the turn of blues pianist Little Johnny Jones’ solitary release for the label:

Hoy Hoy (Jones) / Doin’ The Best That I Can (Jones)
Billboard Pop: none	Billboard R&B: none
Recorded: 9th Nov 1953
Released: Oct 1954.
Other issues: none
Available On: Messing With The Blues – Various (Ace 773 2000 UK)

Mention Atlantic Records, and one kind of music that definitely doesn’t spring to mind is Chicago Blues. This one-off release by piano legend Little Johnny Jones features the inimitable slide-guitar of Elmore James, normally the leader of this outfit, and fellow Broomdusters JT Brown (1918-69) on tenor sax and Odie Payne (1926-89) on drums. The group had first been used by Atlantic to back Joe Turner when he recorded “TV Mama” (Atlantic 1016) in Chicago. These tracks were cut a month later in the same city.

Johnny Jones was born on November 1st 1924 in Jackson Mississippi and was already more than proficient on the piano by the time he arrived in Chicago in 1946. His break came the following year when Big Maceo Merriwether was forced to leave guitarist Tampa Red’s band due to ill-health. Jones stepped in, and stayed with the band on and off until 1953. He can be heard on two of Red’s biggest hits, “When Things Go Wrong with You” (RCA Victor 50-0019 1949) and “Pretty Baby Blues” (RCA Victor 50-0136 1951). He was much in demand as a player in Chicago, and recorded with the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf during his tenure with Tampa Red.

Jones joined the Broomdusters, Elmore James’ group, in 1952 and featured on all the guitarist’s classic records of this period. The Atlantic session was a rare date as leader. It was to be his last, in fact. He continued to work in the Chicago clubs after his split with James until his early death from lung cancer on 19th November 1964, just 18 days after he had turned 40.