Demos podcast: Edinburgh messthetics

[imomus]

This is where it all started for me, musically speaking. Here's the ten-song demo I handed Josef K guitarist Malcolm Ross in 1981, the one that persuaded him to form a group with me. The tape was marked, rather confidently, "Pre-demo demo: Germs of Gems". The artist name was "Group of 1" (a reference to a line on Bowie's song "Teenage Wildlife" -- "I feel like a group of one") and, since the tape's purpose was to get me signed to Postcard Records, I added, cheekily, the motto: "The sound of young bourgeois Scotland". Postcard's motto was "The sound of young Scotland", but the "bourgeois" bit was because on the tape I'd written my embarrassingly posh address: 7 Ainslie Place, where I was living in a Kafkaesque mezzanine between my father's flat and the practice of two old lady psychoanalysts.



What strikes me now about this material is how avant and experimental it sounds. Influenced by reggae dub, by the scratchy-funky "messthetics" of early Scritti Politti, by Eno and Talking Heads and ethnic music, recording lo-fi on cassettes and two track machines intended for my dad's language college, I ended up with a homemade quality which I now find texturally a lot more interesting -- despite the muffled audio quality -- either than the sound of the band the tape led to, or the more folksy-trad acoustic guitar sound I embraced on my first solo album. Closer to what I do now when I record, in fact.

Back in 1980, though, the sound was partly a case of necessity mothering invention -- the guitar I had at the time was a battered acoustic with one string -- the fourth -- missing. That divided the instrument into a two-stringed acoustic bass and a 3-stringed top guitar, which I recorded in separate takes to the little two track cassette machine. It also led to much more interesting arrangements than chordal strumming on a "healthy" guitar. The top guitar, with no fixed tuning, dances or slides glassily about while the bass chugs and improvises below.

My lack of an amp also forced me to invent interesting recording techniques, so there are twanging strings with the mic wedged directly under them, cemented into place with wads of tissue paper, or close-mic'ed harmonics above the bridge. There are reverse-decaying backwards guitars or even rhythm guitars recorded without reference to the rest of the song, and laid in at random in the mix, swaying in and out of time and setting up some interesting polyrhythms. The percussion isn't carried by a drumkit, but by all the instruments playing their own frantic, scratchy, eccentric rhythms, with the occasional cowbell or kick drum mimicked by cups, cardboard boxes, and an anglepoise lamp spring for a cymbal. This is a sound I could happily return to, a kind of funky communist avant pop.

The communist bit is in the lyrics, which pay tribute above all to Brecht ("Antigone" takes its entire lyric from a Brecht poem), but also to The Passage (a highly underrated, innovative electronic band on Cherry Red, with committed leftist lyrics), celebrate the Spartacists, decry puritanism and commerce and demand that "lullabies by liberals for sordid sorts by swimming pools" be stuffed full of cotton wool and fed to the dog. Revolution... but not as we know it, Jim. There's also a strain of Josef K-like "nervousness romanticism", and some Dostoyevsky by way of Magazine ("Its tricks drive me furious when they add insult to injury... Why can't my double learn a little decency?" goes one song, sounding an awful lot like "My Tulpa"-period Howard Devoto).

It's interesting that so little of this material got recorded later. Of the ten songs, only three made it onto Happy Family records. So I guess the tape is almost like a "lost album". For something recorded (Christ!) twenty-six years ago, it sounds quite fresh.

Germs of Gems: Pre-demo demo (12.7MB mono mp3 file, 27 mins 41secs)

Deny It
Spartacus
So They Say
Puritans
My Double
Innermost Thoughts
Antigone
The Salesman
Catalogues
For You

Since I was "blogging" back then too -- well, keeping a diary -- I can give you the context for one of the tracks. Here's my entry for the day I wrote and recorded "Catalogues":

"Tuesday, January 1st 1980

The day's first engagement, Kenny Everett at 3.35, presented David Bowie in a padded cell (Kafka's metaphor for the world) and a kitchen with exploding appliances and windows, singing "Space Oddity". His expression was of bewilderment, fear, his little boy lost manner, used to uneasy effect.

Meanwhile the media paraded predictions, people projecting their own psyches onto the future.

Soon I returned to my two-track machine to regain the purposeful & creative element so necessary. The chief achievement was 'Catalogues', starting as a rhythm track with tin, bottle and shoebox percussion, then gathering layers. Finally it had a stereo vocal, an alliterative, nonsense-cum-critical lyric with stuttering rhythm. I worked some time on different versions, very tensed and eager. Listened to it on the stereo while Father and Chris Garner (colleague in Athens) talked shop; predictions again. Some very bitter coffee compounded the effects of my nervous mood, and I continued my bizarre habits regarding sleeping hours.

Scraps: dinnertime conversation touched the possibilities for my future (Father thinks missionary work!) and the over-exuberance of [name removed] last night, lifting his kilt to his guests, insulting his wife.

The hamster grates his teeth up and down the bars of his cage, widening the furrow in his jaw, as if his life depended on it."

It might be fun to transcribe more of these 1980 diaries... They could have their own blog somewhere! Meanwhile, the only photo of myself at 20 I have to hand is this fuzzy one of me listening to Joseph Beuys.

There's just one more demos podcast I want to release after this, a tape called "Innermost Thoughts" which compiles all my experiments pre-1981. I'm still searching for that one in the cellar. In the meantime, if you want to make donations in exchange for these podcasts, there's a button here.

Comments

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Sounds like all the bands 20 year olds still listen to now.

[(Anonymous)]

Indeed.

Thanks for that, Momus. It does seem like it was an amazing time, a sort of final outburst of creativity following the pop explosions of the 60s and 70s. Not a lot original has really happened in pop/rock since.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

And that's what's so extraordinarily sad. Can you imagine us, in 1980, having nothing better to listen to than mid-1950s rock?

Someone said last week that I was just being an old man, saying "It were better when I were a lad". But even if we cast aside qualitative arguments, look at the quantitative stuff: in 1980 there were four weekly music publications in the UK -- Sounds, Melody Maker, NME and Record Mirror. All looking for new music, all ready to bring interesting bands to the attention of their readers. Now there's just one, a lobotomized NME that, despite being the sole survivor, can't even scrape together the readership it had back in 1980. Not only is the tone dumber, the paper really isn't rewarding innovation -- which we could define as "doing something a bit different from musicians 27 years before".

Of course, the irony is that it's precisely people saying "modern music is rubbish" which makes the bands go back to old music, which in turn makes modern music rubbish. It's a vicious circle. And really, it's out of control, because it's all about demographics in the end. The reason we have retro necro (http://imomus.livejournal.com/255928.html) culture is because of pigs in the pipe (http://imomus.livejournal.com/283498.html).

[(Anonymous)]

Post-punk might have been the swansong for the sort of pop that developed from the Beatles and the Velvet Underground. But surely it's no coincidence that hip hop was picking up speed just as rock went into decline. But rock had a pretty good run as the locus of "meaning" in our culture, from the mid-fifties to the mid-eighties.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Paul Morley:

"Now that the musical spirit of the early Eighties has been allowed into the mainstream, it seems a shame that it's all so chained and cute. Although the music sounds like the music of PiL, Joy Division, Fire Engines, Wire, Go4, Josef K, Scars, Monochrome Set, sometimes unnervingly so, it lacks understanding of the political, social, artistic and moral reasons the music originally sounded the way it did."

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't this just playing the rockist card? It was authentic back then, it isn't now... and isn't this "signifiers floating free from the signified" something you'd actually be praising if it was happening in Japan?

Also, let's not forget that a lot of those post-punk bands copped criticism at the time for ripping off 60s rock. I remember Echo & The Bunnymen being accused (a little justifiably) of sounding like The Doors, Joy Division obviously owe a large debt to The Velvet Underground, and everyone in that scene owes a debt to Bowie... at the time it wasn't so clear that everything was marvellously new. You may not have all been sitting around listening to mid-50s rock, but you were certainly lisening to mid-60s rock.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You may not have all been sitting around listening to mid-50s rock, but you were certainly lisening to mid-60s rock.

Retro felt different then, though. And this is demographic too, I think. There isn't the bullying "toxic retro" thing we have now, which is all about people my age and older asserting the superiority of their culture, and getting away with it, really, through the force of numbers. Because there were bigger talent pools and bigger audience pools and more extensive press coverage then.

So "toxic retro" starts, for me, with the invention of the CD. But I remember specific instances of it. Roddy Frame talking with reverence about Buffalo Springfield and Neil Young in one of his interviews, for instance. In about 1982. And that was the moment I abandoned Roddy, because for me that's not positive at all. After that, you just get Nick Horby and Top 10 lists and TV shows of highlights from each year, and BBC Radio 6 and Mojo.

How can I explain that retro now is qualitatively different than retro then, but that it's largely for quantitative reasons? In other words, at a certain point in the 80s a demographic tipping point was reached, and people younger than a certain age (my age, actually) stopped being able to boot out their elders, stylistically or commercially. At that point, retro became "toxic retro", something bullying and oppressive.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I understand and agree, but where do we draw the line between retro and postmodern, which also borrows heavily from the past? Is it a matter of pastiche vs. synthesis? Modernist vs. modernity? And isn't the point of modernity that one may live within whatever aesthetic they create for themselves, rather than have one forced upon them?

[mandyrose.livejournal.com]

I'm dealing with this with my younger sister (20) right now. I don't think she can see any ideological difference between the old stuff and what's coming out now. But I do. The new stuff just seems like a veneer, a lifestyle, what you listen to so while you drive yawnily through McAnyplace, vaguely dissatisfied but not willing to do a damn thing about it except buy stuff. Sk8er Boi!

My favorite comment, from sis' boyfriend: "They don't even know what real punk is. They don't listen to, like, the old stuff like Green Day and stuff. They don't even know who that is."

...I was a Birthday Party, Patti Smith and Kraftwerk girl.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I loved Felt and the Close Lobsters.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

> Can you imagine us, in 1980, having nothing better to listen to than mid-1950s rock?

but there's the other way of looking at it where every form (pop music in this case) has a lifespan. it's like getting a a puppy or a 12 year old dog. sure 'popular music' of some sort seems to always go on but there are big gaps before truly new forms appear.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, I think that's right. I think pop music is currently dead. And I think innovation doesn't live here any more. For me, "the new rock and roll" is the internet and the visual arts. They came up together (for the internet it was a debut, for the visual arts a resurgence) in the mid-90s. The internet crashed circa 2000 but has come back strongly since. These demos I'm posting today may sound like music from 1980, but in fact they're digital content streaming on the internet in 2007. And the medium is the message!

Part one

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"And that's what's so extraordinarily sad. Can you imagine us, in 1980, having nothing better to listen to than mid-1950s rock?"

That's implying that everyone is squeezing themselves into their skinny jeans, growing their hair long and harking back to "the good old days of rock" as an antidote to the perceived lack of youth culture today. Not everyone is.

"Someone said last week that I was just being an old man, saying "It were better when I were a lad". But even if we cast aside qualitative arguments, look at the quantitative stuff..."

Quantitive stuff circa 1980s vs. Quantitive stuff circa 2000s doesnt count in this argument because the musical climate has changed dramatically thanks to technology.

I'm gonna reduce the past 60 years of youth culture down to fit into a working example. I understand this is perhaps over-simplified, but bear with me:

The 1950s were the start of youth culture as we know it. Youths listening to different music than their parents, dressing differently, asserting their individuality. However, this individuality centred around rock and only rock at the time. It wasnt individuality so much as hive mind. It was your parents taste in music or rock, there was no other options, not like we have today.

As youth culture established itself, it became larger and more diverse, it divided but these factions were still large. Youth culture became powerful and was at the centre of political and social change during the 70s and even to a certain extent the 80s. However, the nature of technology at that time meant that you were restricted to either what was being offered by stores, who are to some degree affected by profit margins and salability of certain artists and genres to shape their stock, listening to mixtapes that your friends could get hold of or make, or going to actually listen to the band in person. In a nutshell -- Your tastes in music were restricted to how big your network was, and depending on who you were and what crowd you fell in with, the more likely it is you'd be introduced to music of a similar type that your crowd liked.

So, technology restricted what was available to youths. With less to choose from, people could only join a smaller number of movements. The more "members" it has, the more influential, commercially successful and well known it becomes. However, size isn’t the same as quality. Size is equal to hype.

What you had in the 70s and 80s was smaller groups, with larger memberships and much more hype. This hype was born of the restrictive nature of technology.

Part two

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

The commercial power of youth culture had long been realized, and during the end of the 90s, manufactured pop was at its peak in the mainstream. People saw this as an example of how much of a creative wasteland the music industry had become, so Brit pop thrived as the antidote to it all... harking back to the "good old days" when music was real music.

The internet has completely changed all of this.

The mainstream seems to trapped in a loop of “creative wasteland vs. Rockist antidote” - for example, nu rave, which isn’t even a musical genre or even a bona fied youth culture since it’s all centered around fashion fads of shaky foundations… the reason why these subcultures cant establish themselves like they did in the past is because the internet has totally opened the flood gates and everyone is networked like never before in the history of music. People don’t need to flock to a small number of youth cultures and genres anymore. They aren’t restricted to their mate’s mixtapes and fanzines and what nights out they can attend. Collectives of the past were a byproduct of the desire and consumption of “youth culture”. With consumption now centering around the internet, and everyone tastes being so eclectic, it much harder to do this. To a certain extent hipsterdom has established itself as a youth culture better than anything else during the year 2000 because it fits in so nicely with eclecticism.

One of my favourite artists is a girl called Tsujiko Noriko. She isnt particularly well known, and if it wasn’t for the internet I doubt I would have ever had the chance to listen to her stuff. Her music is very nice. I’ll upload it for you if you’d like to have a listen, although I’d be very surprised if you have downloaded some of her stuff already…

Music isn’t dead. Hype is dead. The mainstream rockists try their hardest to revive all the hype of the past, with the financial backing of the record labels trying to cash in on youth culture. Good luck to them. As for myself, I’m discovering new music all the time, and I’m lucky enough to be friends with people who make really fantastic music without the motivation of money or hype. I don’t need a group to identify with, I don’t need a collective to feel like a part of something, I have technology available to me that’s allowing me to express my individuality in fashion, music and culture like no other youth has been able to do in the past. I love that.

”the irony is that it's precisely people saying "modern music is rubbish" which makes the bands go back to old music, which in turn makes modern music rubbish. It's a vicious circle. And really, it's out of control”

The nail has been hit on the head. It’s not gonna stop until people stop chasing “authenticity” and by authenticity I mean the hype that comes along with youth cultures of a large scale and shared identity.

Re: Part two

[(Anonymous)]

They aren’t restricted to their mate’s mixtapes and fanzines and what nights out they can attend.

So kids today can discover Momus on their $1000 laptop instead of hearing him on a $1 mixtape and reading about him in a $1 fanzine! Boy was I deprived back in the 90s...

Re: Part two

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Avilability and ease of access to mixtapes in the 80s wasnt anywhere near the availability and ease of access to MP3s on over P2P networks today. Even if you were an utter scene whore you would never have access to enough mixtapes to match the scale of the internet. Also, the internet has mixtapes beat for variety of music. oh and $1 for a mixtape... $0 for mp3s...

Also, fanzines dont compare to the internet in terms of amount of information or variety... or the fact its an active communication tool.

Re: Part two

[(Anonymous)]

So kids today can discover Momus on their $1000 laptop instead of hearing him on a $1 mixtape and reading about him in a $1 fanzine!

You do realize you don't have to own a laptop to have web access, right? I mean, you can go to a public library with a cheap pair of headphones and a $10 flash drive and download mp3s. --2fs