Funkadelic - I'll Bet You (1969)

05/08/2022

Howdy Headadelics,

Cosmic slop from New Jersey, dripping lysergicness all along the Turnpike mainline.

Curiously, so much of the early ‘delic catalogue was pretty mid paced.
They didn’t break out the sweat of the upper BPMs until a bit later, so what we have here is a kind of wonky woo p-funkaliscious, almost gospeldelic acid smash.
Yeah we gots Clinton… but the magic ingredient is Eddie Fucking Hazel, shooting from the hip all over the place.

Tiki Fullwood drums an easy simple pace and Hazel picks his victims with a funktion like Hendrix at half speed.
All gloriously tied together with a multi voiced vocal that could be Sly and The Family Stone, but this is more wiggy than 10 of Sly’s wig hats.

The whole of the first album, from which this bitchin’ beaut comes from, is the exact weed and acid co-operative concoction that sends it all to circle round the moon like an Apollo capsule until NASA records it officially as a UFO

More came with the equally frazzled Free Your Mind… And Your Ass will follow, which still has ( in my mind at least ) the most evil and darn right filthy rhythm guitar sound in the fried bonkers sandwich of Funky Dollar Bill – check it out over thar on the left hand channel and tell me I’m not wrong.

A comedown to the end of the holyfunk trilogy was Maggot Brain, and that title track is Hazel taking no prisoners.

Anyways… short an sweet this week, no rants.
It’s the weekend brothers and sisters.
Let it be messy cos everything else is a bit shit out there.

Fierce cocktails and Funkadelic

Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time
For y’all have knocked her up
I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe
I was not offended
For I knew I had to rise above it all
Or drown in my own shit

RH X

The Associates - White Car in Germany (1981)

29/07/2022

Good Day To You, Soundheads!

It’s a chilly and wet morning here in Leeds, typical of standard UK bullshit weather.
You melt one minute, you drown the next.
Here I am, the very model of stereotypical Britishness, griping about the weather.

You all know my politics by now, so here’s a track that perfectly encapsulates my mood for what we have laid out in front of us.
And this is 1981, pretty much the same bullshit in the country that we have now.
That vicious cunt Thatcher is doing her best to ruin everything and we’re on the cusp of having her mimic Truss carry on all the bad work done by the narcissistic sociopath fuckwad controller, Johnson.

Yeah, I’m fucking pissed off.
Yeah, I definitely got out of the wrong side of the bed.
But don’t let that spoil your day today my friends.

Why?
Because here, we have part of possibly the greatest run of ‘out there’ singles to ever be released, and the series was a HUGE influence on the nascent Hampson.

To briefly recap…
Messrs Rankine and Mackenzie had already left vinyl wonders in the shape of The Affectionate Punch ( not that fucking awful remix version that was put out when they glanced at pop fame ) and were now label free.
Blagging advance monies to spend time in recording studios and experimenting wildly, hopped up on whatever weird pharmaceuticals they could get out of the Fourth Drawer Down – yes, that’s where they were stashed – they proceeded to record whatever came into their heads, not knowing what may become of it all.
It took the shape of a series of singles that Situation Two then released.
Each one off-kilter, each one traversing a solitary path towards… what?
Always with a keen sense of wonky pop lilt, which they took in the future to the oddness of Party Fears Two, which pop pickers, is another tale for another time.

This was released as the last in the series, and talk about saving the best til last, the Cold War chill that emanates from its very first notes, which are a brilliant mix of the sublime Mackenzie vocalisations treated heavily and the musical genius of Rankine.
And I do say genius, because he’s often overshadowed by people waxing lyrical on Mackenzie, and they’re right doing that.
But with no Rankine, the wonder of The Associates would never have met our collective shorelines of consciousness, he was equally essential. His layering of subtle instrumentation and mixing definitely influenced my ears.
But his real genius was that he could draw out a certain angularness that both screamed experimental and pop exactly at the same moment, complementing perfectly those out of this world vocals Mackenzie could emit.
They did indeed, compliment each other… perfectly.
Hence his leaving not long after their initial pop fame left a huge hole in The Associates legacy that Mackenzie sadly couldn’t fill, and like all perfect partnering, it can only leave the heart broken when it ends, wondering what might have laid ahead.

Anyhoo, back to the start!
Once that icy intro kicks in, you can immediately feel the cold snap of a Scottish winter and mirror the climate and mood of Checkpoint Charlie in the then isolated East Germany at its bleakest.

I won’t even try to make sense of the lyrical content, look them up if you want to confuse your brain for a couple of minutes.
But hey, in my book, lyrics can only add to a puzzle in the great overall picture, and I’m all for that.
Make your own interpretations, that’s all part of the fun.
What you will always get with The Associates, is THAT VOICE.
Nobody has ever fucking touched it, nor will they.
It’s pure, it’s operatic, it’s a constellation in its own right.

All these singles worked, they painted imagery within themselves but worked so completely as a whole when compiled and released as an album Fourth Drawer Down.

But this one… this one works for me on another level.
How beautifully and equally plaintive it eeks itself out, never really peaking, remaining static in its simplicity and story.

It’s not the way to start the weekend in all honesty, you can’t cut a rug to it.
This single reminds me of how it felt back then, and it’s actually frightening to think it’s worse now, much worse.

I’m not using it as an overt political statement.
Because I don’t believe it to be political.
But for me, it’s a feeling.
And it’s a feeling I can’t ignore.
Sometimes we have to face the future head on and we then have to collectively make decisions to change that future.
This isn’t some call to arms for the think about our children bullshit brigade.
This is a call to arms for humanity because what’s happening here, it’s happening everywhere… and what it is, is exactly clear
Everybody look what’s going down

And fucking do something about it!

RH X

The Go-Betweens – Cattle And Cane (1983)

22/07/2022

G’day Soundheads

A beautiful elegaic widescreen soaring majesty of a single from Brisbane’s fellow finest (with The Saints… of course) The Go-Betweens.
A homage to a childhood from Grant McLennan, the string to the bow of Robert Forster, taken from their second album Before Hollywood.
Their sound has matured from the more angular and jagged, almost awkwardness of Send Me A Lullaby and I still consider this to be their 4min masterpiece.

Like The Saints and Birthday Party, they’d hedged their bets and flew to the hopeful embrace of the UK, egged on believe it or not, by their unlikely great friends The Birthday Party ( check out After The Fireworks, the one off 7” credited to Tuff Monks which is the hybrid of BP and GBs) …but unlike said bands, that embrace was not immediate .
It was weird, you could see them in a large venue like The Venue in London (the original one in Victoria) or small and intimate like The Rock Garden and there’d be barely 60-100 people.
But they didn’t fly home with their tails between their legs.
Then when it looked like the battle was lost, it suddenly seemed break overnight, and that warm glow gripped many others.
And quite rightly.

Anyhoo, to this bizness at hand.
This can still send shivers up my spine.
It retains that early jagged edge but something else is at play here.
The almost non drumming of Lindy Morrison that seems to take an eternity to flourish is an integral part of the build up. Everything is so minimal, so restrained but at the same time, so goddamn fucking glorious.
You anticipate where it’s going but revel in that restraint until by the end, it’s so beautiful, it can actually leave you breathless.
I literally can count on five or six fingers, singles that can have a such an harmonious effect on me.
Some may be surprised hearing this from such a truculent old whippersnapper like myself.
But behold, I do have a heart and a soft edge at times.
Just don’t get me started about spot lights…

With the recent hold of insane hot weather from that gold globe in that there sky, this shimmers like the glow of unharvested wheat fields.
Think the beauty of Terence Malick’s vision in Days Of Heaven or the dry heat rust of Paris, Texas… that’s what you get here.
That final spoken word verse by Forster seals the deal with the classic often used but still glorious na nan na backing of McLennan.
Never has a wilful simplicity been so wondrous.

It still unbelievably took a while for the GBs to wake the consciousness of the punters after this and the album, but the brilliance of McLennan and Robert Forster’s lyrics and tunesmithage finally took a hold.
I admit, I sort of walked away from The GBs later because I started to think it all got a bit too polished.
I still don’t really have much love for the later period, but those first few albums are very much part of my love for that time, when independent music was far far far more eclectic than it has been of the last 20 years or so.
More ambitious and way less marketing cynical, nothing followed fashion or had to go to a performance art school to raid the past to make it matter.

From time to time the waste, memory wastes

Much Love
RH X

Manny Corchado - Pow Wow (1967)

15/07/2022

Hola amigos

It’s damn hot out there, so it’s a perfect time for a mighty slab of Boogaloo!
And you don’t get much hotter than this 1967 blazing stepper from Mr Corchado.

Every element of this sprung floor assault is damn near perfect… but Christ on a unicycle, listen to those fucking drums!
There’s breaks and then there’s magnificent gravity defying breaks.
Fast and furious and complimented by the sun kissed blasts of brass, it’s full on from the needle drop to the sweet n short 3 odd minutes it takes to take your breath away.
It is actually a mystery who is playing them on this.
Not even the bonafide experts on Latin music know.
It’s possible it’s Corchado himself, but details are as rare as hens teeth, and with only 3 or 4 sevens and one LP to his name, it’s unlikely that it’ll ever be known.

Regardless of such Sherlock Holmesian intrigue, this my dear Watson simply slays.
It’s upper echelon premiership floor filler perfection.
Sadly, an original copy these days won’t leave you much change out £1.5k.

But listen to those fucking drums!

Guys n gals, pull up the carpet, get that talc down on the floorboards, give yerself heatstroke and splash the cold Mojitos…
Dance this mess around!

Hot love and boogie bound

Outtasight

RH X

Métal Urbain - Paris Maquis (1977)

08/07/2022

Bonjour mes têtes de son!

As mentioned a good few months ago, nobody could really touch the Cabaret Voltaire sheet metal sound of the 70’s.
Except this lot!
The utterly glorious din of Metal Urbain.

This is their second single (the very first for the Rough Trade label) and what a fucking racket it is… and it still pretty much defies time and space to this day.
Very much sparked into life in the prime punk period but just forged a interplanetary junkyard screet of their own.
You could say that it runs in parallel with Chrome, who were equally bending brains and warping psyches over on the west coast, but where Edge and Creed were still under an influence of phantasms of acid, the Urbain didn’t seem to have any affinity with cosmos mindwarp, they just went for the jugular with a speedy amphetamine shrill.
3 truly exceptional singles – Panik, this ‘un and Hystérie Connective – followed by the disruption of line up changes, and even splinter name changes Metal Boys, a great debut album and then it all went to shit.

As an aside, if you dig this, track down the chaos of Dr Mix and The Remix, which was chief noise architect Eric Debris forging onwards solo.

France wasn’t ready for them, they found a spiritual home in the UK as Peel loved them and they burnt bright whilst they stayed intact.
There’s a reform line up that still treads the boards and can make it on the money so always worth checking out.

Feast your ears on this ballistic chonker.

Bon week-end
RH X