Flux Uncarved Block

Flux – Uncarved Block. I haven’t played this for years, but by the sound of it, I played it a lot. It’s a strange collaboration between anarcho punks Flux of Pink Indians and On U Sound producer Adrian Sherwood. As such, it sounds like nothing I had heard at the time. It’s mix of industrial style rock, studio trickery, angry lyrics, and a dreamy take on The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff.

It came out in 1986 at a time of a lot of despair – peak Thatcherism, high unemployment, City deregulation resulting in a minority earning shed loads while everybody else was on pre-minimum wage minimum wage. There’s a lot of disillusion in the lyrics here – same children playing revolution in the park, same old ideas stumbling about in the dark – like a band and a movement that felt they’d tried and failed, so let’s move on.

The music itself is anything but tired. It’s vital, hard edged, driven, and weirdly soulful. It sounded futuristic at the time, although the studio techniques are actually quite clunky now. However, it marked a huge step away from the abrasive and primitive guitar and drums sound Flux of Pink Indian previously had, to something more thoughtful and cut up based. Fellow travellers Crass did something similar with Ten Notes on a Summer’s Day, their sign off record, and had been playing with cut up techniques visually and aurally since their inception – Reality Asylum was an eye opener for me. I’ve got that somewhere.

Again, I have to pay homage to my Welsh mate Andy for putting me on to this lot. He had the album and dragged me along to what I think was their only gig playing this material at the time. It was at ULU in London and saw a pretty large line up onstage playing and bashing pieces of metal. It sounded absolutely amazing.

The sleeve on this one folds out in the manner of Emerson Lake and Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery – not a comparison Flux would have relished at the time I suspect. Strangely though, former progster Ray Shulman of Gentle Giant was a player and arranger on the album, which further goes to show how the band were intent on not sticking to preconceived notions of what was appropriate.

As sleeve art it’s an elegant piece. Rather like Peter Saville’s design for Blue Monday, I suspect that it must have eaten up any cash that the record made – not that it would have been much. Despite being on the newly hip One Little Indian label through which Bjork’s Sugarcubes were emerging, it was a bit of a cottage industry.

Andy and me actually interviewed somebody from the band/record label at their South London house back in the eighties. It was for a fanzine that we produced while at university. I can’t remember much about it, apart from the fact that the guy was very polite and earnestly answered our rather naïve questions on the future of anarchism in the UK. Strange times.

#vinyl #fromthegarage #flux #fluxofpinkindians #crass #uncarvedblock #taoofpooh #benjaminhoff #anarchopunk #ULU #onelittleindian #onelittleindianrecords #sugarcubes #bjork #sleeverart #onusound #adriansherwood

Adrenalized? Not by this

Rock biographies are one of my guilty pleasures. Like eating sweets, they're not very good for you in large measure, and I tend to overindulge. This is especially true when it comes to the stories of artists that I liked when I was younger. If I'm honest, a lot of the music isn't objectively that good, but it retains a Proustian effect, taking you right back to more innocent and exciting times. Who doesn't think fondly of their teenage years?
Actually, quite a lot of people probably, but mine were largely fun and relatively carefree - which is why nobody will be queueing up to read my memoirs. Maybe Phil Collen should have taken note.
I was really looking forward to this, to the extent that I prioritised it over Steve Jones' Lonely Boy and Johnny Marr's Set the Boy Free - books that I'd acquired or bought in a Christmas binge.
Def Leppard were one of the earliest metal bands that I got into. I know Joe Elliott hates to be called metal, but that's what they are really, albeit more melodically inclined than most. Nothing wrong with that. 
The first two albums, which don't feature Phil Collen, but Pete Willis, are both pretty decent, especially High 'n' Dry. At the time, Collen was the main axe in Girl, a similarly melodically inclined rock band, from London. They released two criminally underrated albums, Sheer Greed and Wasted Youth before folding when Collen left to join Def Leppard. You can't really blame him for that, and time has proven that it was the right choice. However, it doesn't mean that it makes for a great story, especially not in the hands of Phil and his ghostwriter, Chris Epting.
Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair to Phil Collen, as plenty of rock biogs are more lame than this. It's just that there was so much more potential meat that he could have got his teeth into: his early days in Girl, Rick Allen's accident, Steve Clarke's demise. He touches on them all, but in a very drive by manner. I'd have loved to have heard more about what he really thought and felt about these important times in his life. 
Instead, we get Phil, the cheery cockney geezer who seems to glide through life with nothing really touching him. It's the usual rock star narrative: struggling early days; break through point and rise to the top; being a bit naughty; get serious (and sober); family man, blah, blah... All incredibly linear with little real analysis or thought about what's going on. He devotes more of the book to the hilarious incidences of being mistaken for Phil Collins (geddit!) than his decision to quit drinking.
It's not as if Phil doesn't have things to say as the bonkers final chapter reveals. Suffice to say it's all a bit David Icke - we're all suckers who don't really know whats going on int the world. Wake up people!
To repeat, this book is no different to many others in the rock and metal sphere, so perhaps I'm being unfair expecting Collen to be a fount of self-awareness, but he could have given a bit more. He hints early on that he doesn't have much time for navel gazing rockstars, in which case, why bother with the book in the first place. 
He doesn't even touch on his amazing middle-aged physique besides a few annotated pics of himself looking ripped - they're not in there for irony. Seriously though, one of the most engaging sections of Duff McKagan's It's So Easy is where he sobers up and gets fit. It's a genuinely different and uplifting read - a rock literary equivalent of the Rocky training scene that culminates in him bounding up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art. I'd have loved to hear more about Phil's exercise regime, his diet (he's a vegan. How do we know? Don't worry, he tells us!), his sobriety, and what keeps him motivated. But he seems to be a man of few words - I suppose we're lucky that Epting has teased this much out of him.
Strangely, given my current read - the Steve Jones volume - Phil ends up playing in a band - Manraze - with former Sex Pistol Paul Cook. There's not much that's eye-opening about that either. How did they meet? Is there some sort of under-employed rockers employment exchange? The truth is probably more prosaic. For all his reminders to readers about his working class background, Phil has slipped quite easily into becoming part of the rock establishment, where such connections just happen. 
Do yourself a favour and investigate the first two Girl albums to find out why Leppard wanted Collen in the first place. Then read Steve Jones' book and wait for Joe Elliott to write his autobiography. He's the sort of big-mouthed rocker that I want to hear from and will probably reveal more in the first couple of pages than Phil Collen's workaday effort manages in its 200-odd pages.

How I almost met Lemmy

Lemmy: time for your close up!

There's a scene in the film Lemmy where fans explain to the makers what makes him, well, Lemmy. One superfan predicts that in the event of nuclear war, Lemmy and cockroaches will be the only survivors. Alas, in the end Ian Fraser Kilmister proved all too mortal, passing away days after his 70th birthday, and days after he discovered he had an aggressive form of cancer.
Despite all the paeans to Lemmy's indestructibility over the years, anybody who saw the excellent 2010 biopic will have been in no doubt that the godfather of metal was winding down. The only pills he seemed to be popping were for diabetes and high blood pressure, and several scenes showed a man who was suddenly showing his age - answering questions in a rather downbeat manner, and wheezing in his dressing room as he towelled himself down after a gig. It's actually quite a testament to the guy that he didn't seem to have leaned on the producers to remove anything that showed him in such an unflattering light, but that seems to have been his nature - no bullshit, and tell it like it is.
The eulogies to him from a music industry not known for sentimentality have been demonstration of how well he was thought of. Over the past 30 years, pictures of Lemmy propping up the bar with a variety of rock star buddies have been a standard feature in music mags. From the days of Hendrix, right through to his fraternisation with the latest hot young gun slingers of the LA scene, Lemmy seems to have had an ability to get people to like him and not piss them off.
For fans, like me, he was the very image of the party happy rocker. I don't think I'd have wanted his life to be honest - too much like hard work - but it worked for him, and like many, I experienced a sort of vicarious thrill from reading about his exploits in Kerrang, Sounds, and more latterly Classic Rock. When I moved to university in London in 1985, I probably had a bit of a go at the party lifestyle, drinking a bit much, gigging, and trying to hang out with bands. The little I saw of the scene opened my eyes to the fact that it was all a bit of a pose where the guys in the band did whatever they thought would advance their career. If it didn't work out after a few years, then they folded and you probably never heard of them again.
Motorhead wasn't like that. Before Richie from the Manics carved the phrase on his arm, they were 4 Real. The band sounded too harsh and uncompromising to be careerists, yet bizarrely, the louder and heavier they played, the more the kids lapped it up. Having spent time around both the Notting Hill hippy scene, and the later punk scene, Lemmy had a better idea of how extreme you could take things and still keep the kids onside. In fact, punk allowed him to really push the envelope to create a sound that still sounds amazingly fresh 40 years on, unlike many of the bands that followed.
I started getting into metal in about 1981, discovering bands that my friends recommended and listening avidly for the odd slab of metal and hard rock that were starting to push into the charts. For a band as uncommercial as Motorhead, the fact that they had some hit singles made them an act that you could latch on to and wind up your punk and mod mates with - these were tribal times.
They also had one of the all time greatest logos - Joe Petagno's gothic lettering and Snaggletooth war pig became a mainstay of the patches you'd see on the back of the denim and leather clad metal army. In fact Motorhead's look was a great inspiration for the kids. The classic line-up of Lemmy, Phil and Eddie had an image that was as cool as the Ramones - the leather jackets, tight jeans and bullet belts. They looked like a gang that you'd love to be part of but were never likely to be that cool. At a time when metal threads were starting to get silly with Spandex, Lycra and increasingly bizarre accessories, the simplicity of the Motorhead look was perfectly in line with their music. And once it was set, they didn't have to mess with it.
I could never afford a leather jacket myself, and if I could my mum would have blackballed the decision - I'm sure Lemmy never had that problem. I remember once that a mate left his own tattered leather at my house and I wore it for a couple of days. I can still remember how much like a rocker it made me feel, even though my hair barely crept over my collar at the time.
I missed out on seeing the classic original line-up live, so had to content myself with No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith, which is one of my favourite live rock albums. The playing and song selection is brilliant but so is the inner sleeve with its Polaroids of life on the road - Philthy's 'Self as Shazbot' always made me laugh, even though I wasn't entirely sure what it meant - and dedications to Special Brew and Smirnoff. This was what rock was all about.
It wasn't until about 1986 that I saw 'Head on the Orgasmatron tour. I say 'saw them' but I'd consumed so much Special Brew in preparation that I don't remember too much about the gig. This is especially galling as I bumped into a mate who was on the crew and he got me and my mate Welsh Andy backstage after the gig. So, I nearly met Lemmy!
If truth be told, I lost touch with Motorhead after that. Although they continued to be a big band, Lemmy's biography White Line Fever reveals his exasperation with this sort of attitude. He became bored with playing the old stuff, especially Ace of Spades, as he thought the later line-ups, and especially the last one, were superior to the early stuff.
Technically, he may have had a point, but it's hard to argue that the Lemmy, Fast Eddie, Philthy line up is closest to the heart of most fans. Certainly to mine.
Having said that, when I last saw Motorhead about 10 years ago, they were amazing. I thought of Lemmy as old even by then, so was quite astonished at his dynamism on stage. Yes, they play fast, but he was jiving all over the Kentish Town Forum stage, spinning on his Cuban heels and generally acting like a guy half his age. Phil Campbell might be an excellent guitarist, but he didn't have the moves like his boss. It must have been all those years doing the dance halls before he got the Hawkwind gig.
It was a nice reminder that Lemmy was still around and still doing it. Not that he'd ever been that low profile. Unlike most musicians, Lemmy was a smart character which is why he was a staple of chat shows and other non-music related events - he once addressed the Welsh parliament on drug use. He could hold court and hold his own on many subjects from history and philosophy to politics, and then throw in a filthy joke for good measure.
He had hinterland, as politicians like to say. Although he defined Motorhead, he wasn't defined by it. He loved life and he lived it how he wanted to.
And although he didn't want to live forever, he had a damn good innings. RIP squire.