is this how it always goes

 

Just under two years ago I had things to say about a Public Image so-called documentary and this just came up in instagram, a product I really shouldn't use anyway. It just reminded me of how much I am disappointed by Lydon, who was excellent forty years ago and is now not only everything I hate but everything he, forty years ago, would have hated. This by the way is a little bit of footage of some old men playing um... possibly the last half-decent PiL song I can't remember what it's called I never want to hear it again anyway. Jesus fuck, this is so minor in the scheme of things and I don't have to pay any attention obviously, it just makes me feel a bit better to point out how sad, in a bad way, things are for that individual and his art. 

I guess you just can't count on iconoclasts. Maybe that's not really a problem. 

electronically yours, special squad, kuolleet lehdet

This week I listened to the audible version of Martyn Ware's Electronically Yours, Vol. 1. As you know, Ware was the prime mover in the Human League in its first incarnation and then went on to be a central force in Heaven 17. The second Human League album, in particular, is one of my favourite records ever, it's called Travelogue and I agree with Ware's own assessment of it - that it sounded like nothing else when it came out and it still doesn't sound dated. It's a remarkable record. 

I was most interested in the early stuff here - particularly the HL material - though I was also disappointed by a lot of the approach. I couldn't help feeling that Ware really needed an editor, which I'm pretty sure he didn't have (someone to elicit more detail on some things and less blah on others). Ware was there, so he doesn't seem to appreciate what we would want to know. For instance, he goes into great detail about 'Marianne' which is, you know, an ok song, but says completely nothing at all about 'The Black Hit of Space', which is, of course, an amazing work of genius. He barely touches on 'Empire State Human' which is extraordinary, remarkable, and immense (actually, he might not even mention it, I can't remember). The rise of the HL is unbelievably fast and things like the release of their first record is practically an afterthought. I'm pretty sure, too, that he gets important things wrong - like John Lydon's review of 'Being Boiled' in the NME which I'm 1000% sure was two words: 'trendy hippies' but Ware says it was 'fucking hippies', in fact, he says it twice. 

Update 10 July: It also occurred to me how extremely little Ware says about '(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang' which was a revelation and an amazing statement of intent for Heaven 17 - it was their first single. The bass playing of John Wilson (inc. a hell of a solo) was a remarkable feature of this single and how Ware, Marsh and Gregory came across Wilson is entirely avoided, I am not even sure he's discussed at all. That's all pretty weird, right? It took a lot of gumption to launch H17 the way they did, and a lot was made of Wilson, in particular, at that point. Wilson appears in group photos etc (I'd never seen him before but I gather he's here second from right) and yet, not a mention. 

Of course it could be that I stopped listening/paying attention for a while and/or that I accidentally skipped a bit (I definitely skipped one section about football, so maybe he segued into discussing John Wilson then as well) so who knows?

Ware is a very dedicated socialist, which I approve of, and a football fan, which is a bore. He really likes art and values creativity and adventurousness which I admire. His book is full of the usual crapola about hot women and drinking too much which is a drag but apparently necessary in books like this. Simultaneously to H17 he became an extraordinarily successful record producer though he gives us precisely no information about what a record producer does or is (I suppose I'm fine with that). OK I think I've about said all there is to say about this. By the way it's hard to be sure whether he's providing his own interjections reading this book for audible or whether the interjections are in the original book, I guess I'll never know. 

Meanwhile I've been watching a lot of another Crawfords show made in Melbourne in 1984-5, called Special Squad. It's a peculiar production which apparently sought a certain measure of gritty realism. In one sense it might as well be Homicide '84; it's three men in an elite section of the police force, always in car chases, each episode a neat solving of crime with a lot of the usual moralistic elements (no crim ever gets away). One odd aspect is that the first episode absolutely does not even slightly bother to introduce you to the police characters - you are just thrown in at the deep end. I'm still confused about who these three men are. 

What else does it have? A lot of interesting actors. Red Symons as a terrorist (I'm not even sure he has a speaking role, but it's him) and Frankie J. Holden as an undercover cop, for instance. Norman Coburn is a corrupt cop in another episode (see below). The storylines are, on the whole, not magnificent* and if it wasn't for the intriguing mid-80s technology (phones and computers in cars!) the above mentioned actors and the locations I wouldn't really be bothering, I suspect. Oh, but every episode does end with someone making a lame joke** and the frame freezing, which is pretty amazing to see in the wild. 

Last night my mother and I went to see Kuolleet Lehdet, a low-key Finnish film which surprised me no end by including Maustetytöt in one scene. 

Oddly enough I knew they were in a film because I saw this poster a few weeks ago on the Maustetytöt fan club facebook group but I didn't realise that this was the same film I had already bought tickets to. Just 'cause I'm dumb. 

They don't have lines or anything just a crucial moment in the action, where they convince one of the main characters to stop drinking by dint of their extremely depressing song. It's pretty cool. 

Overall the film is probably worth it. I am still thinking about it. 

* to be fair, I haven't been paying 100% attention

** or just a pointed comment. 

the public image is rotten

First up: fucking awful title for a documentary.

Second up: is this actually a documentary? Well, it has Thurston Moore in it, like most music documentaries that don't have Bono in them, and I have to give TM credit for never saying no to any documentary who wants to include him. Look, when the Cannanes played the Knitting Factory on the 15/5/1991 Sonic Youth were outside the venue with Epic Soundtracks (I remember talking to him and Aileen McNally about how he liked Reeves and Mortimer and she liked Julian Clary and he didn't like Julian Clary and she didn't know anything about Reeves and Mortimer, but I don't remember if he introduced me / us to Sonic Youth; my point being why wasn't Thurston Moore in the Cannanes documentary? He had at least some geographic proximity to something in that group's existence and he will clearly go to the opening of an envelope). But...

Thirdly, if this doesn't have John Lydon's fingerprints on it as a producer or something, or if it isn't officially sanctioned by him, there's no excuse for its shallow, pandering tone and even if it does/was, there's still no excuse. It is obvious to everyone - surely everyone involved in the band, let alone everyone around them - that whatever passes for PiL today/in the 20th century is a complete travesty of the original. I mean, beyond a travesty. It might as well be a PiL covers band but even that would be better than what it's become, a schmetarded piece of shit. I suppose it at least achieves one ambition of the original band: it unsettles and angers some members of the comfortable middle class i.e. me. But only because it has fallen so far from anything high quality. Those first three PiL albums were supreme genius. I admit I haven't heard Album and maybe I should do myself a favour (?). And really I haven't spent any time with anything produced under the PiL name since Flowers of Romance. But I watched this film and fucking hell. Lydon's fall from ability/capacity is just one of those sad, sad things that happen to 90% of great artists I suppose, you have to be just grateful you got them once at a good creative place. Christ. Awful! 

The film is unable to say what is clearly apparent: a great idea for a creative working unit became, over a  long period of time, a sad (if lucrative?) footnote to a career. Obviously a lot of this is due to economics and accidents and drug use (most specifically Keith Levene's) and the music industry being a crock of shit and shame, and even if JL doesn't believe his own myths (or those which have been thrust upon him) he still has to work with them. But argh. Frustrating. Thank christ it's not my problem lol. Actually I sought it out and let it upset me so more fool me. 

Two great albums I happened upon* this weekend which I heartily endorse. One is Punko's Plants Singing which came out earlier this year and which is a total gem (well, I've only listened to one side of it, but I can't imagine the other side would cancel it out even if it was gruesome) and the other is Shrapnel's Alasitas which is midway between being a 2021 cassette release and being an actual vinyl (I guess) LP and I have been playing in the car a lot. If I had to review it, which I don't, I'd say that it sounds like all those great early 80s Flying Nun bands if they'd actually formed five years earlier and were 'indebted' to prog (eg Caravan, Jethro Tull) instead of whatever they were 'indebted' to, Television or the Velvets (or imported german beer or whatever). I love it. 

*This is a lie. Both were recommended by Alec Marshall. 

jimmy savile a british horror story

 

I don't know what induced me to watch this except I saw it was on and I had a mild interest. Like many, in the 70s/80s to the degree he meant anything to me I thought Jimmy Savile was a slightly bizarre but benign figure (same thing we all thought about Rolf Harris, another saint who fell). I remember really enjoying Jim'll Fix It when we lived in Britain in the mid-70s (though in my memory I get it a teensy bit mixed up with That's Life). Anyway, I thought this two-parter was really strangely put together and containing nothing new. Presumably it was for a global audience, so he had to be explained a lot (to the degree that's possible) but after that, the story was: he was a grotesquely awful person, he said and did strange things too which should have alerted people to how terrible he was, but no-one ever put two and two together, and the police conspired to stop any investigation. Then he died with his fingers crossed. 

This documentary didn't use what I thought was a wonderful thing, when John Lydon talked about the rumours on radio (in the late 70s?). 

Although there is a considerable amount of detail on the times he was nearly exposed in the press, etc, I was still a bit reminded of that film Scandal from 1989 where a big part of the story of the film was that the mainstream press 'didn't know'. But as the various Private Eye accounts show, everyone knew, they just didn't want to upset the establishment by talking about it. 

It's just all so English.