labeled with love

Apparently I wrote this for Beat magazine in 2003. I don't remember it at all. It is not very interesting. Enjoy! 

David Nichols takes a dreamy stroll down through the world of independent record labels of yore.

A cautionary tale for collectors before we begin: when Penguin books started in the late 1930s, my grandfather decided he would collect them all.

The best indie labels (like Arizona’s 555 or London’s Fortuna Pop!) are the ones where the records released are all about the personal taste of the person who runs the label. The second tier of great indie labels are organisations like K, from Olympia or Swarf Finger from Bristol, where almost all the artists are from the same geographical region – it’s not just cottage industry, it’s also delightfully anti-global. The worst indie labels are the very common ones where dufus X decides he’s going to run a record label so that he can hang out with the bands he likes as an equal, only, he (yes, it is always he) never quite gets around to actually producing anything tangible (‘Yeah, you’re my 21^st release, as soon as I get the first twenty out’). But we’re not here to talk about me.

Here are some great indie labels, direct to you from the top of my head:

Postcard: ‘The Sound of Young Scotland’ circa 1979, created by Alan Horne to push his favourite band Orange Juice but also managing to launch a few other careers as well. Aztec Camera released two sumptuous singles on the label, and Josef K – dirgey, poppy and dark – fleshed out the roster, along with The Go-Betweens’ third single, ‘I Need Two Heads’. It all went belly-up within a year or so, although Horne occasionally revives it to put out new records by the same people, and reissue classics from the original bands.

Magic moment: The Orange Juice single ‘Poor Old Soul’ – a funky Captain Cocoa-esque masterpiece.

Lost classic: A record that wasn’t even released on Postcard, by a Scottish group called Article 58. Their single ‘Events to Come’ must have been slated for a Postcard release – it sounds so much like one – either that, or it’s homage. But it was issued on Edinburgh’s Rational Records in ’81.

Chapter: Guy Blackman’s wonderful label is, we must all assume, dead and gone. Like the best labels, Guy was basically releasing his own and his friends’ music, yet his taste in friends was impeccable. Starting with cassette compilations of Perth bands, by the end of its existence – was it really only last year? – the Chapter canon was looking pretty diverse and mighty for it.

Magic Moment: Don’t make me choose! Probably the compilation, Double Figures.

Lost classic: Guy planned a compilation of 60s Australian female rock groups, which will probably now never see the light of day.

Good Vibrations: A Belfast label from the late 70s, dedicated to documenting Ireland’s best punk/powerpop groups. Their most famous record was of course the eternal classic ‘Teenage Kicks’, launching The Undertones on the world.

Magic Moment: Well, let’s face it, ‘Teenage Kicks’, though all the records cast their own spell. Rudi (a group featuring Gordy Blair, who played with Dave Graney in the 90s) and Ruefrex, for instance.

Lost classic: The Xdreamysts’ ‘Right Way Home’. Not only did this group have the best beards in punk, they also drew on Irish folk and Saintsy rock to make, uh, a really good record.

Next Best Way: Alastair Galbraith managed to release two great CDs (so far) on his own label before he ran out of puff (i.e. cash). Named in tribute to the great, and defunct, Expressway label, Next Best Way aimed to continue the tradition of beautiful NZ indie music from out-of-the-way places and people. The first release was Galbraith’s own ‘Talisman’, the second a compilation, ‘Runner’. Galbraith’s preference for cardboard sleeves over jewel cases cost him sales in the US, and the whole thing went into abeyance.

Magic Moment: Both of them

Lost classic: Yeah, both of them

13th floor elevators, a visual history

This is a pretty beautiful book* and not only is it amazing that so much ephemera - handbills, small press, photographs - has been preserved from the late 1960s, but also that so much of it is such high quality, artistically speaking. I'm at least as pleased by the original graphics as I am by the text, which is a great oral history of the 13th Floor Elevators (naturally) compiled from past and, I guess, present sources. Beautifully done.

There is one weird aspect to the overall - yes I do really like the 13FEs but as you know my real thing is the Red Krayola, the 13FEs' label mates on International Artists and also, I guess, their friends too. Roky Erikson appears on the first RK album, etc. But the RK are not mentioned once in this book - other IA artists are, but not the RK. At all. 

You'd almost imagine that Paul Drummond perhaps just hates the RK (people do), but I'm going to suggest that's probably not the case as he has, in the past, written sleeve notes for the reissues of RK material from the IA archives. So I guess... huh... it just didn't come up or something. 

That's not really the most important thing, it's just a point I wanted to make.

The important thing is that the 13FEs made it a point of honour to never do anything as a band without taking a massive dose of acid first. I am not sure that anyone in this book even implies that's not a good idea to pursue as an artistic approach, although I guess it's somewhat mixed in with the realities of the run-ins (runs-in?) that they often had with the law over their drug taking and the fact that between a grotesque anti-drug legal regime (including OTT punishment), and a horrendously inept and exploitative record label in International Artists (I was pleased to have the question I never knew I wanted to ask, answered here - why was the label called International Artists? I mean to me, they were/are all International but to them, they were just Texans! Well, the answer is that it was essentially something akin to a company name bought off the shelf by clueless fools). 

I am frankly, perhaps this is embarrassing, not massively au fait with the first 13FEs album but I really like Easter Everywhere and I really, really like Bull of the Woods, which I recognise in some eyes possibly makes me a faux 13FEs fan (a fauxn). But I'll wear that. BotW was an album of (great) Roky-era offcuts plus a bunch of tracks written and sung by Stacy Sutherland, and be fair, he was really, really good. Clearly while there's a tragedy at play with Roky and the 13FEs generally, there's another whole different tragedy going on with SS, who barely did anything after BotW and was then killed in the late 70s.** 

Back to this book: it's a testament to graphic and other artistic talents of a bunch of marginalised nonprofessionals (some of whom probably did get to be professionals down the line) in the service of the counterculture. Very impressive and a marvellous, horrible story. I recommend it. 

*That said, I don't 'get' what's being attempted with the cover, which could obviously have been printed in full colour (like much of the book is) rather than this weird die-cut triangle opening onto some very simple text on a purple background. I mean, I don't hate it exactly but I don't understand it. 

** Can you believe that thirty years ago I had a joke, when someone who died in, say, the 70s or any time earlier than that, I'd say, 'he/she never had a fax machine!' I can't even tell you now, how this was a joke in any sense. 

idiots

 

I get so tired of Americans sometimes. Thanks for your lack of care newspapers.com 

homicide: 'grains of sand'/'the girl who wanted to go home' (may 1972)

After watching (almost completely, I've missed a few) close to 330 episodes of Homicide it occurred to me to wonder what attracts me so compulsively about this show. It is not nostalgia per se for me, I never watched police dramas of course when I was a child and I actually still don't really like them in themselves (I couldn't even watch most of the 2 May 1972 episode 'Grains of Sand' because it was so depressing - murder of a kidnapped child ffs). Aside from Ernie Bourne who I obviously have a soft spot for (but perhaps more for his depiction of Rob Lewis in Neighbours than for his Adventure Island stuff) I was not greatly familiar with any of the actors in Homicide (well, I suppose I did watch quite a bit of Class of '74/'75 ten or so years ago for a journal article I wrote, and Leonard Teale was ostensibly the star of that, but christ knows what he thought he was doing there - I suppose he thought he was maintaining an acting career!). 

It really does feel like time travel though, I know how stupid that reads, but I so thoroughly enjoy not just Melbourne of 50-60 years ago, but getting the sense of why Australians enjoyed the show so much - the familiarity of it all. Streetscapes, absolutely, and familiar place names. But also venturing into backyards, petrol stations, waste spaces, laneways and bedrooms (home interiors are a little less thrilling because they are almost always sets, constructed the same way and in the same depth through the close to eight years of episodes I have now watched). Not just what you see on the screen, either, but social mores too - things that people throw into the mix, the way we're supposed to empathise with George Mallaby's character Peter, a handsome young man who likes to play the field, or for that matter, Leonard Teale's character Mack, a handsome older man who likes to play the field (although he has a girlfriend, Joy, who suggested to him that she might be about to move to Brisbane for work and who was then shot in the neck by an escaped prisoner trying to kill Mack - she lived, but wasn't mentioned again lol). 

Anyway that said, I try not to get involved but 'Grains of Sand' is Norman Yemm's last episode and I will miss him. I couldn't really watch the actual episode as I said but I did watch the end of it which was not entirely dissimilar to Inspector Connolly's departure - in that he didn't definitively say he was going, just applied for leave, at Col Fox's urging. 

Homicide's producers etc clearly knew that Patterson was a popular character because they made it clear to us for some time before this episode that he wasn't happy in his job and finding it a strain, particularly because his wife was finding it a strain. 

Here he is on the steps, having said goodbye to Fox but no-one else, and about to stride down the street alone like Connolly did. 

The next episode, from 9 May, wastes no time: new opener (well, new-ish, they didn't waste time filming Kurts, Teale or Mallaby getting out of the car again, just inserted Mike Preston): 

Very little background on Preston's character Bob (who incidentally is only in it for 40+ episodes, so I won't get too attached). They do say Bob's wife left him, which I assume is flagging something into the future. Bob is the second of the Homicide team, after Lionel Long, to be played by a pop star - and like Alwyn Kurts, Preston had also been a TV show host. 

He is installed in Jim's old desk and that's the only time Jim is mentioned - Peter says something about how Jim's cleaned his desk out (but I thought he was only going on leave?!). 

Not much more to say about this episode. Here are Teale and Preston with Penny Ramsey who plays Sally Reid. 

Mildly interesting, to me, brief shots of the suspects (one of whom turns out to be the culprit for this particular episode's murder) visiting what was then known as the George, which would become about five years later the Crystal Ballroom, known as the Seaview Ballroom by the time I was going there in my late teens. Here as you can see it's basically a strip joint. I actually didn't know that about it. 

I will say that this is one of those instances watching Homicide when I get a weird little feeling - you don't see a huge amount of the frontage of this building, but even this was highly familiar to me. 

I say this a lot, but the 70s were a horrible time to grow up, so I guess in a way I'm processing something really. As I say it is compelling. 

a man called...

It's w-r-o-n-g to prejudge an artwork of any kind before you've actually experienced it but fuck off with your A Man Called Otto, an american remake of the third most watched Swedish film of all time, which I saw a few years ago at the scandinavian film festival and couldn't help but enjoy; for the little quirks as much as for the big set-piece corny coincidences.* I get less tolerant as I get older, naturally, who doesn't but this incapacity Americans have to experience, much less enjoy, anything that is from outside their national boundaries, makes me want to become disgruntled. 

Look, Tom Hanks is OK, and for all I know this takes the great original film (based on a book I haven't read, so I jumped on the train between stations obvs) and makes it superb, but I just want to say, if 'America's' (i.e. the USA) so great it shouldn't be a clearing house to churn through whatever other stories come into being elsewhere, it should generate its own fuckin' stories and tell them. I would also say that I felt that A Man Called Ove was a really Swedish story and to my mind that valuable quality is not translatable into either some mediocre mass-minded Americana. Yes, there's a story about a grumpy old man who wants to die, but there's also a story about whether there are intrinsic qualities (re: community spirit and willingness to help neighbours) to a small national culture that are adaptable to the modern world. Any other reading is bullshit. Has to be.

*cornincidences

homicide 'the hermit' (& 'a ticket to the grave')

This episode of Homicide aired two days before my seventh birthday, and I didn't watch it. I might have enjoyed, briefly, the central role played by Ernie Bourne in the show however as not only did I know Bourne's work from Adventure Island (he played Fester Fumble) I also, strangely, had met him - at a party (as previously discussed on this blog 13 years ago, remember?). 

In this fairly nonstarter ep he plays an unsavoury character called Dudley Roberts, by this time living under the name Dudley Brown. He is an artist (the Ds keep saying he's not a very good artist but I don't know, I've seen worse art) and kills a model because she says she'd charge him $20 more to pose nude for him. We don't see the killing. Not that I wanted to. 

This is a shot of the boyfriend of the mother of the model, Cindy. Played by John Stanton. I was more interested in the background, wherein you can see a point of sale poster for the very short-lived newspaper Newsday which confuses me as this episode went to air in early 1972 and Newsday closed in May 1970 (at least that's what Wikipedia says, can't necessarily trust that information). Maybe Crawfords had a standard bunch of newspaper posters for scenes like this. Or maybe I'm wrong and it's New Idea, though it's weird to think of magazines being advertised the same way as newspapers. Also, note the Taranto's gelati sticker in the window. Me and my mother used to love their Tartufo. 

I see why IMDB insisted the character we know through most of the show as 'Dudley Brown' is 'Dudley Roberts' - because that's what it says in the credits.* 

This has pissed me off for quite some time watching these old eps. If I went back in time and killed Hitler, could I also stop in 1970something ((c) Barry Divola) and fix this fuckin' apostrophe? 

PS note to self - 1972 is when the Homicide theme started to end on a different note. I mean literally. Like they re-recorded the whole theme, and ended it with that one change. 

* OK but weirdly the next episode, 'A Ticket to the Grave', features a character who calls himself Nigel but whose actual name is Norman. Yet here he is, credited as Nigel. 

OK I know what your eye was drawn to... Ian Smith! Here he is, age 34 and credibly playing someone surely at least ten years younger. 

Btw I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the dreadful habit of faking newspaper stories in Homicide. They did it again in this episode. 

What the hell is that picture?! 

wake up

I still haven't had a proper listen to all the discs in the Essential Logic box set but there is one notable omission to the compilation - this EP. I gather (actually I think I read it in the book in the box, but I probably knew it already) this was released on Virgin as the group's first release as-a-group (as opposed to a hastily assembled studio project, see below) and then almost instantaneously withdrawn after objection from Disney, who own the copyright on the cover image. Apparently there was no will to reissue the record with a different sleeve or anything like that. Two of the songs were rerecorded for the Beat Rhythm News LP, and the other two remain exclusive to this release.

I once owned the 12" but I don't anymore, as far as I can tell, I don't know what happened there. I have the 7" version (tracks are identical). What I was surprised to find via discogs was that the 12" is really common, or at least, very cheap to buy even now 43 years later, but the 7" is quite rare. 

This is my copy of the first EL single 'Aerosol Burns'. It is what it is. I mean, it is pretty good. Apparently Lora Logic just made it up on the spot and claims it was all recorded in a couple of hours from completely spontaneous 'go into the studio, do what feels right' situation. I do really like that story of her being sacked from X Ray Spex and someone or other tracking her down and giving her a few bob to just make a record. I'm really glad that happened. 

Today is a horrendously hot day, and I'm stuck indoors for the foreseeable in a situation where even though it's more or less bearable in the house, any activity makes one hot and uncomfortable. Fuck it.