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FILE UNDER POST PUNK

 

Bee Vamp: Valium Girls / Lucky Grills / With Barry in Bengal 

Monster in Orbit Records (1981) 

'Well tell me, do you ever get headaches?'

One in three of all post punk bands came from Liverpool. Probably. You may not know this, but the city apparently has a rich musical heritage. Bee Vamp won't be getting a statue, a coach tour or a commemorative tin of shortbread biscuits any time soon, but they did leave behind two nice singles, the first of which is the quietly extraordinary Valium Girls.  

Intoxication is a standard subject for popular music in all its forms, particularly the getting high and the coming down. Fewer songs tackle domestic addiction, however, the epidemic of ordinary people in the thrall of prescription or over the counter remedies which now, apparently, affects nearly a million people in the UK alone. This song both parodies and celebrates the public’s obsession with pain killers, sounding like an art rock version of a pharmaceutical ad. The lyrics convey a grim kitchen sink vignette in a few well-chosen words: a young woman, ‘protected by her National Health prescription’ spends her days drifting aimlessly and thoughtlessly from room to room in her flat, numb, blank, drinking endless cups of Nescafe. We’ve all been there.

Like a lot of post punk music, this track features saxophone, but here it is played well rather than merely enthusiastically, much more Eric Dolphy than Eric Morecambe. The sax interpolations are played on the very edge of atonal, squeaky and squawky without quite becoming annoying. The guitars are bitty and intermittent, like somebody absently scratching their arm until it’s raw. There is a clever false ending that never fails to provide mild surprise. The bass and drums are good, too, never quite playing what you expect. It’s an excellent track all round, really, go and listen to it.

      

The b sides are much less interesting, but have verve, edging perhaps ill-advisedly into Pigbag territory, all happy horns, busy bongos and twangy tremolo arms. Bee Vamp were apparently great improvisers, and these tracks perhaps reflect what their live shows may have been like: energetic, chaotic, sweaty.   

As a final note, thinking about pain killers, isn't pain a vital message in bodily terms? I mean, isn’t it actually exceptionally important? Shouldn’t it be cured rather than killed or, rather, temporarily dulled? I don’t blame the addicts, but I do wish they could get more help with it. If this blog has any wisdom to impart (it really doesn’t), it's this: if it hurts, get it looked at it.

THE IMAGE IS THE SOUND

 

Dresden Dynamo, d. Lis Rhodes (1971)

While still a student at North East London Polytechnic, Lis Rhodes applied a range of Letratone stickers directly onto 16mm film and used filters to create red and blue colours. No camera was used.

On projection, the stickers create a range of unusual and atonal sounds: buzzes, fuzz, bleeps and throbs, and these random sounds complement the pulsing images as if by design.

Rhodes said later: 'It was an attempt to make a material connection between what is seen and what is heard. The image is the sound.'

If any of you are familiar with my musical project, Beam Weapons, and ever wondered what inspires some of the noises we make, simply watch this film, a source of ongoing inspiration.

Supplemental: Dynamo Dresden are a German football team formed in 1953, originally affiliated to the East German Police, then the Stasi, the secret police and state security agency. Highly successful during the lifespan of the DDR, often by nefarious means (intimidating referees, transfer fixing, blackmail, violence and murder) they have fared less well since reunification, and currently play in the German Third Division.

FILE UNDER POST PUNK

 

prag VEC: Bits / Wolf / Existential / Cigarettes

Spec Records (1978)

'There is no future, 'cause you're in a fiction'

Accomplished and confident, occasionally strident, prag VEC released two singles, and recorded three sessions for John Peel. Their name is a conflation of Pragmatic and Vector,  too complex for Ingsoc but very Philip K. Dick.

Beneath their paint spattered punk facade, Bits and Wolf have a quirky Canterbury poly-rhythm going on, an almost progressive rock-ist interest in complex time signatures and interesting chords involving lots of fingers. These short, sweet, swervy blasts are agit-prop nursery rhymes played by supply teachers high on sexual politics, radical economics and arts centre poetry.  

Existential is the pick of the bunch, a sultry slow burner punctuated by angry, intellectual sounding French language narration and a series of wild, jagged guitar solos. It's tremendous, Stereolab plus steroids. 

Finally, there's Cigarettes, which marries a busy pub rock riff with a seemingly throwaway lyric about 'the fags we smoke' ('don't forget the menthol, though they're not so common now'). The crux, however, is that the fug of multiple exhalation obscures real issues. I mean, why even try to tackle world peace or famine or inequality when you can sit around with your mates like lotus eaters sucking on a B and H and talking rubbish? 

In any event, distraction devices or not, the band fully intend to 'smoke them until we die', a common attitude among dedicated addicts, and one that I used to fervently share. Now, like an ex who you cross the street to avoid, I wonder what I ever saw in them. Cigarettes, I mean, prag VEC are great.

FSR

A very brief sojourn into the wild world of Flying Saucer Review, first published in 1955, and apparently going strong. The truth is still out there, just not in W.H Smith.

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THIN AIR

The Body Stealers, d. Gerry Levy (1969)

How to disappear: get aliens to help you.

A DISTINCT CONCEPT

Paradigm, d. B.S Johnson (1969)

In an unnatural environment, a man speaks an artificial language. Excitable and talkative at first, as he ages he becomes increasingly taciturn. Ultimately, he is unable (or unwilling) to say anything at all. 

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