Boarding the wayback machine

I can't wait to see this documentary on Memphis' legendary Antenna Club, a place I practically lived in the period 1982 - 85, and visited/played at with varying frequency over subsequent years. I know pretty much everyone interviewed here (nice to see you all again!), including surprise appearances by my old schoolmate Laura Goodman, and the young woman I am 99.5% sure is my late classmate Jamie Thomas, and I am amazed at how the makers have managed to get their hands on some of the footage seen here.

For those unable to remember a time before the internet, it's probably impossible to convey just how significant this club (and other clubs like it around the country) was to the lives of those who gathered there to play or listen to music. It gave us a sense of connection to the outside world, as well as a nexus for all the various strands of local music to attract, intertwine, or repel.

I played more gigs there than I can possibly recall, some of which I'm still proud of, and also witnessed or perpetrated a number of heinous crimes against music. I also was privileged to catch amazing shows by a very young R.E.M. (whose first single had just been released, and whose equipment had been stolen from their van the night before, requiring that they borrow kit from opening act Barking Dog), N.R.B.Q., Firehose, The Replacements, The Meat Puppets (twice), Shockabilly, and many others by now forgotten bands, local and otherwise, all of which stay with me to this day.

It would be easy, however, to get caught up in the nostalgia and ignore the fact that many of us who frequented the club had a love/hate relationship with it. It was an unpleasant environment: smoky, claustrophobic, oppressively hot, filthy (even the "dressing room" for bands was unspeakable), and depending on the night the management could be a bit surly. And as it developed more or less into a local monopoly over time, musicians and fans began to look for other places to play and listen. Thus, Antenna's repelling effect was arguably the catalyst for other scenes to take shape: Fred's Hideout, Barristers, The Pyramid Club, The Loose End/Epicenter Lounge, Barristers 2 (which I am proud to say I booked the first show into), and others I am no doubt forgetting for the moment.

It was by turns seductive and repugnant, glorious and embarrassing, a jewel in the crown of Memphis' chequered and confused cultural heritage, and it was important. I miss it, sometimes.

Scenes from London life

I Wanna Be Loved

I can remember seeing Elvis Costello perform this song at Mud Island in Memphis around 1982/83, and I recall he credited the song to a Memphis group called Teacher's Edition, a group I'd never heard of and still know virtually nothing about. Presumably, they were a group of teachers from the Memphis City Schools who somehow managed to cut a side on Hi Records, and I guess if you've only got one shot you might as well try to make a jaw-dropping classic. When I finally tracked the original down years later on this compilation, I was really stunned by what I heard, and I'm really pleased to be able to share it (note - there is no video, just a rather poignant static photo). As a recording, it may not be crafted to the same meticulous standard as Al Green's work of the period, but it still possesses all the fine elements of Hi productions. Enjoy.

All's well that ends well, eventually, with a little pressure

After a few more days of government inaction over the environmental crime and arson incident which took place across the road from me recently, I escalated the situation last week. First, I stupidly called the general Environmental Services number for Southwark Council, which took me to a friendly, if somewhat baffled, call center employee, who didn't quite know how to direct my complaint. He eventually sent it to the department in charge of fly-tipping offences, before suggesting that perhaps the best way of dealing with the issue was to confront the builders/property owner myself. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps he was just rehearsing his script for our future lives under the ConDem government, where apparently most public services will be handled by volunteers. I told him in no uncertain terms that I don't pay taxes so that I can enforce the law in place of the Council.

Convinced that this call had been a waste of time, I sent my local Councillor an email with a link to my original blog post. This was now three days after the arson incident. He responded to me the same day, and forwarded my email to the head of the enforcement division, who got in touch the following day. Apparently this division had been aware of the rubbish dumped in front of the house, but did not know about the subsequent arson incident.

I was, and am, amazed that an incident requiring the fire and police services' involvement would not be reported to the appropriate local authority immediately, let alone four days after the event. I was also astonished to find that I was only the second person to file a complaint. The first person had apparently called in about five days before the arson, by which time the rubbish had been on the street for nearly two weeks, if my memory serves me well. This speaks of a level of apathy and indifference which even I find surprising. For days I watched people walking past, looking at the mess and shaking their heads, but it seems that not one could be bothered to pressure the Council for action - not even the family resident in the upstairs flat, who could have easily lost their lives.

Anyway, the environmental enforcement division took the extraordinary measure of sending out a crew last Friday, and cleaning the site to an immaculate extent. Apparently the property owner will get the bill, which is as it should be. The question I have is, would this neat and quick resolution have occurred had I not written about it and posted photos to name and shame the Council into action - and crucially informed them of the existence of the blog post? I suspect not.

On the other hand, what this incident suggests to me is that, if people expect their local government to do nothing, and then do nothing to make their complaints known, then indeed, they will probably observe inaction and erroneously conclude that they are powerless, and the local government indifferent or inept. It doesn't have to be this way.

Scenes from London life

Another fallen star

R.I.P. Andy Hummel, the third of Big Star's original four members to pass away, and the second this year. Last year, in writing a post on Four Neat Guys, I included a peculiar anecdote about him as related to me by Harris Scheuner, which I reproduce here.

We were all obsessed with Big Star, whose catalog was out of print at the time, though Randy had all three studio albums and a bootleg tape of the radio broadcast from 1974. Harris, in particular, seemed to be way off into a Big Star trip, and I remember him telling me this story around this time. He was in the old Seessel's Supermarket on Union, doing some grocery shopping. An announcement came over the in-store PA system: "Mr. Andy Hummel, Mr. Andy Hummel, please come to customer service." Harris was curious, as Hummel is not that common a surname, and Andy Hummel was the name of the bass player in Big Star. So Harris went to customer service, to see a tall guy there who was unquestionably Andy Hummel.

Harris waited until he had finished whatever business he had been paged for, and asked him, "Excuse me, are you Andy Hummel?" Andy Hummel, who indeed he was, looked a bit startled and said, "Yes." "Andy Hummel from Big Star?" Apparently there was a pause, and the real live Andy Hummel said, "Yes, but how do you know about Big Star?" As Harris told it, Andy Hummel had moved to Texas to work in the aerospace industry, and apparently had no knowledge of the resurgence of interest in Big Star, despite the fact that REM and a number of other high-profile acts had by this time become very vocal public champions of the band. To anyone reading who can't remember a time before the internet, this is the way life used to be - people, relationships, bands just got lost. Unsearchable, un-Facebookable, un-Linked-Inable, just gone.

The curious among you may enjoy this interview with Andy Hummel from 2001, in which he gives his view of life in Big Star and beyond. I fail to understand his vitriolic attacks on Jim Dickinson, but I guess everyone is entitled to be wrong about something. There may be some tension up in Rock-n-Roll Heaven tonight.

Broken Hearts for You and Me

I don't know how many people remember Trio, but for a brief period in 1982 they brightened our world with the equal-parts annoying and irresistable "Da, Da, Da," which I first remember hearing in heavy rotation as a music video at the Antenna Club in Memphis, before it went on to become an international hit via MTV. Like many of my friends, I dutifully bought the EP, and fell in love with this song, which seems to have aged pretty well. I've always wanted to cover it, and I'm sort of surprised more people haven't, though I do remember The Thunder Lizards of Memphis doing a particularly good version at one of their gigs in 1983 or so. Perhaps surprisingly for a group built on minimalism, here we are treated to an airy, psychedelic guitar solo (blindfolded, no less) from Kralle Krawinkel. Perhaps the song is due a revival in the wake of Germany's devastating exit from the World Cup.

Scenes from London life

Happy Bastille Day!

London's burning

About three weeks ago, the noisy and vaguely antisocial youngsters occupying the ground floor flat of the house opposite mine suddenly were gone. I don't know if they skipped out on the rent, or were evicted, but the owner of the property immediately got to work on gutting and redecorating the entire gaff. Sadly, this apparently necessitated dumping all of the contents of the flat (clothes, books, mattresses, bookshelves) in a very unruly pile in front of the building. The man is apparently too cheap to even hire a skip.



Since then, Southwark Environmental Services have been out to visit at least twice that I have observed. I spoke to them once during the week before last to give some background and encourage them to deal with the mess, because I was afraid that if it were just left, some opportunistic and unscrupulous builder (is there any other kind?) would be happy to add to the pile under dark of night. The second time I saw them, they appeared to be speaking to the owner, or at least to one of the guys doing the refurbishment work. Yet nothing happened.



I have had a couple of friends from the States staying with me for the past week, along with their young daughter, and being a decent person, I have ceded my bedroom and connected guest room to them. I have been sleeping in a sleeping bag in my living room at the front of the house. Yesterday, at about 3:30 AM, I was awoken by what sounded like a group of young men, talking and laughing very loudly in the street. In a minute or two, things quietened down, and I dropped off to sleep again, but soon I was disturbed by something I briefly mistook for raindrops hitting the ledge outside my open windows, but soon realized was the sound of fire.



Sure enough, the rubbish pile had been lit at the front left corner, next to the hoarding surrounding the partially completed new "aspirational" apartments being put up next door. I called the Fire Brigade immediately, and in my sleep-deprived stupor watched as the flames shot 15 feet or so in the air and spread rapidly towards the house, where a family with a couple of young boys and a baby live (fortunately with an entrance to the side and nowhere near the fire). I was just about to run across and awaken them when one of their windows broke loudly from the heat, a light came on upstairs, and one of their neighbors from next door made sure they were up and out.



By this time the hoarding around the new building was on fire, and the flames were licking the windows of the ground floor flat of the house. Fortunately the Fire Brigade turned up at this point, only five minutes or so after being called, because I think a couple of more minutes would have seen both the house and new building on fire. The next day police forensics did a thorough examination, and there was an officer outside most of the day, to whom I gave a statement of what I'd heard and seen.



However, the pile of partially burnt rubbish is still in front of the building, astonishingly, as a nice trophy, or perhaps a challenge to complete, for those responsible. Having failed to either remove the blight in the first place during the two weeks prior to the arson, or to force the property owner to do so, Southwark Council unwittingly allowed the shits responsible for this to put lives in danger via a stupid and pointless act of vandalism. My visitors, unlike many American tourists who visit London, will not be returning home with misconceptions of what a civilized place it is.

Scenes from London life

Just about alright

Fifteen years ago today I arrived in the UK with a couple of suitcases, a little bit of money, and huge hopes for love, adventure, and prosperity - well, of a sort, anyway. The next morning, when my then wife-to-be left our tiny apartment in Vauxhall for work, I switched on the radio to survey the audio landscape of my new home before venturing out into the real world to try to shake off my jet lag. And out came this, the first song I heard on commercial radio in the UK. It's by no means my favorite from Supergrass, but still every time I hear it, I find myself right back in the feeling of that moment.

And the song is probably also emblematic of the general sense of optimism percolating through that era: the rise of "Britpop;" the promise of New Labour; "Cool Britannia;" the approaching Millennium; new technological and economic paradigms; previously unknown prosperity - much of which optimism, we now know, was underpinned by poor planning, poor regulation, and a lack of prudence and foresight which has led us to the nightmare, sorry, "significant challenges and opportunities," which now confront us. Still, on July 7, 1995, it was all there to play for, and I relish the memory.

Let's go away for a while

I'm a sucker for the stories behind how great records were made, and "Pet Sounds" is certainly one of the greatest. Here we have Brian Wilson working to realise the beautiful music in his head - a bit of a taskmaster, but it's difficult to argue with the results.

Scenes from London life

Inspirational

The other night I watched "This is Spinal Tap" for the first time in many years, and I laughed just as hard and long as every other time I have ever watched it. As anyone with taste will surely agree, the best member of the band, without question, was Nigel Tufnel, whose scenes in his guitar room are among the funniest in the film. Today I happened to notice something come up on Twitter with a link to an article containing this footage. If this priceless segment were not the actual source for many of the guitar room gags, I will eat my skeleton T-shirt. Otherwise, it's one helluva coincidence.

Missing

Tonight I'm missing a show at the Levitt Shell in Overton Park, Memphis, originally scheduled as a Big Star performance, but now re-purposed as a tribute to Alex Chilton. Of course I'm missing it, because I live 4,400 miles out of town, just beyond the dying gasp of Memphis' relentless eastward urban sprawl. Last night, I missed what by all accounts was a great show by my friend and occasional co-conspirator, Linda Heck, with whom I have just recently done some recording, both from London and in Memphis. This remarkable video sort of connects the two, at least in my mind.

Here we see Alex, joined by the late Jim Dickinson and Lee Baker, along with Sid Selvidge, Marcia Hare, a bass player I don't recognize, and an unseen drummer (presumably Richard Rosebrough) recording sections for "Like Flies on Sherbert," in either 1978 or 1979. This was a record I listened to with fascination for a long time, and while reviewers at the time struggled to know what to make of it, in retrospect, I think it's an important missing link on the road to the "lo-fi devolution." It's also an awful lot of fun.

If I understand it correctly, the story is that Alex managed to con some free studio time by claiming that technical problems had impeded his production of the Cramps' "Songs the Lord Taught Us," though this may be apocryphal.

This is a fascinating document to me, both of the people and of the recording process at the time. My recent Urashima Taro-like re-entry to the recording studio was an eye-opener, and this video reminds us how painful and challenging the process used to be. Witness Sid Selvidge trying with great difficulty to punch a single phrase into the beginning of "No More the Moon Shines on Lorena," and you get a sense of how difficult things were. Obviously, working within these constraints also prompted more innovative thinking, but damn, some easy things really seem unnecessarily hard in retrospective.

The songs are, "My Rival," "No More the Moon Shines on Lorena," and "Boogie Shoes." A longer version of this once existed on Vimeo, which also included more of "My Rival," "Bangkok," "Baby Doll," and "Rock Hard." Chaotic and all over too soon. Rest in peace, Alex.

Electricity

I think it's a safe bet that the Cannes Film Festival will not see the likes of this this year, or any other, for that matter.

How sausage is made

What turns you on, U.F.O.?

Doug Easley's studio office contains a huge number of song lyrics from songwriter hopefuls who sent them in to the previous occupant/proprietor back in the 1970s. The most outstanding and strange that I saw was called "What Turns You On, U.F.O.?" It was an expression of exasperation with a lover, apparently of a sexual nature, but only the author knows for sure. Hopefully she since has either worked it out or moved on. No real connection with this short video of the Joe's Liquors "Sputnik" sign, apart from my own oblique connection. I always loved this Memphis landmark when I lived there, but like so many things in the city, it was frozen and non-functional at the time, only coming to life after I had moved on.

I'll remember April

The burst of beautiful spring weather we've had recently has evaporated, and I find myself looking out my window on a grey and unseasonably cold London Sunday afternoon, struggling to grasp that the events of the past week were real, not imagined.

I returned Thursday morning from a four-day lightning trip to Memphis, having at last escaped the clutches of Eyjafjallajokull. There I had the indescribable delight of three days in the studio with Linda Heck and the ever-amazing Doug Easley.



I shot plenty of video on my Flip Mino, but sadly this precious device seems to have died somewhere along the way, and I can't even retrieve the videos. I do have this one short segment shot on my phone, wherein we're listening as our old band mate Kurt Ruleman adds some percussion parts to a track.



The main focus of these sessions was vocals: Linda re-cut a couple of main vocals, and I added my voice to ten tracks, on some of which Linda sang with me. We have always had a deep unspoken musical understanding, and I find that harmony ideas flow thick and fast in my mind when I hear her sing. We also have a tendency to sound alike, or more accurately, I have a tendency to sound like her when I sing with her. I am curious to see if, when this collection of songs sees the light of day, listeners will even realize it's not all her.



We also synched up the guitar parts I recorded for four songs in London, so she and Doug could hear properly for the first time what we did (as opposed to the mp3 versions I sent previously, which have a Phil Spector-esque quality to them - as in it is often hard to unpick sounds). Kurt came in to do some percussion, including playing Doug's tympanis, which used to belong to Stax.



There were some more details added here and there: Linda played some sparse pedal steel parts on "Transformed," to which I also added pedal steel (though in my case it is strummed slowly, to sound like a tanbura); Doug added some beautiful pedal steel and virtual vibes to "At Your Door"; and in the absence of our friend John McClure I punched in a sparse bass line during the breaks in the same song.

So, at this point, I'm guessing this project may be near completion, apart from the mixing, not quite two months since it was begun. Linda, John and Kurt cut 15 basic tracks and vocals at the beginning of March, I did my basement sessions later the same month, Greg Easterly and Mark Harrison added strings, sparse guitar and synth to a couple of songs in Nashville in April, and this string of vocal/percussion/overdubs sessions in Memphis takes things to a pretty complete level, at least as far as I can hear.

I am as excited about this as anything I've ever been involved with, and I love every second of the 51 minutes or so which these songs comprise. I think Linda's writing and singing is in top form, and the playing from her and Messrs. McClure/Ruleman/Spake/Duckworth/Easley/Easterly/Harrison is tasteful and fine throughout. For my own part, having put the guitar down for 15 years, I feel like I play better than I ever did when I was trying consistently. Perhaps I should not play more often.

Seriously though, it's interesting to have the perspective of time to put things into context. I used to find it daunting to go into the studio in isolation to do guitar or vocal parts, and was prone to clowning in order to hide my discomfort or lack of self-confidence. I also recall many times being in the studio with no clear idea of what we were trying to achieve - this sometimes gave rise to interesting accidents, but more often led to indifferent results.

The contrast with the past could not be greater in this project, at least as I have experienced it. For once, I have felt a sense of lucidity and calm throughout, in having ideas worked out in advance which ended up being executed as planned or improved through collaboration with others. I guess this is the much-vaunted "confidence and ease that comes with age and experience," and I can only hope it eventually permeates all other aspects of my life.

The material in question also makes a good contrast with the much-lamented "Lost Album." Whereas we either ran out of money or patience, or perhaps both, before that body of songs could be satisfactorily mixed and presented as a finished, polished product, every song here already feels like a complete, self-contained work. Every song here, bar one, has a definite ending, rather than a lazy fade. The arrangements are more sophisticated and there is much more going on sonically, but the sound is much sparser - another lesson of experience being a greater capacity to listen and self-edit. Saying nothing, or little, usually carries more weight and meaning than a filibuster.

And the nature of the songs in this set is also a long way from 1992. What are the songs about? One thing I have realized after all these years is that Linda's writing process is probably a much more complex affair than might seem apparent to anyone but her, which makes interpretation a fairly treacherous task. There are some non-obvious shifts in point-of-view which I am now aware of, and in one case I assumed a song to be about a very specific individual, only to be told that the lyrics had the widest and most general application imaginable. So, in short, it's not for me to try to interpret or explain, because I may be wrong, apart from the songs I have asked about and had explained to me. However, I do hear some common themes cutting across most of the songs involved here: emotional estrangement (both from the other and the self), death (in a variety of senses/guises), vulnerability, acceptance, forgiveness, self-discovery, rebirth. Grown-up stuff, but beautiful and a lot of fun. I am ecstatic and thankful that I got the chance to be a part of it.