First Five Songs on Shuffle

Not sure what's happened to the text here. Computers hating on me again. Makes me look hopelessly unprofessional. Just drag your cursor over the offending sections for full reading pleasure. Now . . .

This morning I fired up the old MP3 machine and hit the shuffle button. Here’s what happened and where my mind went.

No. 1: The Electric Prunes – “Are You Loving Me More?”

Palm-muted guitar makes me think strongly of Astronomy Domini. The swoop and swirl of the chorus. Then the songs slows, almost stops. You’ve got no idea where they’re going. Until, oh thank fuck, it’s still a pop song. Another chorus then a quiet freak out that probably should’ve been faded out. You can forgive them though. Come on, it was the sixties, a glorious time when the acid was strong and the sun was, for some, still underground.

No. 2: Roxy Music – “Avalon”

This song is about leaving the house at 5 a.m. after the party’s cooled down, walking your waif-like mistress toward the beach, taking your shoes off and untucking the tux. The two of you stumble along the cold sand to stand where the tiny bubbling waves lick your toes. You kiss and, as you pull away from her, you notice some fine coke-dust on her upper lip. She hides her face but you laugh and say it doesn’t matter and you take her bodily and hoist her into the light sea breeze as the edge of the sun appears orange on the horizon.

At least that what it sounds like.

No. 3: Althea & Donna – “Uptown Top Ranking”

Always use this one at a party to cool things down. I’ll spark up a fatty and give the kids on the floor time to breathe and start a slow skank and grind. Wedged in between “Funky Kingston” and “Mirror In The Bathroom.” Full skanking explosion. Wind it up, pull it back, push it back up.

I was sure for a while they were singing ‘Not Pablo style – us strictly roots’. But they surely wouldn’t be ripping into Mr Augustus, dub- melodica master. Lyrics are closer to ‘Nah pop no style, a strictly roots.’ According to lyrics playground at least. Who’re probably more sober than I seeing as they’ve tracked lines like ‘Shoulda see me and the ranking dread/Check how we jamming and ting,’ and ‘See me inna ‘alter back/Sey me gi’ you heart attack.’

Althea and Donna where two Jamaican schoolgirls when they cut this track. It was an answer record to Trinity’s “Three Piece Suit.” John Peel got excited about it one English winter and it went to No. 1 in the UK in February of ’78.

No. 4: Fleetwood Mac – “Second Hand News”

I’m glad this one came up. The reasons are twofold.

Since watching the ‘Classic Albums’ episode on Rumours, I’ve had pretty much every song from the album in my head. And because the universe is against me, when I went to the iPod to exorcise the songs from circling my skull, the player wouldn’t play it. It’s just tease me with the first twenty seconds of each song then shit itself.

The other reason I’m glad this came up is because there has been a shift in the enjoyment of Fleetwood Mac. Many moons ago, in my younger years, during days of polarising opinion and swift but lasting judgement of cool, Fleetwood Mac were not at all enjoyed. Maybe it was that Rumours was massive in the late 70’s and was up against punk and its tenets. Rockstar excess, inter-band fucking, coke and California. Can’t think of many pale, emaciated white boys who tackled those subjects back then. Suppose they were more worried about being wiped off the face of the earth by a nuclear wind.

And the story would’ve got stale after a while. “You know they were all either getting it on or falling apart when they wrote the song s - listen.” Someone’s annoying parents would say when they find out you were into music, foisting the album on you. “Yeah. Real music, Mum. Not that pap.” You’d respond with appropriate snottiness.

Then there is a gap in time long enough for all that shit to be forgotten about. You get guys like Robin Pecknold admitting that Lindsay Buckingham being a huge influence on his own guitar playing. Or you’ll be out one summer evening in Sydney and the last song the DJ spins before Beach House arrive on stage is “Dreams.”

Maybe after a certain amount of time the stories become myth or just unimportant in the face of the songs. Which still stand up today. Except for that ‘bamp bamp ba bamp bamp’ bit at the middle and end of this one. That’s just stupid.

If you listen carefully and oh so closely to the first five seconds of “Second Hand News” they’re pretty close to the beginning of Zeppelin IV and “Black Dog”’s odd scratchy whirring noise. Like a jukebox that a quarter’s been dropped into. Or an amp warming up. Solid way to start an album, I guess.

No. 5: Hüsker Dü – “Lifeline”

Pretty much every song should start like this:

“Aaarght!!!”

You know you’re in trouble right from the start. It should be noted that this song was not named for the local telephone service for people who just need someone to talk to.

Bonniwell's Musical Mess

I got this album the other day for my birthday and gave it my first listen last night. Its a collection of the Bonniwell Music Machine's songs that have fallen far from anyone's attention. And for quite obvious reasons. The music is a fucken mess. Its garage rock from the late 60's, all those sounds are in there - fuzz guitar, farfisa organs, thudding drums - the ideas are in there, the voice is there but not a single one of these elements seem to fit together in any way, shape or form.

The Music Machine had a hit in September 1966 with the song "Talk Talk", breaking into the top twenty and making a television appearance that showed them wearing - according to Sean Bonniwell, the band's lead singer/songwriter, to avoid all gimmicks and to embrace their originality - matching black suits, mop-tops and, to really stand out, a single black glove on either their right or left hand. Fucken wild, hey. Their next single flopped, Bonniwell blaming industry clashes and the band put themselves through years of hard touring, presumably on the back of the one song. They refused to play covers or, apparently even listen to any form of advice. The band would play hour-long sets without breaks, rather than stop to have requests shouted at them which smacks of some weird and confused egomania rather than some highly original or progressive musical tract.

After a while, the original Music Machine parted and Bonniwell put together The Bonniwell Music Machine, recorded some songs for Warner Bros that probably didn't see the light of day until this CD release.

The disc is basically the musical equivalent of one guy's strange, deluded insistence that he force his overwhelming originality onto an audience that existence nowhere but in his mind. An odd, maniacal journey into a pop-garage sound with not a single clue about hooks, harmonies or cohesive musical arrangement. Its astounding that this man was even allowed near a recording studio. No one could have been that hard up for bands in the late 60's that they needed to spend time on this confused mess of ideas. From the liner notes (credited to Bonniwell and written in the third person) to the untracable sounds that pop up clueless and erratic this music isn't, as is claimed, a forerunner to punk or progressive rock, its some insane, gloriously confused mess of mashed ideas made inside the supposed shape of 1960's garage rock.

And its not Beefheart messy either. Beefheart at least had something you could tap into, had enough of a flow and awareness of its own insanity that it was something you could tap into. But this . . . this is simply . . . impenetrable.

To quote Bonniwell in his description of the song "Absolutely Positively", which is about: 'Demanding that you get what you don't have without knowing what you want, is the same as wanting what you haven't got - then not wanting it after you get it." Right . . .

Now, I've met people like this - I know that they're real and that they're out there. People that are so enthusiastic and so brimming with ideas; people that are so convinced of their own originality that they loudly proclaim it attempt to draw others into audience. Unfortunately, though, these are ideas are often so confused, so lost, so misdirected that they are lost on anyone who happens to come into contact with them.

Which is why Bonniwell's music is so fascinatingly, fantastically broken and messed up. In a way, he does fit in with the idea of punk and, indeed, with anybody's ideas about freedom of thought and expression; the idea of creating your own world, of making evrything around you your own and yours to own. Its just that its such a terrifically garbled and inarticulate mess that no one can get properly inside of it to take away something for themselves. As Bonniwell sings in the opening line to "Talk Talk": "I got a complication/And its an only child." Thanks Sean, couldn't have put it better myself.