glampunk
Crab On The Rampage
gloompunk; glitter goth: disciple of Rikki Nadir: demonik in disguise, etc.
Posts: 61
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Post by glampunk on Jan 8, 2013 1:07:43 GMT
Great moments from GLAM: Peter Hammill Accidentally Invents Punk! (sort of)"The song Nadir itself, if not exactly a blueprint, fits in entirely with the ethos of '76 and '77 precisely in chord structure - and attitude, come to that. Nadir's Big Chance came about really because the preceding album, In Camera, was at that time probably my most challenging solo album to the extent of having seven minutes of musique concrete at the end. It definitely wasn't going to get me on The Old Grey Whistle Test! The three and four minute Nadir songs were completely different." - Peter Hammill talking to Mark Paytress, Record Collector, July 1993. Inside every introspective rock cult hero, there's an eternal 17-year old black leather glitter yob struggling to get out and unleash his raucous three-chord wonders on the world and Peter Hammill's was Rikki Nadir. His host may have been up for pondering the meaning of life, the universe and everything, but all Rikki wanted was to "smash the system with the song". Sadly, if we disclude a novelty comeback single The Polaroid ("she whips off 'er bikini top/ and I think 'OK!") some years later, he only got this one crack at it, but then, as the mighty Wire will tell you: once is enough. Nadir's Big Chance (Charisma, 1975) opens with one of the greatest "one-two-three-four!"s ever before bursting into Nadir's manic vocal and a booming bass riff which a certain Mr. Rotten of Finsbury Park was obviously taken with as the next time we hear it, it is performing a guest spot on Anarchy In The UK. Nadir's target is the top thirty and all the "jerks" who populate it, "pansying around in their leather platform boots/ making it with the heavy sound" (he talks like that) and he's gonna show you what it's all about. I would imagine some of Hammill's regular audience were already feeling a little concerned at this point .... Don't bother sending for a lyric sheet, Nadir sneers in his liner notes, because "there aren't any", but he's being disingenuous. The Institute Of Mental Health - some strange approximation of reggae, no less - could easily have made it onto a 'normal' PH album had it not been so pop catchy. The five-minute Open Your Eyes is the best sax-driven glam stomper Roxy Music never wrote, a jolly little thing commemorating Nadir's romance with an usherette in fishnet tights at the local Locarno. Back to proto-punk for the nasty put-down of Nobody's Business and then another change of pace, the beautiful Been Alone So Long which a guy who ran a mobile disco once assured me was the only Hammill record he'd ever been able to include in his roadshow without fear of being bottled for depressing everyone to death. Several Hammill love songs will feature on the rest of the album as the mask slips (it really is a delightful schizoid mash-up of a record: what's the incongruous Pompeii doing on here?) but the likes of Shingle Song are so gorgeous I can't see anyone minding much, and besides, Nadir's back for mayhem with a vengeance before too long. Birthday Girl - the metal-ish single! - could, and possibly, should have been a hit if Charisma had been able to stretch to a huge promo-campaign, but, being irredeemably perverse, I'd have opted for the unrequited love death disc The People You Were Going To which piles misery upon misery and is at least as heartbreaking as the Shangri La's at their Never Go Home Anymore/ Past, Present And Future teenage angst ridden best. Caustic closer Two Or Three Spectres begins with a devilish cackle before Hammill launches into his latest state-of-the-music-biz address, sticking the platform boot into all the usual suspects before signing off with a spleen-vent at the fans aka "the Hitler Youth". Six minutes of the most relentless non-riff that many may find unlistenable but it's actually a classic in a nervous-breakdown-on-vinyl kind of way! As it happens, Nadir's Big Chance didn't get Hammill anywhere closer to that enticing OGWT audience with whispering Bob Harris either .... File under: Messianic.
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Post by pulphack on Jan 8, 2013 6:52:03 GMT
In the VDGG box of sessions, rarities and already released tracks th came out - blimey, must be ovfer a decade ago now - Guy Evans remarks that although everyone talks about Nadir as presaging punk, as far as he was aware PH was listening solely to classical piano concertos at that stage, and it's a matter of synchronicity and sniffing something in the air.
This may not be unconnected to something PH has said himself about the difference between the first stage of VDGG and the second (ie - for non-fans - the 1969-72 albums and the '75-77 albums). The first era is about the band saying simple things but in a complex manner (which figures, as there's a lot of instrumental virtusity in arrangements) and then reforming to say complex things in a simple manner (again, the actual songs and lyrics are deeper but leaner). Looking at the timing of Nadir, this makes sense.
PH solo always gave him a chance to try some leaner and simpler things, or go more abstract, as there was no demand for band arrangements and everyone needing to add heir pennyworth to the arrangements. He could be both micro and macro as he wished (does Private Eye still have pseuds corner?). The band now is very much in the vein of the second era, and I do hear that they don't really want to do Pawn Hearts era stuff, even though the audience wants it. Said audience - mostly men of a certain age - are old prog fans generally, and like the earlier stuff, which is telling. Being just a few years younger and having been exposed to punk as a seminal thing, I prefer the later eras. Timing is everything, I guess.
I had a spare ticket for the Barbican VDGG gig a couple of years back and persuaded mrs ph to come by spinning her a line that the new stuff was 'very sixties soul band', referring to something PH said on the Freak Zone. Well, as you might expect, his idea of being soul band influenced was not hers... I've never seen anyone leave an auditorium faster at the end of a show. But at least she stayed to the end, possibly because she was amazed at the energy of three old blokes giving it large, and because we were seated to one side of Hugh Banton and she was fascinated by his flying feet on the bass pedals of his organ (for non-VDGG fans, they hve no bassist and he does it all with pedals - it is awe-insprining to see this little white haired bloke going at it for two hours!).
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Post by dem bones on Jan 8, 2013 13:19:59 GMT
dunno how come the initial post disappeared, but have retrieved it from the cache and, now we've a designated Hammill thread, might as well shift these too. I got my first Hammill solo albums (Chameleon and Silent Corner) this year and although I had heard VDGG's Pawn Hearts years ago and liked it a great deal, I only really fell in love with Hammill from these solo works. Cant wait to hear this, but I want In Camera first. I'm a little intimidated by the size of his discography, as if Legendary Pink Dots, Guided By Voices/Pollard, Boris and many others hadnt given me enough to worry about. Illustration: Peter Hammill I hope In Camera lives up to expectation. Robert. This is perhaps the most experimental of his 'seventies solo efforts, musically all over the map. Tapeworm is manic proto-punk metal with a bizarre choral interlude when you least expect it. Again is a love song built around quite possibly the most gorgeous bass line ever, and the apocalyptic Gog is a "song" you might expect from Laurence Olivier's Richard III at his most gaga. It's sister piece, Magog (In Bromine Chambers) has been described by Hammill as ten minutes of near impenetrable 'Musique concrète', not so far removed from the aural torture Throbbing Gristle were shortly to inflict. In this company (if no other), Faint Heart And The Sermon is almost pop, albeit an unutterably morbid variant. I don't rate the album quite as highly as the same decade's The Silent Corner ..., Nadir's Big Chance, Over and much of Fools Mate, but ... well, his work is never less than interesting. Was playing VDGG's Pawn Hearts and Godbluff a lot over Christmas - interspersed with a home made glam rock compilation. Fortunately, we have very understanding neighbours. I'm guessing you're already familiar with his wordpress blog, Sofasound?
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 8, 2013 14:52:11 GMT
Pretentious artsiness is bad in literature, but good in music, am I guessing right?
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Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2013 12:28:50 GMT
If 'pretentious artsiness' is what Hammill's work ultimately amounts to, then yes, your guess is 100% correct!
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jan 9, 2013 13:15:07 GMT
Anyone out there ever heard Hammill's The Fall Of The House Of Usher?
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 9, 2013 18:33:22 GMT
If 'pretentious artsiness' is what Hammill's work ultimately amounts to, then yes, your guess is 100% correct! I thought so!
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Post by pulphack on Jan 11, 2013 10:21:23 GMT
Remember what Rick Wakeman said about prog rock? 'People say it's pompous, pretentious, self-indulgent... good, innit?' Spot on, Rick. In writing it would drive me mental, in music I love it. Don't ask me why because I don't know. It just does.
Franklin - House Of Usher is bloody awful - tuneless, spineless and rambling*. PH lost the plot entirely with this one. I was really disappointed when I finally heard it.
(* of course, two of these three could apply to much of his work anyway for some listeners...)
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jan 11, 2013 13:13:10 GMT
Franklin - House Of Usher is bloody awful - tuneless, spineless and rambling*. PH lost the plot entirely with this one. I was really disappointed when I finally heard it. (* of course, two of these three could apply to much of his work anyway for some listeners...) Cheers, Andy - I needn't worry about trying to scrape up £50- £150 to get a copy, then? Recently dug out the Alan Parsons Project Tales Of Mystery & Imagination (1980s CD reissue - boo!) - which has a nice Fall Of The House Of Usher suite, introduced by Orson (Heavy Metal) Welles, and part of it is apparently nicked from Claude Debussy's unfinished opera of the same subject. On a Poe kick...should bugger off to the Lou Reed thread....
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 11, 2013 13:58:22 GMT
Remember what Rick Wakeman said about prog rock? 'People say it's pompous, pretentious, self-indulgent... good, innit?' Said the man known for wearing a cape (though the fact that I know this may tip my hand as to my true feelings on prog rock). Recently dug out the Alan Parsons Project Tales Of Mystery & Imagination (1980s CD reissue - boo!) - which has a nice Fall Of The House Of Usher suite, introduced by Orson (Heavy Metal) Welles, and part of it is apparently nicked from Claude Debussy's unfinished opera of the same subject. On a Poe kick...should bugger off to the Lou Reed thread.... There's also some talk of this on the Poe thread starting here.
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Post by pulphack on Jan 11, 2013 16:10:49 GMT
Nothing wrong with a cape - Classic Rock once reviewed a homemade album by a virtual one-man band referring to him as the 'silver caped neighbour from hell', which is a wonderful image.
I love Rick because he's such a down to earth bloke yet has made some of the most ridiculously bombastic music in rock history. Also, I love the fact that on that run of 70's albums, despite the virtuoity shown in composition, arrangement, etc, when it comes to taking a solo he plays THE SAME ONE every time, complete with twiddly bit at the end of each phrase. Splendid.
Dave Greenfield does the same with the Stranglers, who I also humbly adore for being such contradictory buggers. There may be a theme here...
Incidentally, £50-100 for PH's Usher?Blimey, my mate downloaded it on some torrent site for nowt, which is the only way I was going to get to hear it!
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Post by dem bones on Jan 11, 2013 18:32:12 GMT
Dave Greenfield does the same with the Stranglers, who I also humbly adore for being such contradictory buggers. There may be a theme here... When Hugh Cornwall was jailed for possession, Hammill took over as the Stranglers' vocalist for a few gigs. This is him applying his magic to Tank ... .... and The Raven as you never imagined it in your worst nightmares.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 11, 2013 18:44:21 GMT
Dave Greenfield does the same with the Stranglers, who I also humbly adore for being such contradictory buggers. There may be a theme here... Aural Sculpture is the only Stranglers album that I've heard, but I did like the keyboards on it. As for Wakeman, he has his good points (give or take the cape), though I've always been more of a Tony Banks fan myself.
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