Category Archives: Post-Punk

Gig Review: Mark Stewart & The Maffia/Tackhead @ The Forum, 30 April 2022

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This was a twice-rescheduled London gig, initially designed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of On-U Sound Records.

And what a line-up was brought together to celebrate mixmaster general (and birthday boy) Adrian Sherwood’s iconic dub/funk/post-punk/industrial indie label (motto: ‘disturbing the comfortable, comforting the disturbed’): Creation Rebel, African Head Charge, Tackhead and Mark Stewart & The Maffia.

And what a pleasure to hear this music in a big hall, in front of a near-sell-out crowd. There were no half-measures here – this was an ageless performance from all the artists, and, refreshingly, also bone-crunchingly loud. Club gigs are all well and good but sometimes you need to hear this stuff in full effect.

Augmented by a striking set of projected visuals, taking in everything from Malcolm X to 1980s CND marches (On-U always championed agents of protest), Creation Rebel and Head Charge fused slow dubs and occasional bursts of metal guitar.

But the real draw was the return of Tackhead, their first London date for 14 years, and they didn’t disappoint – drummer Keith LeBlanc always swings even when tied to drum machines and loops, playing with dynamics and a killer right foot.

If there’s a greater contemporary rhythm section than him, bassist Doug Wimbish and guitarist Skip McDonald, I haven’t heard it – and these guys are not young any more. Joined by sermonising vocalist Bernard Fowler, they unleashed tracks taken mainly from their 1989 Friendly As A Hand Grenade album, excellent versions of ‘Stealing’, ‘Tell Me The Hurt’, ‘Mind At The End Of The Tether’, ‘Ticking Time Bomb’, and a brilliant take on ‘White Lines (Don’t Do It)’.

Mark Stewart, skulking around at the back of the stage for most of the Tackhead set, then took the mic, seriously pissed off with the state of the world – and who can blame him? He laid into ‘Hysteria’, ‘Liberty City’, ‘Passcivecation Program’ and ‘Resistance Of The Cell’ with the intensity of a man who knows everything he predicted 40 years ago has come to pass, but also found time to lead the crowd in a verse of ‘Happy Birthday’ for Sherwood.

Then, gig over and job done, Stewart was soon spotted in the stalls, chinwagging with fellow travellers. As he once said, the On-U audience is just as interesting as those on stage. Great gig.

The Movers And Shakers Of 1980s Music: Their Real Names Revealed

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Captain Sensible, AKA…

During the punk era, musicians often chose stage names so that the dole office wouldn’t identify them from album covers or gigs when they came in to sign on.

One wonders how much of an issue that was for Gordon Sumner, Paul Hewson and David Evans, AKA Sting, Bono and The Edge, but you never know.

But as the 1980s wore on and the post-punk era became the hip-hop era, a whole new generation of rappers, DJs, producers and musicians felt the need to create pseudonyms.

But what did their mums call them? Here, for your dubious pleasure, are some of the most intriguing real names. It’s fair to assume that most probably don’t like being reminded of these, for various reasons. YOU go taunting Ice-T with his real name (Tracy Marrow). But, on the other hand, kudos to The Cure’s Robert Smith for NOT using a pseudonym…

Terminator X (Public Enemy DJ): Norman Rogers

Melle Mel (Furious Five rapper): Melvin Glover

Cheryl Baker (Bucks Fizz vocalist): Rita Crudgington

Grandmaster Flash (superstar DJ): Joseph Saddler

Kidd Creole (Furious Five rapper): Nathaniel Glover

KRS-One: Lawrence Parker

Pauline Black (Selecter singer): Belinda Magnus

Siouxsie Sioux: Susan Ballion

Sebastian Bach (Skid Row singer): Sebastian Bierk

Marilyn (‘Calling Your Name’ star): Peter Robinson

Don Was (Was Not Was co-founder/superstar producer): Don Fagenson

Falco (‘Rock Me Amadeus’ one-hit wonder): Johann Holzel

Steve Severin (Siouxsie and the Banshees bassist): John Bailey

Budgie (Siouxsie drummer): Peter Clarke

Flavor Flav (Public Enemy rapper): William Drayton

LL Cool J: James Smith

Tone Loc: Anthony Smith

Bonnie Tyler: Gaynor Hopkins

Yngwie Malmsteen: Lars Lannerback

Young MC: Marvin Young

Ice Cube: O’Shea Jackson Sr.

Shakin’ Stevens: Michael Barratt

Donna Summer: LaDonna Gaines

Captain Sensible: Raymond Burns

Rat Scabies (Damned drummer): Christopher Millar

Vanilla Ice: Matthew Van Winkle

MC Hammer: Stanley Burrell

DJ Kool Herc (hip-hop pioneer): Clive Campbell

Duke Bootee (hip-hop pioneer): Edward Fletcher

Afrika Bambaataa: Lance Taylor

Nikki Sixx (Motley Crue bassist): Franklin Ferrana

Skip McDonald (On-U Records/Sugar Hill guitarist): Bernard Alexander

Billy Idol: William Broad

Bill Wyman (Rolling Stones bassist/solo artist): William Perks

Fish (Marillion singer): Derek Dick

Fee Waybill (The Tubes vocalist): John Waldo

Billy Ocean: Leslie Charles

Posdnuous (De La Soul rapper): Kelvin Mercer

Maseo (De La Soul rapper): Vincent Mason Jr.

Chris De Burgh: Christopher Davidson

Kool Moe Dee: Mohandas Dewese

Youth (Killing Joke bassist/superstar producer): Martin Glover

Geordie (Killing Joke guitarist): Kevin Walker

Associates: Fourth Drawer Down 40 Years On

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The Associates gave good title: ‘Tell Me It’s Easter On Friday’, ‘Kitchen Person’, ‘White Car In Germany’, ‘Q Quarters’, ‘No’, ‘Those First Impressions’, ’18 Carat Love Affair’, ‘Nude Spoons’, ‘Party Fears Two’ etc. etc.

The first four appeared on Fourth Drawer Down, released 40 years ago this weekend.

Mostly co-produced by 19-year-old Flood (Depeche Mode, U2), it was a collection of the increasingly bizarre singles released by the ‘band’ during 1981, all of which featured strongly on the Independent charts.

The Associates were yet another impressive 1980s pop duo, at least in their early incarnation. Billy Mackenzie was arguably the greatest singer of the post-punk era, while Alan Rankine was a key guitarist (and talented multi-instrumentalist) alongside John McGeoch, Charlie Burchill, Will Sergeant et al.

They were also arch music-biz pranksters, years before The KLF, good-looking, talented lads milking the record companies for all they were worth.

Newly departed from Fiction Records, with ex-Cure bassist Michael Dempsey in tow, the three spent 1981 holed up in their St John’s Wood flat by day and Willesden’s Morgan (later Battery) Studios by night.

If taken in an amount just over their recommended dose, Quiet Life (also an ‘influence’ on David Sylvian/Japan?) health tablets would give a nice buzz, found in the ‘fourth drawer down’ of their bedroom cabinet.

It was a hedonistic, musically expansive period. Experimentation was king. It wasn’t unusual to see Billy singing down a vacuum tube or through tracing paper, while Rankine occasionally applied a water-filled balloon to his guitar strings.

Vintage synths were layered with dulcimer, xylophone, early drum machines, ‘funky’ bass and mad fuzz-toned guitar. It was a brittle, lo-fi sound, influenced by Bowie, Roxy, Sparks, Ennio Morricone and John Barry, quite insane in places.

The scary, majestic ‘White Car In Germany’ was the logical conclusion to all of that icy, post-Heroes Euro-grandeur, but is it a pastiche? ‘Lisp your way through Zurich/Walk on eggs in Munich’, croons Billy. It’s impossible to say, but that’s part of the fun.

The brilliant ‘Q Quarters’ is strongly reminiscent of Scott Walker’s ‘70s/’80s soundworld, and comes complete with Billy’s coughing solo. Superbly chaotic ‘The Associate’ is invaded by a screaming fit and what sounds like a major vacuum-cleaner malfunction.

Some of it may remind one of early Cocteau Twins (particularly Mackenzie’s strident vocals and oblique lyrics), early Suede and the work of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Propaganda from later in the decade (Trevor Horn apparently almost produced a solo Mackenzie album around 1987, sadly yet another what-if in this gifted artist’s short life).

Less than a year later, aided by some more streamlined material, Warners money and the excellent producer Mike Hedges (who also worked on ‘White Car In Germany’ and ‘The Associate’), they spent nine months as bona fide pop stars in the UK.

But nothing ever sounded as singular as Fourth Drawer Down. And don’t miss out on the wacky B-sides, newly added to the remastered 2-CD version. Also worth checking out is their extraordinary Peel Session from April 1981.

Further reading: ‘The Glamour Chase’ by Tom Doyle

‘Rip It Up’ by Simon Reynolds

Simple Minds: Sparkle In The Rain

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After ‘82’s critically acclaimed New Gold Dream, the logical step for Simple Minds would seem to have been to go even further away from their art-rock roots and rush headlong towards some funky ‘sophisti-pop’.

After all, head honcho Jim Kerr is on record as saying that his favourites from the era were Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing, Donna Summer’s two classic 1982 singles and Carly Simon’s ‘Why’.

To that end, Nightclubbing co-helmer Alex Sadkin was eagerly approached to produce Sparkle In The Rain, but he declined, busy with Duran Duran and Thompson Twins work.

Instead, inspired by premiering the pile-driving, Pink Floyd-meets-Doors ‘Waterfront’ at Dublin’s Phoenix Park gig (supporting U2) on 14 August 1983, they turned to producer Steve Lillywhite, chief architect of the Return to Rock that was eclipsing New Pop during summer 1983, courtesy of his work with Big Country and U2.

Lillywhite hastily took them into Shepherds Bush’s legendary Townhouse Studios 2, with Howard Gray engineering. Guitarist Charlie Burchill wrote ‘Herzog’ on the back of Lillywhite’s chair, inspired by his and Kerr’s newfound love of the German director’s ‘Fitzcarraldo’ and its theme of dreams moving mountains. A photo of Nastassja Kinski took pride of place on the control-room wall.

There were regular games of table tennis, Kerr using them to psych himself up for the very adrenalized vocal takes, especially on the hysterial ‘Kick Inside Of Me’.

After previous drummer problems to match Spinal Tap, the excellent Mel Gaynor was a real find for the band. Though quiet in the studio, he was a monster on the kit and also apparently contributed effective keyboard and guitar ideas.

Bassist Derek Forbes was more in the background, spending a lot of time drawing his ‘Dan Yer Man’ cartoons. Burchill allegedly gave him a bollocking about his lack of ‘commitment’; the writing was on the wall for the talented player. He’d soon join fellow ex-Mind Brian McGee in a superb iteration of Propaganda’s touring band.

Tellingly, Sparkle’s songwriting royalties are split five ways, except for a truncated cover of Lou Reed’s ‘Street Hassle’ which jettisons some of the more ‘unsavoury’ statements of the original (shades of Bowie’s ‘Tonight’, recorded a few months later?).

But it’s Gaynor, Kerr and McNeil’s album. The latter provides epic textures, very high in the mix. Kirsty MacColl provides a very welcome ‘girl’s voice’. ‘Shake Off The Ghosts’ was certainly noted by U2. ‘Waterfront’ is brilliant. How many other hits use guitar harmonics for their main riff? (only The Hooters’ ‘Satellite’ comes to mind).

Alongside Empires And Dance, Sparkle remains my favourite Minds album. Yes it’s a sonic ‘experiment’ and most tracks go on for a minute too long, but it’s rooted in strong band playing and delicious ambient textures. And it’s bloody loud.

Released on 6 February 1984, it became their first of four straight UK #1 albums. But they weren’t delivering on the singles front: ‘Waterfront’ only got to #13, ‘Speed Your Love’ #20 and ‘Up On The Catwalk’ #27. With hindsight, their reluctant November 1984 recording of Keith Forsey/Steve Schiff’s ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ was a vital career move.

Minds hit the gig circuit for a very busy summer 1984 tour including a record-breaking (at the time) eight nights at Hammersmith Odeon. This was a very different group to a year earlier. It’s fascinating to compare two ‘Oxford Road Show’ gigs from early 1983 and early 1984:

Gone was the skinny, neurotic Euro art-funk. Kerr was a far more wholesome, energised, welcoming character than before, screaming ‘Charlie Burchill!’ before the regular guitar breaks. He even started the Hammersmith gigs up a pole, Julian Cope-style!

But Kerr quickly disowned this period, citing exhaustion on the part of the band. Stateside success seemed so near yet so far. But then came ‘Don’t You’, Kerr’s marriage to Chrissie Hynde, ‘The Breakfast Club’ and Live Aid. The world was theirs.

Further reading: ‘Simple Minds’ by Adam Sweeting

Grace Jones: Nightclubbing 40 Years On

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Nightclubbing, which turns 40 this week, would be iconic even if it was only half as good, thanks to Jean-Paul Goude’s fantastic cover painting.

But drop the needle anywhere and it’s an all-time classic, one of the jewels in Island Records’ crown and hugely influential.

Arguably its mashup of new wave, reggae, synth pop, disco and Caribbean flavours blueprinted the sound all the key New Pop acts of 1982/1983 (Talking Heads, Kid Creole, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, ABC, The Associates, Simple Minds, Thompson Twins et al) sought.

Some, of course, went route one and employed Nightclubbing co-producer and movingtheriver.com favourite Alex Sadkin.

But you might also call Nightclubbing Grace’s covers album – it features not one but six classics, if you count ‘Libertango’ and the Marianne Faithfull’s previously-co-written-but-never-recorded ‘I’ve Done It Again’ (Sting lent her ‘Demolition Man’ before laying it down with The Police).

She revolutionises Flash & The Pan’s ‘Walking In The Rain’ (her androgynous alto freaked me out when I first heard it as kid, there was just no reference point…) and compare her funky, succinct ‘DM’ to The Police’s ponderous, overblown version.

On a good system Nightclubbing‘s sonic details delight: the tambourine commentary throughout ‘Use Me’, Sly Dunbar’s dub-delay cross-sticks on ‘Walking In The Rain’, Grace’s whispered chorus on ‘Art Groupie’.

The Compass Point All Stars, particularly man-of-the-match Wally Badarou on keys, are perfectly poised to provide such moments.

But there is a weird quirk – the mastering. The album seems to get quieter as it goes along, at least on the original CD version. ‘Demolition Man’ requires some serious crankage. I’m not sure if subsequent reissues have rectified that.

Nightclubbing was NME’s album of the year for 1981 and it got to #32 on the US Billboard chart, a certified crossover hit. You might even say that the 1980s Proper started here, and it helped make 1981 one of the greatest ever pop years.

And we haven’t even mentioned Grace’s electrifying One-Man-Show that accompanied the album, directed by Goude, taking place at London’s Drury Lane Theatre and New York City’s Savoy. It was surely a huge influence on everyone from Laurie Anderson to Annie Lennox.

12 Angry Men: The 1980s Midlife Crisis Collection (Part One)

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Here they come, these days about as welcome as turds in a jacuzzi, a collection of white, male, middle-aged ‘rockers’.

Then again, by the time of Live Aid, anyone over 30 was deemed a ‘veteran’, one of the funnier legacies of punk and New Pop.

Let’s survey the ages of some of the ‘ancient’ rock legends who appeared at Wembley Stadium and in Philadelphia on 13 July 1985: Pete Townshend (40), Paul McCartney (43), Freddie Mercury (39), David Bowie (38), Bob Dylan (44), Keith Richards (41), Bryan Ferry (39), Mick Jagger (41), Elton John (37), Brian Wilson (43).

Looking at the output of rock’s ageing alpha males during the ‘80s, angst, anger and lust were apparently the main drivers, alongside an interest in psychoanalysis and politics. Let’s take a look at some of their most coruscating work. For our purposes, we’ll define ‘mid life’ as 30 and above…

Peter Gabriel: ‘And Through The Wire’ (1980)

Upon hearing the early mixes of Peter Gabriel III, the US arm of his record company reportedly wondered if 30-year-old Pete had recently spent time in a mental asylum. But no, he was just letting off some steam, inviting Paul Weller along to supply raucous guitar, and unleashing a newfound, barely-concealed sexual energy: ‘Prowling the water hole/I wait for the kill/Pressure’s building/Overspill/I want you’. Ding-dong!

Richard Thompson: ‘Don’t Tempt Me’ (1988)

The folk/rock guitar/songwriting hero (38 at the time of recording) employed a killer US drums and bass team (Mickey Curry/Tony Levin) to carry off this pile-driving, piss-taking portrait of male jealousy and ‘little man’ syndrome. Note that he’s only ‘halfway’ out of his seat… Superb.

The Police: ‘Mother’ (1983)

Andy Summers (40 at the time of recording) takes some inspiration from Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ for this monstrosity, a hysterical, Oedipal blues in 7/4 time, very much inspired by his pal/guitar partner Robert Fripp. It’s quite funny to think that it was a contractually-obliged inclusion on the enormous-selling Synchronicity album, listened to by millions of unsuspecting teenagers before the emergence of the ‘skip’ button.

The Police: ‘Synchronicity II’ (1983)

Sting (31 at the time of recording) filters a Carl Jung concept through the story of family discord, a father’s paranoia and disquiet literally spawning a monster (in a Scottish loch!). Along the way, there’s also a barely concealed hatred for the common sprawl, ‘packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes’ during the morning commute, and the protagonist’s secretaries who ‘pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red-light street’, while Sting, Summers and Stewart Copeland lay down one of the most aggressive grooves in the band’s history. Scary, strange, midlife stuff.

David Bowie: ‘It’s No Game (Part One)’ (1980)

33-year-old Bowie is jolly well peed off about…everything. There was certainly a lot to be angry about in 1980, and accordingly his Scary Monsters album dealt with some of the fears he felt for his son, from the increasingly bold tabloid press to the ever-present right-wing bully boys. In surely the most histrionic vocal performance of his career, he sounds terrified of the ‘fascists’ and violent revolutions on his TV screen.

Robbie Robertson: ‘Hell’s Half Acre’ (1987)

From the classic self-titled album, Robertson (43) sounds seriously teed off about the legacy of the Vietnam War, and more specifically, The Battle For Cu Chi of 1965/1966 (‘Down on Hell’s half acre/Shakin’ with fever/Rumble in the jungle’). Tony Levin and Manu Katche make for an appropriately barnstorming rhythm section and Robbie’s guitar is almost Clash-like in its viciousness.

More 1980s musical midlife crises soon.

Talking Heads Part One (1980/1981): Reagan, Ghosts & Listening Winds

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For many Americans, 1980 hoped to offer a break from the recent past: the Watergate scandal, defeat in Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis, a major recession. Disco.

A Presidential Election was also pending in November. At the beginning of the year, Jimmy Carter stood at 62% in the polls, Ronald Reagan at 33.

Reagan promised to return America to a pre-countercultural era, prioritising family values and social order. He courted the Fundamentalist vote; evangelists and motivational speakers suddenly popped up all over the radio.

Something pinged in David Byrne’s head, and he later outlined the febrile atmosphere of early 1980 in Simon Reynolds’ book ‘Totally Wired’: ‘The text was saying “Thou shalt not” but the preacher’s performance was this completely sensual, sexual thing. I thought, “This is great – the whole conflict is embodied right there…”’

Byrne and Brian Eno explored some of these themes on their groundbreaking My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (named after the 1954 book by Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola) with a particular emphasis on Islam and its contrasts with Christianity.

The project was originally supposed to be a three-way collaboration between Jon Hassell, Eno and Byrne, a fake ‘field work’ complete with ethnography, liner notes and photos, but Hassell dropped out at the eleventh hour. The album is strikingly original, still relevant and sometimes terrifying.

A month before the Presidential Election, on 8 October 1980, Talking Heads released their masterpiece Remain In Light, also a collaboration with Eno. The album’s key tracks, ‘Once In A Lifetime’ and ‘Listening Wind’, went even further than Bush Of Ghosts: the former showed that Byrne had completely assimilated the ‘sensual preacher’ persona, while the latter outlined a young Arab’s act of terror.

Mojique resents the rich ‘foreigners in fancy houses’ turning up in his country, makes a bomb ‘with quivering hands’ and dispatches it to his American enemy. It’s a unique, powerful piece of work, and one wonders whether its inclusion on Remain In Light contributed to the album being their worst-ever seller in the USA.

Reagan was elected on 4 November 1980 with 50.7% of the national vote. His famous Election Eve speech mentioned ‘that shining city on the hill’, invoking both Jesus’s Sermon On The Mount and noted Puritan John Winthrop. But Byrne’s New York had been under the cosh: more murders, robberies, burglaries and subway breakdowns were reported in 1980 than in any other year since records began 49 years earlier.

Reagan was inaugurated on 20 January 1981. My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts was finally released – after several postponements – almost exactly a month later.

Further reading: ‘Life And Death On The New York Dancefloor’ by Tim Lawrence