Saturday 9 February 2019

Neil Campbell ‎– "Is Not Here" (Union Pole ‎– #53) 1996


Indeed, noise experimentalist Neil Campbell appears not to be here.Instead he's been replaced by one of those pain in the arses who whips out the acoustic guitar at parties and other social gatherings.Oblivious to the fact that he's shit (its always a 'He'), and incapable of knowing when to stop.Churning out a painful array of hits from the sixties and seventies, surrounded by adoring women.
If there's one song that makes me wanna smash something up, primarily any acoustic fucking guitar within my personal aura, It's "American fucking Pie"!!!!
It is, however, more than acceptable, if this excuse for self-immolation is played sardonically by someone like Neil Campbell, bristling with subtle irony,and lashings of stealthy intelligence. 
The most amusing tracks have to be his versions of  Syd Barratts "Astronomy Domine", and the demolishing of FM radio anthem to boredom, Led Zep's thoroughly atrocious "Stairway To Heaven"; otherwise known as the down escalator to some horrific rock'n'roll purgatory where this track plays in an eternal loop while you're straped into a chair.....no wait a minute,this exists already...its called American FM Radio.
I'd love to hear Neil having a go at doing a  "12 Crass Songs" thing like the Jeffery Lewis album of the same name."U2 Crass Songs" this time Maybe?

Tracklisting:

A1 American Pie
A2 If
A3 Green Is The Colour
A4 Fat Old Sun
A5 Stairway To Heaven
A6 Scarborough Fair
A7 Imagine
A8 Astronomy Domine
B1 Blowin' In The Wind
B2 The Times They Are A-Changing
B3 Let It Be
B4 Eleanor Rigby
B5 Penny Lane

B6 Unknown Title

2 comments:

Henk Madrotter said...

That "Leaving On A Jet-plane" song... That song makes me wanna torture and kill (after hours and hours of pure agony) the person who's playing it, usually some Indonesian long-haired "guide" who makes a living ripping tourists off with bullshit overpriced trips, playing it for the umpteenth Western woman he's caught, usually on the night before she'll go back to her home country.... If he's lucky she will be dumb enough to start sending him money every month and if he's even luckier she will pay for him to come visit her in her country... If he succeeds he will end up living there with her and within a year or so he will be her very own house-trained sex-slave to be shown off at parties full with other house-trained sex slaves, male and female ones... Ten, fifteen years later this guide will come back on holidays to Indonesia, he will be totally condescending to his former fellow guides because now he has "seen the world", arrogant as hell spending most of his money on local girls because now he's thirty and his Western wife is sixty....

John Denver didn't know what hell he unleashed when he wrote that goddamn song.....

Jonny Zchivago said...

FUCK!..you're right its a John Denver atrocity. He was probably singing this when his plane decided to kill itself and John in a noble act of self-sacrifice by flying into the "rocky mountains high", which if i'm correct was a very ironically titled John Denver hit also?

Also, what is it about women that makes them lose their minds whenever confronted with long hair and a guitar? The fairer sex is a mystery to me!???