Showing posts with label Ron Warren Ganderton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ron Warren Ganderton. Show all posts

Thursday, 28 October 2021

Sound Ceremony – "Sound Ceremony" (Celestial Sound Production – RWG2) 1979


Like 100% of this end of the century post millennium madness crop of 'Outsider' musicians,also known as,rather less pretentiously, as Crap musicians;but also Increasingly, as Crap Musicians who now think they are newly discovered genius's.They mistakenly,as do a lot of Outsider fans also,think that this upsurge in interest means there is some artistic content within this wildly amusing rubbish. Those types who don't know the difference between Laughing WITH you,and Laughing AT you!
I mean just look at this guy! As it's his own self-release,probably on a self-release from the Funny Farm too,as in...He escaped;but he must have chosen these cover shots himself, thinking that he looks good? It's that fashionable 'I'm On Heavy Medication chic' again.The front cover shot is more in the realm of a lost, undiscovered third world psych album from the Muslim half of Kashmir in 1992 rather than a UK post-punk classic.
This, his second record (1st one here!) is that truly brain-damaged winner that we've all trawled through unsorted vinyl dumps to find.The record surely fits somewhere into the 'right place wrong time' category in the UK punk explosion of the day, but it also looks back to the mid-sixties rock that Ron cut his rotting teeth on and ahead to some sort of maniac future form of entertainment that perhaps had not been invented yet.....now it has,namely Outsider Rock/Punk. Ganderton's mildly "out of it" stream of consciousness lyrics show a clear lack of self-censorship or political correctness, but that's really one of the albums strongest assets. He has created this character for himself as a huge rock star and sex symbol, and who are we to deny his claims,apart from the fact that he is clearly neither? The band chugs along amiably as Ganderton covers such terrain as his beating heart (it's made of rock), his distaste for education (he'd prefer to teach a lesson in bed,he obviously wasn't getting any) and his electric brain (which happens to be insane). If you've never heard a singer do a count-off all the way up to seventeen, then now is your big chance! Features what is perhaps the greatest anti-cigarette song of all time,or wot? 
He comes across as a bit of a dysfunctional,but charming arsehole,if that's possible?.....on meds....Who says there's no place for drugs in music? 
When you have people like Wrong Ron and his unsound ceremony to do it for you,there certainly is.Learning from others mistakes is certainly safer than making them yourself.....unless you're really stupid,like most Pop car crashes are and were.
Ron is now the celebrity that he craved to be,and can be seen hanging around record shops in Vancouver waiting to be recognized, marker pen at the ready and a armful of his re-released work from 1978-81. He deserves to make a living,unlike most other Rock Stars.Hell! I even bought one!

Tracklist:

1 Rock Work
2 Virgins Do
3 School
4 Rock Heart
5 Sorry
6 Our Song
7 Dance
8 Bet On Life To Win
9 Tobacco Man
10 Electric Brain
11 Motor
12 Sound After Death
13 Invitation To The Bizarre

Wednesday, 27 October 2021

Ron Warren Ganderton / Sound Ceremony – "Guitar Star" (Celestial Sound Production – RWG 1001) 1978


Praised by private-press hunters, esoteric appreciators and “out of time” searchers alike.Canadian and legend in his own extended lunchtime,Ron Ganderton,and his output hold echoes of monotone  proto-punks such as Jonathan Richman and Lou Reed,but without the good looks(*?), or the charisma,...or even the questionable talent of those aforementioned fellow travelers....*check out that boatrace# girls!? 
Similarities to outsider cult acts such as the extremely nutty but clued up Armand Schaubroeck and the less nutty but completely clueless Kenneth Higney,are as inescapable as they are wrong.....Ron.
Ron was fortunate enough to have the Subway Sect's drummer Bob Ward, and later, Martin Chambers of the excellent Vacants,and the later,but lesser combo, The Pretenders; to back his Velvets out-take tunes and keep him in roughly four four time.....which is a talent very few outsider Rockers seem to embrace.Ah bless him, he's trying his best,but he's missed the wave again....several times by the look of him.
The usual tactics are involved in the new wave cred myth building stakes,as the punk before punk hands shoot up in the room, claiming that this record was made in 1974,so Ron Warren Ganderton must have invented Punk,right?...along with Death(the group), The Modern Lovers,Stooges, and many other proto-punk pretenders.The "I was a Mod before you was a Mod" syndrome. Ron was never a Mod,and he's obviously tried to jump on any bandwagon that was going before the wheels fall off; but Ron's Wheels fell off long ago by the sound of it,and he also fell off the noo wave bandwagon too.Especially when you hear his second, and truly dysfunctional outsider classic album,simply called, just, "Sound Ceremony".
Maybe Lou reed ripped him off and we've all got it so very wrong.....Ron?.....somehow I doubt it!
NB;

# Boatrace is cockney for Face
&
Get the even nuttier second album HERE!

Tracklist:

A1 Guitar Star
A2 Letter To Moma
A3 Concrete Rodeo
A4 Miss Vickey
A5 Come The Change
A6 Feelings
A7 Love
B1 Blues Miss Your Mind
B2 Fool
B3 Lonely Road
B4 Booze, Drugs And Sound
B5 The Lady And Me
B6 The Devil
B7 I'll Go To Hell For Your Love My Lady