Jane And Barton – "Jane And Barton" (Cherry Red – MRED 53) 1983

The Otway and Barrett of Twee has to be Jane (Lancaster) and Edward Barton who,like Otway and Willy scored a minor chart hit across several continents.Especially when "It's a Fine Day" got used on several TV adverts,including a very bizarre one in Japan advertising Kleenex Tissues......they're bloody weird over there!?

In the grand folk tradition of unaccompanied singing,Jane and Barton,but mainly Jane,dare to be minimal,and alone, in an unforgiving world.

A gentler Indie Pop version of Folk legend, Ann Briggs if you want?

Its like being sung to sleep by your mother.And just like the death of your maternal parent,they never return to do it again when you are a fucked up adult.

So we need records like this,where someone called Jane is your mother replacement for a very short 20 minutes,which is probably in proportion with the average lifespan to childhood ratio that we are saddled with.

So we leave the mercifully short Edward Barton vocal parts to remind us of being forcibly pulled out of the womb into this horrific existence,then......well....you know what comes next.

Thanks for that Edward!? 

Tracklist:

1.There Is A Man
2.It's A Fine Day
3.You Are Over There (Part 1)
4.Mmmm

5.Of All
6.I Want To Be With You
7.You Are Over There(part 2)
8.Ha Bloody Ha

9.Leaves were falling

DOWNLOAD your sonic surrogate mother HERE!

John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett – "Live At The Roundhouse" (Official Bootleg) 1977

Another who extolled the virtues of wood and its role in popular music,was one Wild Willy Barrett; whose work with the bard of Aylesbury ,John Otway,took unprofessionalism to new heights.

Wild Willy made his own guitars,and even made wooden sleeves for some of his solo releases.

Otway,as Willy called his rather eccentric partner,was one of those very British characters  on the peripheries of the pre-punk rock scene who seemed to exist as Stars in their own lunchtimes and in their own minds.Such as Johnny Moped,John The Postman,Chris Seivey,Wreckless Eric,and Sting,the Geordie Bono.

Like Sting, Otway,would literally do anything to achieve his dream of being a Star,but, unlike Sting,did it with an blatant sense of humour that suggested he also knew he would never make it.....surely not? But, briefly, he did. Mainly thanks to his more Punk than Punk performances on the Old Grey Whistle Test and Top Of The Pops with Wild Willy,which included Otway leaping on to Willy's amp, precariously perched on a chair,and subsequently falling off astride the amp crushing his family jewels,and disconnecting Barrett's guitar in the process,all on live national TV.

Catapulting "Really Free" to the lofty position of number 27 on the UK charts,and Polydor releasing their previously self-released eponymous LP,as financed by John's long suffering parents who re-mortgaged their home(?)in a desperate attempt to help their son to have a career....ANY career.

Of course the follow up singles flopped.Incredibly even the classic hymn to mindless violence "Headbutts", never broke the top 75!?

John then made sort of a career,post Wild Willy as a professional 'Failure',and his fans co-ordinated themselves to buy his "Bunsen Burner" single to get it into the top ten in 2002.

This pair were very representative of the generation of long hairs caught between Punk and Prog. Too young for Prog and too old for Punk,which really most of the Clash were too;but Otway and Barrett didn't have to pretend to be anything but themselves.Punk before Punk,and DIY before DIY.

This recording,headlining at the Roundhouse,was made at the height of Otway's micro stardom.Where our hero is supported by the marvelous  Fruit Eating Bears, Clayson and the Argonauts,and future hit makers,Squeeze...featuring the king of bland coffee table dad rock and boogie woogie criminal, Jools Holland...who,bizarrely, is the only one out of this lot who can still get on TV.

Tracklist:

1.Slewfoot
2.Only A Hobo
3.Really Free
4.Fire On A Mountain
5.Geneve
6.Beware Of The Flowers ('Cause I'm Sure They're Going To Get You Yeh)
7.Running From The Law
8.Cheryl's Going Home
9.Down The Road
10.Racing Cars (Jet Spotter Of The Track)

DOWNLOAD and Cor! baby, it's really free HERE!

Edward Barton – "Here Is My Spoon" (Wooden Records – WOOD 10) 1990

 

Edward Barton looks and sounds like an artist,he may even be an Actor,for he once resembled a Drama student,or a member of Furniture (UK arty one hit wonders)...but we'll settle for 'poet'!?

Young Edward, first came to our attention attacking his acoustic guitar while writhing on the floor and screaming about his Mini on the exceedingly awful and sickeningly Hip early evening pop magazine programe ,"The Tube".The vile creature that spawned Jools Holland in his mission to make music as bland and pointless as yer Aunties cakes.A raison d'etre that this boogie woogie terrorist embraced with all the efficiency of a death camp Kommandant and the spiteful enthusiasm of his uncaged wife.

Inexplicably,YouTube has no footage of Barton's first appearance, but luckily there is a performance of his debut single,"I've Got No Chicken But I've Got Five Wooden Chairs".

Edward embraced this fifteen minutes of fame eagerly,and made it last about twelve minutes before spending the next thirty years in artsy obscurity.

His other three minutes of fame belong to the unaccompanied vocal Hit single Edward penned,With girlfriend, Jane, "It's a Fine Day", which was one of those rare 'Good' singles that hit the top ten in several countries.Other versions exist,including one by bloody Orbital!?

His songs,"It's a Fine day" excepted, have all the requisites that make Jandek's works so provocative,except I rather suspect that our Edward has the sense of Humour that The Corwood representative so patently lacks....which of course, makes it Funny.

Eddie's songs are funny too,but he actually intends this....so,he is an Artist after all, yes?

Alas, as a lifelong Mini owner,I thoroughly approve of Edward Barton. 

Tracklist:

1 Listen To Edward
2 Knob Gob
3 Sorry Dog
4 What Shall We Do Today?
5 Everyday I Try To Find The Man Who Killed My Brother
6 Barber Barber
7 Violence
8 In Dreams I Drive
9 King Of A Flat Country
10 Dear Dad
11 I've Got No Chicken But I've Got Five Wooden Chairs
12 Shover
13 Thin And Pale
14 I've Got No Chicken But I've Got Five Wooden Chairs
15 I Am A Mother
16 Two Cows
17 Me and my Mini (Bonus Track)

DOWNLOAD seventeen songs to go with your wooden chairs HERE!

Rolo Tomassi – "Demo" (Mayday! – 001) 2005

This is a CD-r....Remember CD-r's.....No?..,and remember how hardcore punk bands each self-released several tapes a month called 'Demo'?..  and then there's MySpace......No?, and CD-r's??? ...why?

That's how bands promoted themselves back in the early naughties. CD-r's disintegrated over time, and MySpace killed itself by totally unnecessary restructuring nonsense and fiddling around with the format. It's still there, floating in cyberspace like the dead astronaut in 2001,after HAL had done for him. Maybe it was HAL who reprogrammed MySpace? If so, would HAL do us all a favor and  please go and reprogram Spotify?Then Twitter, and somehow abandon Musk in space. Probably when one of his stoopid rockets fucks up when he's onboard...can you fix it for us HAL? Please?...Branson and Bozos too while you're at it.

No doubt that Rolo Tomassi are on Spotify too these days,as I saw they did the Download Festival a year or so ago,on the very spot The Monsters Of Rock Festival used to be in the male only days of NWOBHM.....we don't count Girlschool as female by the way.

Rolo don't wear Lycra tights,or have massive curly mullets.Very admirably,Rolo have an unpretentiously sober dress-sense,which is all well and good,but i kinda miss taste-bypassed idiots like Twisted Sister, and Kiss....but they are Americans ;we need Americans to do the things more educated persons would never stoop to.Which leaves us with straight edged wild time signature tennis such as Rolo Tomassi,who are obviously too intelligent to wear make-up,or lycra....lead singer/screamer Eva excepted of course.

This type of Post-Hardcore Math-Jazz does have a tendency to be rather over-clever,and the group makes this mistake on the long third track,which has one of those long silences eventually revealing a wild hidden track, as they obviously had played their mum's Nirvana album and came away impressed by the delayed appearance of "Territorial Pissings" at the end of that horrible record(CD version)....ah well, Never Mind.

Tracklist:

1 Breathing Through A City (Is Much Harder Than Just Breathing) 0:36
2 The Tentatively Titled "Film Noir" 2:28
3 ...And Then The Mannequin Spoke 10:00

DOWNLOAD not the download festival HERE!

Rolo Tomassi – "4 Track Demo Cassette" (danger!laser!phaser!razor!) 2005

Back to the long dead MySpace era for the first rebirth of DIY ethics,as continues with that Bandcamp,Soundcloud nonsense today,where the true gold is lost in an ocean of drone projects and bedroom bands with one member.

These Rolo Tomassi kids must have been 15 when they made this charming package of progressive abstract Jazzcore Math rock..They're like a cross between Gentle Giant and Tool. 

I say Tool,having never listened to one of their albums, and having just seen them live once so i'm imagining what other people say Tool sound like.

For want of better words, these kids must have had a granddad with a Prog and Jazz Fusion collection, and peers who dug slipknot and ...

ahem..Tool. While still at school.

It also helps that they have a sweet girlie screamer as a focus point, refreshingly free of tattoos and piercings, as are the rest of the group,from what i can gather......even today,as it seems that they are still going,but now in their thirties,and certainly rather too Metallic for my liking....but in the beginning...as always...they were nearly perfect.

Tracklist:

1 Codes Within Codes
2 From Ambience To Ambulance
3 Hiroshima 8.16am
4 A Cosmic Accident

DOWNLOAD these gentle giants HERE!

Skullflower – "Exquisite Fucking Boredom" (tUMULt – TM212) 2003

Any of you cool kids out there like a bit of boredom going on? 

As previously mentioned,in the Stanlow Crickets post, the Great Erasure is coming,like a huge electro magnet realigning your digital media into straight lines of zero's.Comedians and social commentators will be silenced, vetted and vetted again for controversial comments and opinions,Popular music will be obsessed with the easy get out clause of the Love Emotion,and how cruel un-chemically castrated males were before the new potential rapist law made sure that Toxic masculinity was neutralised by regular Brain scans and testosterone checks.I don't wanna offend nobody cats,but i reserve the right to be offended,and to offend ,and challenge tabboos.It is this that makes one "Free".

So here's the rather fantastic Drone Psych Noise Skullflower group,playing the same riff for 60 minutes;and it hasn't gone unnoticed that they have used my favourite Dr Rhythm DR110 drum machine for the dour four four beat that accentuates the exquisite fucking boredom very nicely indeed. Like that Joni Mitchell song says,one needs to look at life from both sides,or you really won't know life...at all?

Tracklist:

1 Celestial Highway I 12:39
2 Celestial Highway II 13:48
3 Celestial Highway III 14:35
4 Saturn 9:53
5 Return To Forever  9:18
6 Celestial Highway IV 12:33

DOWNLOAD inoffensively through your skull into what mind you have left HERE!

Stanlow Crickets – "Navigation Of Loplop" (Sound Of Pig – SOP #144) 1988

This bloke called Philip Seifert is responsible for this ,undoubtedly with the assistance of Al Margolis one would assume,it being on his Sound Of Pig cassette label.

Kerazzy musique concréte,with liberal use of a second hand emulator to blind the less informed with yesterdays science.

Yeah it gets on yer Tits,but somebody out there who was locked in a cupboard for their early adulthood will find this very novel indeed.

Its certainly fun to listen to the cutting edge of low budget sound technology in 1988,especially by persons who were thankfully clueless as to what those charming,....and this part is satirical,so don't cancel me,.... coloured gentlemen,... were doing with the same kit in Chicago and Detroit at the same time.....ie, stuff like this with a marching beat and a lot of electronic squelching noises stuffed in there....("Acid House is two minutes and 30 seconds of squelching noises" said an anonymous wag in 1988,rather like John Lydon's description of the sex act a decade earlier?...ok,rumbled....it was me wot said it,about five minutes ago!Ok?

As I notice that Jeremy Clarkson got cancelled by Jeff Bozos this morning for saying this very Die Or Diy observation on the subject of the lovely Megan Markle....i will repeat:

"At night, I'm unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, 'Shame!' and throw lumps of excrement at her." ....couldn't have possibly put it better myself.

The axe is being wielded for offense givers such as we and he,as one heads in a runaway bus towards the dull and sinister world of terminal fucking boredom during the horrors of the oncoming 'Nice' revolution....the exact opposite of Skullflowers superb "Exquisite Fucking Boredom" album (up next),but something more akin to "La Terreur" after the first bit of the French Revolution;except in that terror, you could still make a joke and survive.

Yes i did say 'Charming Coloured Gentlemen'...soon to be a capital offence punishable by forcing this smart arse to clean out the latrines of the Re-education centers that were once our homes.My father did the same thing during his incarceration by the Nazi's in World War 2, cleaning out the 'twenty holer',as he put it, latrine in the POW Camp.

The old newspeak word 'Degenerate' will be replaced with the Nadsat friendly term,'Offensive' in the realms of art and entertainment.

But at least the Nazi's oganized sn exhibition before they burnt it.Hide your hard-drives in a lead lined box before the "Great Erasure"....no,not the pop duo, the satellite Erasure beam that will cleanse the earth of anything Offensive.The Year Zero of Nice. 

Tracklist:

A1 Messy's Alarm Cock
A2 Furniture Cornices
A3 Ocelot Acrobat
A4 Passage To Dadaville
A5 Hebjirma
A6 A Pigeon Flies Against A Fish
A7 Mala Baka Haka
A8 Absorbing Roots Of Rest
A9 Radiophonics
A10 Scaffolds In The Collapsed Lung
A11 Preparation Of Glue From Bones
A12 Epoxy Faced Bison
A13 Dugong
A14 Distressed Goresa In A Plaid Tie
A15 Basket, Bottle, And Wallpaper
A16 Cacomixtle
B1 The Naivete Of Slirpin Serpents
B2 Intentions Of The Heel
B3 Slivery Moths Apply Their Makeup
B4 Birdman Gets A Bismuth Bath
B5 Slivery Moths Reach For Hands
B6 Thirsty Rain Doves
B7 Lustre
B8 Loplop Eats A Banana
B9 Wireless Sidesteps

B10 Outro

DOWNLOAD before offence is taken HERE!

Burden Of Friendship – "The Head Of Your Goat - The Son Of Your Dog, Vol. 2" (Self-Released) 1985

One man's Friend is another man's Eric Burden; especially after he left the Animals and went a bit Funny,but still looked like an ex-coal miner in a kaftan.All this, While the humble geordies of Newcastle toon were left behind in the decidedly un-swinging sixties oop North.These simple un-tuned in folk were certainly not meeting the godhead through chemistry while Eric and his New Animals 'Turned On',absolutely Not!His old town mates were meeting their maker using such exotic delights as Emphysema and neumoconiosis.Newcastle is also a place that used the term 'Man'long before the Hippies popularised it.....'Why Ay man',is still used to express approval in certain areas of the North East. So I doubt yer redundant miner would have said 'Why Ay Man'when confronted with Geordie escapee Eric talking about peace and love with a flower sellotaped to his grown out short back'n'Sides. Not all the Ex-Animals wasted their time on such misogynistic nonsense as Eric did of course. Chad Chandler discovered Jimi Hendrix and formed The Jim Hendrix Experience,wisely In London and most definitely Not in Newcastle.And Alan Price wrote "Andy Capp-The Musical"..the less said about that the better.

Well know Punk Rock hater, Eric,does have one superior aspect that sets him apart from his hopelessly obscure U.S. Industrial counterparts Burden of Friendship;...he at least has some kind of Talent,no matter how naffola....but don't ask me what that is,but its probably something in relation to his writing some toe-curlingly bad boastful Flower-soul tunes that brighten up anyones day with its pure hippie naivity and toxic misogyny.

He accidentally created the sickening atmosphere that these legions of Throbbing Gristle-a-likes were trying to spew forth from 1985 onwards.

I could never write such a morally bankrupt pop song as "Man/Woman" by Eric Burdon and the New Animals", but I could easily churn out "The Head Of Your Goat-The Son Of Your Dog Vol.3" in my lunch-hour. No 'Talent' needed whatsoever to churn out endless 'Industrial Noise' cassettes.They are all the same, and Not at all funny like Eric's transition from hard geordie white man's blues thuggery to ugly older bloke with medallion who gets to shag loads of young women.....and they better thank him for it too. That's far more shocking than any Industrial experiment,but it does take...cough,slight retching of gastric juice....Talent!?

There are scores of tapes like this on this blog,and its time to post some more,'cus my public like it,and i've ran out of ideas...rather like Industrial music did in the nano-seconds after the Big Bang.

By 1985 however, these bedroom dwelling types could now afford a sampler,so the tape loops and found sounds from extermination camp documentaries became a lot easier to do....even less talent required.

But Fuck that...let's Boogie! 

Tracklist:

A1 The Lesson And The Knowledge Gained
A2 Thanksgiving At Unarco
A3 Novone Mix
B1 Joy
B2 As Much Static As Possible
B3 Horror & Mortal Terror Pt. 3
B4 Bison Remembers
B5 I Was Marlon Brando's Fat Cell
B6 And The Revox Played Itself
B7 Why He Joined The Army
B8 What Is The Doctor Doing For Lunch?
B9 Metaphysical Jabberwocky
B10 White Man's Living Room
B11 It Smells It Stinks
B12 Bosco's Stomp

DOWNLOAD this daughter of a bitch HERE!

Jandek – "Diverseworks" (Corwood Industries – CORWOOD 0856) 2022

After a lengthy series of stuff about recently deceased musicians,I will risk my life by returning,briefly, to the possibly Dead Jandek,with another pseudo-classical improvisation from the seemingly infinite vaults of old recordings.Rarely do we hear anything from contemporary Jandek. I suspect there's enough in storage for Richard Representative to achieve musical imortality.We will all be long dead by the time the Rep and his helpers exhaust the well.....that is, unless he has expired and they are doing this already.

Here we have Outsider music turned inside out.This is as far as one can get from that creepy guy in his mum's cellar banging out deranged versions of the human condition on an old piano.

Jandek,once a ginger mist with an out of tune guitar that drifted around various suburban parts of Houston,howling like a slow wind across freshly laid barbed wire;alas he is now a trilby wearing version of Nosferatu,hanging around the toilets in the music department en campus somewhere in the Texas system for further education.

His purpose?...Recruiting insider studentia to help him make this very seriously experimental music.Rather like how Madonna and Bowie used to 'look for ideas'by stealing them off starstruck upwardly mobile producers and musicians.

I doubt any student of modern composition would be Starstruck by the appearance of Jandek in their campus toilets,more likely they would run away,unless they knew better.

The ones who did know better,saw this as an opportunity to get on an avant garde record with a guy would would pay for everything.

Jandek does virtually nothing on this record,except for twanging his detuned bass somewhat furtively .Leaving the recruits to make it sound like one of those spontaneous improvisation records he spotted in the 'Other' section of his local record store,thinking, 'Hey, I can do that'!...or rather, 'i can get someone else to do that and i'll credit myself' on the traditionally credit-less Corwood jewel case artwork.

It has now got to the point where Sterling the Corwood representative is no-longer listed as an Outsider Musician on Discogs, but has joined the much despised ranks of the "Free Improvisers".

So now any collective gathering of Avant Garde improvisers can be heard to scream:

"Lookout! It's Jandek...and he's looking for musicians!"

Whatever the collective noun for a gathering of Free Improvisers is....maybe a 'Scrape' of Improvisers perhaps?

Tracklist:

 Rehearsal:

1-1 Part One 16:01

1-2 Part Two 28:28 

Concert:

2-1 Part One1 9:05

2-2 Part Two2 6:22

2-3 Part Three 16:03

DOWNLOAD this diverse insider crossover moment HERE!

The Associates - "Sulk (40th Anniversary Edition) 1982/2022

I'm in a sulk.....there are no associates left. 

Rankine died peacefully a few days previously, which is ironic as Sulk is one of the least peaceful Pop records ever made.Its full of several kitchen sink's worth of suffocating Pop genius. There's so much going on that one needs a crowbar to get the album out of its high viz glossy,but nameless,package.

None of yer average pop consumers knew what The Associates looked like, hence the need for the annoying sticker that fucked up the garishly botanical cover,and was impossible to remove.

There are few stranger records than "Party Fears Two" or "Club Country" that entered the top ten of the UK Charts.Right Up there with PiL's "Death Disco" and "Flowers Of Romance" as the weirdest singles to both chart and appear on Top Of The Pops.Subversive moments both.The associates also got on Top of The Pops with "18 Carat Love Affair", using chocolate guitars,which melted as Alan Rankine mimed playing them,and got eventually eaten by the audience,including the Spare one....Pop eating itself in action.

I'm supposed to write something else aren't I?..but i've been drinking some hard medicine,and i've become lost listening to this work of genius.Food?...who needs it?

One of my few claims to fame by proxy, is that I had an aggressively jealous Scottish girlfriend,who came from Dundee/Glasgow,and went for a night out with Billy mcKenzie!?...a predictably crazy and wild night was had by all accounts.Although if I went for a night out with Billy Mckenzie i'm sure she would have been less generous,and i would have received a few glancing blows from the flying crockery heaved in my general direction.But.....

Of course "Sulk" is one of the greatest ,most perverse Pop Lp's ever made.And Bill remains one of the greatest vocal acrobats ever.

Rest in noisy peace Bill and Alan. This album is your epitaph.

Sulk:

CD1-1 Arrogance Gave Him Up
CD1-2 No
CD1-3 Bap De La Bap
CD1-4 Gloomy Sunday
CD1-5 Nude Spoons
CD1-6 Skipping
CD1-7 It's Better This Way
CD1-8 Party Fears Two
CD1-9 Club Country
CD1-10 Nothinginsomethingparticular

Outtakes, Monitor Mixes & Rarities:

CD2-1 Ulcragyceptimol - Demo
CD2-2 I Never Will - Demo
CD2-3 Club Country - Demo
CD2-4 Me, Myself And The Tragic Story - John Leckie Recording
CD2-5 Australia - John Leckie Recording
CD2-6 Skipping - Monitor Mix Instrumental
CD2-7 It's Better This Way - Monitor Mix
CD2-8 And Then I Read A Book - Alternative Version
CD2-9 Ulcragyceptimol - Alternative Version
CD2-10 It's Better This Way - Alternative Version
CD2-11 The Associate
CD2-12 A Girl Named Property
CD2-13 Grecian 2000
CD2-14 Party Fears Two - 7"
CD2-15 Club Country - 7"
CD2-16 18 Carat Love Affair
CD2-17 Love Hangover - Extended Version

Associates Live - The Peel Sessions:

CD3-1 Me, Myself and the Tragic Story
CD3-2 Nude Spoons
CD3-3 A Matter Of Gender
CD3-4 It's Better This Way
CD3-5 Ulcragyceptimol
CD3-6 Waiting for the Love Boat
CD3-7 Australia
CD3-8 Love Hangover
CD3-9 A Severe Case of Career Insecurity
Associates Live - Gigant, Apeldoorn 10/01/81
CD3-10 Arrogance Gave Him Up
CD3-11 A Matter Of Gender
CD3-12 Nude Spoons
CD3-13 Paper House
CD3-14 No
CD3-15 And Then I Read A Book
CD3-16 Gloomy Sunday
CD3-17 It's Better This Way
CD3-18 Skipping
CD3-19 Australia

DOWNLOAD on this very gloomy sunday HERE!

Lemon Kittens - "Live 1980/81) (a Die Or DIY? product) 1980/81

A prolonged absence may have been noted by your faithful scribe,but i have been an unwilling victim of a Co-Vid variant!Despite having been vaccinated thrice, It fucked me over.and I was visited by the ghost of Christmas Future during my virus ravaged stupor.I was even planning how to keep the blog running after my imminent death!?

I's Still a bit fucked up,but managed to think of something to write about.....The Lemon Kittens of course?...i really don't know what i have been doing in the preceding weeks,but i'm already forgetting that terrifying dying feeling.Shit man, i was panicking about my estate rather more than yer actual fear of death. Soooooooo......!?

In the lengthening history of 'Out There' during the Rock'n'Roll era, there has been, actually, a gaping dearth  of genuinely fucking weird groups this side of the grand canyon of 'Out'. You've either got it or you ain't,and 99% of 'Weird' just ain't is it? There's trying (embarrassingly Hard) to be weird,Volcano The Bear (one lp on that NWW bloke's label!?) spring to mind, and there's just plain old. Weird. 

Early Residents were effortlessly weird until they discovered computers. Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica is the epitome of Weird ,but he couldn't repeat it!....nah....'Decals' is 'trying' not 'being',like all his post bat chain puller stuff, pretentious, like his shite Art works;but hey we all need to make a living don't we? We also have 'Ill' weird, like Jandek, Daniel Johnston,and anything Outsider. You have to be Normal (conforming to general standards of 'Normal) to qualify as achieving 'Weird' status...like Moondog?

There are plenty of early industrial acts who sound weird,but are far toooo normal to fool me....like the bloke from Nurse With Wound*...but his public schooled mate David Tibet knew he was far too fucking normal, and spent his career languishing in,slash exploiting,the truly weird,and wonderful ocean of Dark Folk...now that certainly IS weird shit brother,but we is talking the world of 'pop' here,and Lemon Kittens qualify as being within the 'pop' format, like Don Van Vliet before them, even though they were regularly featured on 'Industrial' compilations.

"We Buy A hammer For Daddy" (also on that NWW bloke label!?) is easily the equal of "Trout Mask Replica" on the pantheon of Weird,with a better follow up to boot.

I won't bust a blood vessel listing albums I reckon are effortlessly weird,but that list would be a slim volume indeed,dangerously treading on pamphlet territory.

Yup, The Lemon Kittens were effortlessly so.

So,in the light of a lack of new material,here's a quickly cobbled together volume of very rare recordings of Dax and Blake supporting This Heat at the ICA....the bootlegger obviously arrived late and missed most of the Lemon Kittens set...twat....and another one supporting ...erm...Modern English!?...dunno what their fans thought of of it all?

That first Modern English LP was rather good I remember?....certainly Not weird,but classic British pop music;just like Lemon Kittens were classic British Weird.

It's a fascinating subject is Weird innit?

Asking what is the Weirdest Album of all time is akin to asking what is the worst album of all time. Mostly, the same record tops both charts, and maybe even tops the Best Album Charts too.....this has happened to "Trout Mask Replica".Alas "We Buy A Hammer" is far too obscure to feature in any chart,even the Obscure Chart....and dare I say, far too Weird?

*once upon a time, That Nurse With Wound bloke,was selling his first LP to the record shops in Camden,when he approached the infamous Ted Carroll of 'Rock On'.Ted asked what kind of music it was.

"Sort of 'Weird'said MWW bloke.

"Nah!" said Ted, that ain't weird....This is WEIRD!"..and proceeded to play The Human League's, "Being Boiled",newly released on Fast Product.

Y'know what I agree with Ted.

Tracklist: 

1.Intro (The Venue, London 08/09/1981)

2.Up In Arms (The Venue, London 08/09/1981)

3.Popsykle (The Venue, London 08/09/1981)

4.Morbotalk (The Venue, London 08/09/1981)

5.Small Mercies (The Venue, London 08/09/1981)

6.Bookburner (The Venue, London 08/09/1981)

7.Funky 7 (The Venue, London 08/09/1981)

8.(unknown) (end cut) (The Venue, London 08/09/1981)

9.Afraid Of Being Bled By Leeches (ICA London 27-12-1980)

10. PVS (ICA London 27-12-1980)

11. This Kind Of Dying (ICA London 27-12-1980)

DOWNLOAD this kind of trying HERE!