Badgewearer – "F.T.Q." (Gruff Wit Records – GRUFF 0006) 1991

 As much as I was oblivious during the 1990's, there did seem to have been a limited rise in interest in noisy avant-math rock types with their feet dangling in the limpid pools of both the Magic Band and Jesus Lizard camps....in Scotland?  Up until Brit-pop,the 90's were one endless party, unless you like Grunge culture,so didn't really have time to listen to a lot of this stuff,when just owning a new wave of Jazz record made me instantly allurable to the fairer sex in those happy pre-consent form carrying days.A Badgewearer album wouldn't cut the mustard. I suppose Post-Rock was the 90's too wasn't it? That was a largely interesting way to nurse a hangover,and a toll-free highway back to the music that started all this...Progressive Rock.

In many ways this math-punk noise was indeed progressive Punk Rock that, in hindsight, would have been rather popular in my household were it not for the many distractions on offer.

Badgewearer was another production job by former Stretchhead 'Richie',and it certainly has a few reference points that hark all the way back to the C-86 era,with its high-speed plectrum blur guitar attak a la Wedding Present, bIG fLAME etc,and admirably disjointed like a Glaswegian Shrub(s).

Very Ron Johnson.

Dunno what F.T.Q. means,but i'm guessing ,'Fuck The Queen',which would have appealed thirty years ago,but now the Queen's a nice little old lady, who could possibly dislike her? If you do you're a T.F.A......see next post. As,The Queen is the rightful heir to the Russian Throne,maybe 'Fuck Putin' is more appropriate? Sever the head of the snake and replace the poisonous dwarf,built up heels and all, with good Queen Liz?

Oh Yeah,this record has a song called "Rod Stewart's Penis"....i bet the plastic Scotsman himself never needed a consent form?...oops, a little bit of sick just appeared in my throat!

Tracklist:

A1 Inflexible Expendable
A2 N'Alien Head
A3 Too Much Soap
A4 We Want Your Name
A5 Moneylenders/Cumbernauld
A6 Impersonal Stereo
A7 Karioke Casualty
B1 Aftershock
B2 Woollenhead And Ears
B3 Static
B4 Rod Stewart's Penis
B5 Syndex
B6 Satellite Dish
B7 Liquid Cosh

DOWNLOAD and hail the rightful queen of Russia HERE!

Dawson – "How To Follow So That Others Will Willingly Lead (Oh My Godley And Creme Cheese)" (Gruff Wit Records – GRUFF 005) 1991

Another crazy as a deep fried mars bar in a box of frogs groop,again from Scotland,and,containing a former Drummer of Stretchheads,is the unforgettably named, 'Dawson'.A derived from various band members' art teacher,who happened to be called...'Dawson'.And there was me hoping they were named after the great Lez Dawson...knickers,knackers,knockers missus!

For those who give a shit....in other words,if you;'re Scottish,they hale,or Hail,from...yeah that's right, Glasgow (pronounced Glaz Go)...or as Joe Biden says it, Glazz ,Gow as in Cow.

Plenty fractured chord sequences and obvious Beefheart influences here kemosabi ...think God is my Co-Pilot,The Shrubs, and Stretchheads with their amplifiers turned off.....very clever they seem to be...falling just short of too clever by 'arf.

Wasn't 1991 the year 'Punk' Broke in USA?...so we had to endure all these,as far as I could determine,heavy Rock groops from Seattle polluting our sceptered Isle with long greasy hair,checked shirts,and lots of quiet then noisy,then quiet,then Loud and so-on, rock songs,as if The Pixies had never existed. Once an ex-acquaintance boasted to me that he'd seen The Pixies six times; I said i could out do him on that one,as i've seen this band who looked like the cast of the Office,or more likely from a real Office, who'd formed a weekend Rock Group precisely ZERO times,and had no plans to change that.

But,the new wave of Punk had been hatched,and spawned a legion of white middle class nerds all claiming to have seen Nirvana when they were the support for Tad. Now if Tad were the only grunge band that existed.I'd be cool with that.....they were basically how Heavy Metal should sound but without the black trousers, topped off by Trucker Caps with plenty meat manufacturer logo's adorning their fashionable, for 1991,Pedophile Trucker chic.Yeah Tad were good.

There were NO British grunge bands (i'm proud to say),except, apparently some big in America token Brits,called 'Bush'.....never heard them I'm pleased to admit.

Alas, wot the British Isles did have,apart from 50 million 'mad for it' Ravers,were a few traditional rock instrument wielding loonies, who made something like the east coast USA style avant-punk,such as God Is My Co-Pilot,and....er...God Is My Co-Pilot?....can I say it again?...or something Japanesie,such as The Boredoms.

Indeed, off-kilter rhythms,fucked up chords,wayward time signatures,nutzoid singing,silly song titles,... you know, Prog Rock by any other words.Why do you think Godley and Creme get a mention?

Glorious Side:

A1 From Bearsden To Baghdad (Via The Erskine Bridge)
A2 Leaf Sweepers And Sandwich Men
A3 Surface Tension
A4 Crick
A5 Records
A6 Booger Hall
A7 George Bush's Family Oil Business (Sanitized Version)

Heavenly Side:

B1 Bodies Under The Floor
B2 Pwep Dub
B3 Barb
B4 Datsun Panel Beating Co.
B5 The Chairman Of British Gas Graciously Accepts His £150,000 Pay Rise (BPM 58-75)

DOWNLOAD so that others may follow HERE!

Stretchheads – "Five Fingers, Four Thingers, A Thumb, A Facelift, And A New Identity" (Moksha Recordings – SOMALP 2) 1988

Stretchheads first proper Lp,with a few 30 second symphonies repeated in new form from the earlier cassette. Short songs were rather fashionable around 1988,epitomized by Napalm Death's "You Suffer", clocking in at one second...unless some smart alec adds reverb like on the Peel Session version,so that version was timed approaching the ten second barrier.

One must take issue whether a 20 second tune actually qualifies as an actual 'Song'? 

Just playing a high speed riff with a lunatic repeating a phrase a few times, then stopping at a random moment around twenty seconds isn't really enough.I mean, what's stopping you playing the same riff for a whole hour  with the same sentence screamed over and over again (sounds good to me?) ,is that a different song?Or Not a song?

An Avant Garde statement on the disposable culture of the 20th and 21st century it may be,but Songs have to have some kind of structure to be called yer actual 'Song' innit?

Personally I'd like just one half hour tune, played in the classic Stretchheads' Beefheart meets Melt Banana in  Pycho-Ward Z at hyper-sonic speed stylee.....no unwelcome end of track and here's another one stuff;a bit like watching adverts i suppose...or another Avant-Garde Proto-Grind statement on the corporate west....I dunno do I?

Either way, there was certainly nothing like this bunch of nutters in 1988...at least outside of Japan.

The Front cover depicts a classic scene of Spontaneous Human Combustion,leaving just the extremities .......kinds sums up The Stretchheads most adequately indeed.

Tracklist:

1 Fans
2 Long Faced German
3 Headache
4 Asylum Suck
5 Skinrip
6 Yiddish Yoddle
7 Shape & Cleanse
8 Land Of Ming
9 Rex Perplexed
10 Semtex
11 I Should Be So Lucky
12 Confront
13 Sidatorium
14 Spleng
15 Archive Footage Of A Fish
16 Jaw Box
17 Chicken Fish
18 Everythings Going To Break In A Minute
19 Ilness
20 Cancer
21 Shut Up

DOWNLOAD a classic case of spontaneous musical combustion HERE!

Stretchheads – "Three Steps To Heaven" (Self-Released Cassette) 1987

"She's got Myra Hindley Eyyyyyeeeessss".....remember that Hit for Kim Carnes?....or was it Dickie Davies Eyes?.....one of the two anyway.

Dickie Davies, for the minuscule minority who are ignorant,on a need to know basis,that,Dickie Davies presented Itv's 'World of Sport' every saturday on British TV.Oh yeah, and Myra Hindley was the blonde one in The Moors Murderers....Nooooo, Not that Punk Group of the same name which Chrissy Hynde and Steve Strange were in for five minutes in 1977, yer actual child killing Moors Murderers.

Anyway,Those Scottish types ooop north weren't wasting their time watching World Of Sport on saturday lunchtime,oh no...they were down the pub getting pissed (as in 'very drunk' for you yankophones).In the case of the Stretchheads,they were busy getting Pished (scottish for Pissed for you Anglophones),then going on to rehearsals after last orders.I'm sure they intended to sound like The Shrubs,but ended up sounding like an Exhibit A recording of one of The Moors Murderers'(not the group!) victims being tortured,....if they were in their twenties and extremely pished.

This deranged version of Grind-core meets Captain Beefheart, on past their sell-by date amphetamines, would have been the perfect soundtrack for a child killing,but Brady(The Scottish one)and Hindley's artist of choice was The Ray Conniff Singers christmas album (This is pure Evil...the Little Drummer Boy) to accompany the torture of Lesley Anne Downey,which they recorded.....crazy but true.That one was indeed Exhibit A at their trial,and doubtlessly still exists in the vaults at New Scotland Yard.....potentially Throbbing Gristle before Throbbing Gristle?...Whereas, Stretchheads were potentially Grind-Core before Grind-Core, but without any reference to Impending Nuclear destruction or evil multinational corporations leading us all from enslavement to obliteration.....y'know, that kind of thing.

The nearest equivalent has to be something Japanese? Maybe Melt Banana? A duet between Yasuko Onuki(Melt Banana) and P6 (that's the name of the Stretchheads' singer,screamer,vocalist etc???);would be something to behold.....except The Stretchheads split up and Melt Banana plough a lone furrow of truly demented Hardcore still...so no headlines of "Melt Banana Split" can get me off the hook anytime soon!

Any group with a vocalist called P6,high speed prog rock chord sequences,and recorded well into the red Zone has to be good? No?

They should have been rightly revered by the Noise-Core youth of today, but they did the right thing by splitting,citing record company theft as a primary motivation....so they now advocate illegal downloading of their back catalog....so you can make the band happy by starting HERE!...and make me feel like Dennis Moore giving lupins to the Poor again.I love you all.

Tracklist:

1 Sidatorium
2 Chicken Fish
3 Confront
4 Fans
5 Headache
6 The Illness
7 Skinrin
8 Jawbox
9 Cancer

'Steal' from the stretchheads' former record companies HERE!.....but its still sharing as far as i'm concerned.