uncarved.org blog

I saw this last night at the ICA. It was billed as “an oral history of Jungle music and an affectionate, touching, and, at times, incredibly funny, tale of bedroom obsessiveness.”

The film consists of London pirate radio taper Michael Finch running through a carrier bag of cassette tapes in his flat. It is so simple, it’s quite brilliant. The film is completely carried by two elements:

1) The awesome music and MC-ing on the tapes (covering late ‘ardkore in around 1993, through a lot of jungle and drum ‘n’ bass, ending with a dip into garage and proto grime circa 2000).

2) Michael’s awesomely life-affirming enthusiasm and knowledge about the stations, MCs, DJs and music.

I was worried by the “incredibly funny” billing in the blurb because it’s all too easy to mock obsessives (and I feel a bit defensive, being one myself!) but the humour and the film itself are both blissfully free of ironic piss-taking. People laugh when Michael gets distracted from his commentary because he has to nod his head and smile a lot when a bassline comes in because they know exactly what that feels like.

Some of us in the audience burst out laughing at his run-down of old school cassettes with metal screws in, because we remember that too. It’s that basic level of empathy that seems lacking in so much music criticism and coverage these days.

During the Q&A afterwards (hosted by Derek Walmsley from The Wire) Rollo made the point that he is often disappointed by the standard BBC4 music documentary format in which former stars relive their youth. He made the point that talking to punters with a broader overview of the scene (and their love for it intact) was perhaps a more effective way to go about showing the history. On the evidence of “Tape Crackers” he certainly has a point.

I had to overhaul the uncarved shop.

Someone hacked my site through the old shop and installed a phishing scam on uncarved.org. Basically a load of faked bank webpages were on there. 

I’m not quite sure what to think about that. I’m not keen on people preying on the naive and vulnerable, but it’s not clear to me if the banks end up suffering from these scams or their customers.

(If you ordered anything from the old shop don’t fret, none of your bank details or anything serious were stored on the site).

Basically I agree with Martin on this one – there should be more people robbing banks in the traditional way and less of this computer-based tom-foolery. Same goes for music – in the olden days people had to stuff LPs or CDs into their trenchcoats if they wanted to hear stuff for free. Or at the very least have some decent mates to tape things for them.

Which is a slightly unusual way of introducing a top ten showbiz bank robbers:

1. The Bonnot Gang, 1911-1912

French anarchists who were the first to use cars for their getaways. The book about them is full-on, I can recall a few accounts of bitter sectarian in-fighting, including a rival sect’s printing press being smashed up.

This tradition is allegedly being kept alive by Italian insurrectionist anarchist Alfredo Bonanno who was arrested at the age of 70 in 2009 for robbing a bank in Greece. My recollection is that there was some doubt about whether he actually did the deed.

2. John Dillinger, 1933-1934

Didn’t he rob 23 banks or something? William Burroughs was keen on him: “To John Dilinger in the hope that he is still alive“.

3. Bonnie and Clyde, 1931-1934

Exerted an almost tectonic pull on everyone from Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot to Papa Levi. Inspired that whole Thelma and Louise live fast die young, roadtrip kind of vibe.

4. Ronnie Biggs, 1963

Punk icon recently discussed here.

5. Red Army Faction / Andres Baader & Ulrike Meinhoff, 1970-1972

Sports cars, flashing their tits to the PLO, bombs aplenty. Punk, and yet so very serious and so very very wrong.

6.The  Covenant Sword And The Arm of the Lord, 1980s

Extreme right wing “Christian Identity” cult which robbed 19 banks in 8 US states in one month. They apparently spent all the money on guns, displaying a typically fascist lack of imagination. Included here because Cabaret Voltaire named their 1985 album after them.

7. Patty Hearst, 1974

“Death to the fascist insect that preys on the life of the people!”

Sixties pin up! Rich girl turns insane maoist terrorist! Locked up and then pardoned by philanderer Bill Clinton! Acts in John Waters movies!

8. Chelembra Bank Robbery, 2007

80 million rupees in the back of the van. Our anti-heroes took over the restaurant under the bank. Then drilled a massive hole through to the vault under the guise of renovating it.

If that isn’t mad enough, the whole scheme was inspired by a Bollywood movie. Respect.

9. The Geezer Bandit, NOW

For the name alone, really. This guy is apparently in his SEVENTIES and has been expropriating the expropriators in Southern California. He’s done 13 banks, including one on the 28th of January this year. Apparently has inspired facebook fan pages and also at least one copy cat robber. Also rumoured that he’s a young man in a rubberised Scooby Doo villain mask?!

10. Unknown: Central Bank of Iraq, 2003

The day before the United States began bombing Baghdad, nearly US$1 billion was stolen from the Central Bank of Iraq. This is considered the largest bank heist in history. Opportunism or what?

ANGRY BIRDS GOLDEN EGG BRIGADE BONUS LEVELS:

Rubbish bank robbers:

They were trying to put it back?!

Not actual bank robbers:

Rob Da Bank – festival organiser

The Blaggers – anti-fascist Oi band, who became “ITA”.

Banksy, heritage attraction in bohemian Stoke Newington.

The motherlode seems to be at this South American fashion blog.

But a lot of those featured aren’t actually all that improbable, I guess.

Maybe Ashlee Simpson is such a tortured soul that she regularly plays the first three Sabbath albums on rotation?

For all I know David Beckham, Miley Cyrus and Charlotte Church really do all share a deep and profound love for The Maiden?

Metal is funny like that – despite all the moral panics about Satan and head-banging health hazards, I don’t really think it has any kind of criticism of society at its core. I mean you can argue the toss about punk, but surely metal can simply be reduced to the youthful hedonism of rocking out and/or getting wasted, with some stuff about dragons thrown in for good measure?

I’ve written about my thankfully very brief brushes with metal and rawk before, but it’s not really my thing. So I can’t really work up much defensiveness or laughter when its imagery is used by celebs.

So y’know – if Britney wants to be into Led Zeppelin, fair enough!

But there is still part of me that has a weirdly protective attitude about punk. I actually find this troubling and hilarious in equal measures. Disentangling my own bizarre personality traits is the reason for this series about t-shirts I guess. (That, and posting photographs of attractive bare-armed young ladies seems to have a positive effect on my blog views, for some reason…)

Getting back on track, here is Lindsay Lohan wearing some garms from eighties California hardcore punk groups:

And “It Girl” Alexa Chung in a “Am I more skeletal than my t-shirt?” pose.

(with thanks to Sharon)

I’ve previously written about my teenage years hanging around with goths in St Albans:

In mid eighties suburban Hertfordshire, goth was pretty good lowest common denominator “alternative” fodder. Black clothes were de rigeur anyway and we tended to huddle together with the other weirdos to avoid violence from people who took exception to our appearance.

Plus, let’s be completely honest, hanging around in a pub for some underage drinking with some impossibly foxy goth girls was a lot more interesting than sitting alone in your bedroom again listening to Foetus and reading William Burroughs.

So I was interested to see Kiran Sande’s 20 Best Goth feature over at FACT Magazine. The inevitable, and planned, reaction to these lists is to get people up in arms about what has been left out – this was as true of Droid’s fantastic 20 Best Ragga feature as of the current one.

But what differentiates goth from other genres is its high level of fuzziness. There are relatively few arguments about what is or isn’t reggae, or who is or is not a reggae fan. But whilst everyone knows what a goth is, very few people in its eighties heydey admitted to being one, least of all the people in the bands. This game of goth accusation and denial even afflicts middle aged men who are succesful dubstep producers.

This adds a certain complexity to the historification process, which is already fraught with issues such as the tension between recording what was popular at the time and what went on to be influential. And of course the personal credibility of the author.

The FACT piece is clear from the outset that it cannot be a history of what was popular with goths (not least because of the author’s youthfulness). Comrade Stagger Lee’s response to the FACT article includes some great personal history, a mix and some good examples of omissions.

That isn’t a bad dialectic right there, which is a fancy way of saying that these two have done most of the work. All that remains is for me to introduce some wildcards and argue the toss!

I carried on hanging around with goths when I moved to London in 1988. Indeed, I lived with someone who had been in a very early incarnation of goth thrashers Creaming Jesus. There were a few clubs a bunch of us went to like KitKat, Friday nights at the Electric Ballroom (was that called “Full Tilt”?), Tuesdays at the Camden Palace (Feet First) and even a Saturday night bash in the club above the Manor House pub, by the tube station of the same name. There was also the Slimelight, but I think that came later when my interest had properly waned.

These nights all had the advantage of being really cheap to get into and filled with attractive goth girls. They were also a right good laugh - something that people with no first hand knowledge of gothdom may not realise.

Both FACT and Lee’s lists miss out these three tunes. All of which were surefire goth dancefloor fillers. You could also probably expect to hear a blast of PIL’s “Rise” and Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb were also de rigeur, soon to be joined by virtually anything off the first Nine Inch Nails album. And late period Siouxise and the Banshees (“Wheels on Fire”, “Peekaboo” etc). And yes, “Cat House” and “Big Hollow Man” by the legend which is Danielle Dax.

What I like about the tunes listed above is that people avoid them like the plague now – they can’t be cited as influential or hip. But they were huge tracks which people danced to week after week in the late eighties and early nineties. I suspect they still get played at goth clubs now, somewhere.

Perhaps I remembered them as being better than they actually are in the cold light of day in 2010. In fact, a good few of them sound a bit leaden and overproduced in that eighties way. But they do catapult me back to dark clubs, ripped to the gills at the age of 19/20. Which I think makes them important, and valuable – to me at least.

I suppose what I’m saying is that writing about classic music is well and good, but writing about the history of subcultures can’t be done by just selecting the best bits – any more than a “greatest hits” compilation can truly represent an artist.

Martin has also contributed to the discussion with an excellent post over at Beyond the Implode. His piece combines some great anecdotes with some good musical selection and is much funnier (intentionally!) than me wittering on like an old fart here.

Loki brings things up to date with a look at Zola Jesus over at An Idiot’s Guide to Dreaming. I first heard them on Boomkat’s psyche-dub “14 tracks” compilation. Their collab with LA Vampires was a standout track for me and whilst the own efforts are much less dubby, they are significantly more goth – a definitely worth investigating.

ZJ are also flagged up in the FACT feature as being a current incarnation of goth. It’s easy to argue for a goth continuum:

• Siouxsie
• Bauhaus
• Sisters of Mercy
• Sisters clones like the youtube vids above
• Nine Inch Nails
• Placebo
• Marilyn Manson
• emo?!
• The Horrors etc
• Lady Gaga
• Zola Jesus

That’s just off the top of my head – to pursue the idea we would need to demonstrate connections between each stage and fill the gaps. I’m not really interested in doing that. Possibly the list is total bollocks anyway, but you see what I’m getting at.

What I am interested in is whether the resurgence of goth now has parallels with the economic and cultural conditions in the early eighties.

Is it a miserablist escapism – a way of internalising uncertainty about the future? Or simply an amplification or adolescent emotional intensity? Or both?

Do people turn back to artiness in times of austerity because they have lots of time on their hands, or because they are seeking something greater than trying to make ends meet?

It’s not time for me to get the pointy boots out again, but I’ll be keeping an eye on things with some interest.

Who Makes The Nazis is a new blog which is “Keeping an eye on the neo-fascists currently burrowing their way into a subculture near you…” off to a good start with yet more on Tony Wakeford, but also some more general ruminations on the neofolk scene which are very well argued. I especially liked the comments in this entry about artists who harp on about exploring extreme material, but seem unable to come to any conclusions or opinions about their favourite subject matter, even after a quarter of a century.

I was also thrilled to see Martin rev up the Beyond The Implode war machine with a piece entitled “10 youthful musical rituals I (sometimes) miss“.

Datacide magazine have started digitising the archival pieces from their predecessor, Alien Underground, which was a great zine covering techno, noise and politics in the mid 1990s. Pieces so far on the Criminal Justice Act, Digital Hardcore Recordings, Sakho, and a lot more. Even the record reviews from back then are a nice reminder times gone by…

Datacide contributor Flint Michigan has a great interview with Arthur McDonald of early Factory Records act The Royal Family And The Poor over at Mute Magazine.

With characteristic good taste, Jonny Mugwump booked Ekoplekz and Hacker Farm for his Exotic Pylon show on Resonance FM last Saturday.

Ekoplekz was formerly known as Gutterbreakz (my review of his debut CD here).

Hacker Farm are also known as Kid Shirt and Farmer Glitch.

They were accompanied by a bevvy of minders, including Low “Idiots Guide to Dreaming” Quay and illustrator and Woofah back page fixture 2nd Fade. Guest appearances were made by the man like Woebot, Mr Time Attendant, Mr WestNorwoodCassetteLibrary and bunch of other people I didn’t really get a chance to talk to, such was my breathless enthusiasm for the West Country massif.

It was unbelievably good to sit around in a pub with these people and talk nonsense in person, rather than exchanging pixels. To meet in an actual bar instead of haunting each other’s blog sidebars. It’s difficult to write much more than that without it sounding ridiculously back-slappy, but you get my  drift.

The Exotic Pylon show is now available for your downloading pleasure. It’s good – Ekoplekz come in with walls of bass, beats and electronics, whilst Hacker Farm do a more abstract ambient thing with the occasional surprise.

Ekoplekz’s second CD is out today and is being followed by a vinyl release on Bristol’s respected Punch Drunk label soon.

Rumours are rife of a Hacker Farm octuple glass, mercury and hay box set coming out in 2021.

2nd Fade has just submitted awesome his contributions to Woofah issue 5.

Lowquay remains both Loki and low key.

Cybore / Box Set Go.

Matt owns a lot more boxsets than me:

These Trojan sets, compiled by Steve Barrow, were the most accessible way to get into Black Ark stuff in the late eighties. They foreshadowed Barrow’s later work with the Blood & Fire label – incorporating great selection, sound quality and design. And also the excellent Arkology 3 CD set on Island.

Sort of “Occult Roots of Big Beat” set, featuring mad breakbeat tunes from across the board. I got this ridiculously cheap (I think 6 quid?) from Berwick Street in the mid 90s.

Test Dept’s first LP with grainy photo inserts. This must have been the first box set I ever bought, in the mid eighties. Ordered via the back pages of “Record Collector” magazine. Also the first record I ever picked up from a Post Office depot, something which seems second nature now! Some if not all of this was produced by Genesis P-Orridge. Another Some Bizzare classic.

This used to be ubiquitous – peaking out of people’s record shelves at you when you visited them for the first time. Shorthand for a particular background and all-encompassing worldview which many of us have now jettisoned most of – but the traces remain. Lots of 4o year old anarchopunk “sleepers” out there, biding their time.

This set includes a whopping great booklet featuring the tragic tale of Stonehenge Free Festival founder Wally Hope. And a full colour poster by Gee Vaucher (which mine is missing, boo!)

I had this on tape for years and then finally found a copy in Reckless Records in Islington (RIP) for a good price in the late 90s.

Why Delila’s HDD Mix by Hipsters Dont Dance

(Big Bashy bashment throwdown. Good for housework / getting ready to go out / pounding the mean streets).

And finally:

Moments In Love [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Moments In Love: Version Excursion by Nguzunguzu.

This is some mad shit, that Wayneandwax and DJ Rupture pointed me at. Many different takes on the Art of Noise classic, beautifully blended together.

But shockingly, not including this one:

…is a short film by photographer Shaun Bloodworth.

It was commissioned by Mary Ann Hobbs for Sonar, and has a soundtrack by my man Grievous Angel.

All three protagonists live in Sheffield as do the various clubs featured. It’s good – some nice energetic positive vibes.

Click the link to have a look.

John Eden “History Is Made At Night” Questionnaire

Damian Marley profile

Damian Marley and Nas “Distant Relatives” album review.

(thanks to my contact at The National for all their work on the latter two!)