20 for 2020 #4

I'm not going mention any of the records that disappointed me this year - there were a few. God knows we've had anough negatives over the past 12 months. I'd rather focus on the positive side of things, so here's the final selection of my favourite albums of 2020.

PUBLIC ENEMY 'What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down?'
What makes me happy is that Public Enemy are still making music in 2020. What makes me sad is that the messages they were preaching in 1987 remain just as relevant in 2020. For their 17th album, Chuck, Flav and Lord roped in friends from the hip-hop community including the Beastie Boys, Run DMC, Ice-T, Nas and Cypress Hill to name a few. A couple of old tracks were given a makeover too including 1990's anthem Fight The Power, one of the most powerful protest songs of all time. In the current landscape, it's never sounded so necessary.

CULTS 'Host'
There were two distinctive firsts on Cults' fourth 'proper' album: they used mainly live instruments instead of synths and electronics; and it contained songs written by vocalist Madeline Follin, who had been hording them for some time. The result is possibly their best album to date.

SORRY '952'
Another duo - Sorry hail from London and released an intriguing debut album which kind of defies categorisation (though if you like Beetlebum-era Blur, you might well enjoy it). There's a lot going on here, and they certainly wear their influences proudly on their sleeves. I play this album when I'm not sure what I'm in the mood for, and it always does the trick.

LAURA MARLING 'Song For Our Daughter'
I mentioned earlier in the year how Laura Marling's latest effort is an absolute joy. An album of intimate and sparsely-arranged songs for an imaginary daughter, it was inspired by an eclectic bunch of writers and musicians including Maya Angelou, Graeme Green, Paul McCartney, Leonard Cohen and Robert Icke. Laura Marling is fast becoming a national treasure, and she's still only 30!

THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS 'Made Of Rain'
And to finish off, how about the comeback record of the year? Despite reforming in 2000, the Psychedelic Furs toured for the best part of the next two decades without releasing any new material. And then this little beauty hit the shelves, a full 29 years after their last record 'World Outside'. Got to say, it was worth the wait. Some brilliant, brilliant songs on this one.

Shout outs must also go to:
Sparks - 'A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip' (one of Mrs Robster's faves)
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - 'Viscerals' (definitely not one of Mrs Robster's faves...)
Ian Skelly - 'Drifters Skyline'
Mourn - 'Self Worth'
The Strokes - 'The New Abnormal'

OK, I'm done. I could make this list twice as long but that would be boring. Hopefully this time next year I'll have just as much to write about, maybe I could even get a few gig reviews in as well!

Back to the burrow I go. Wake me up when something good happens...

The Devil's Music

No Sympathy From The Devil by Public Enemy

One thing is for certain - for as long as Public Enemy are around, there will be no shortage of things for them to write about. Still fightin' the power, Chuck D will always set the sparks flying. Hell, there must be a good three albums in him with what's been going on in the US in the last six months alone. Here, he lets us know, in no uncertain terms, that he's far from finished:

  "Since when did you decide / The truth should hide / You 20-30-40, I’m 55"

And just to make sure we get the message: "I'm in my September / But the devil remembers." Keep rockin' it through December, Chuck. Man plans, God laughs, and the Devil rubs his hands with glee. Bring the noise.

• No Sympathy From The Devil - Public Enemy (from 'Man Plans God Laughs')

We return to the Devil's lair in two weeks...

50 albums to take to my grave #17: It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

While all the albums in this series mean something to me personally, few can claim to actually have changed things. Here's one that can though. 'It Takes A Nation Of Millions...' practically reinvented the entire hip-hop genre and no rap record before or since can hold a candle to it.

Now I'm very aware that much of my readership has little to no interest in this kind of music, but if you're one of them and still reading, I urge you to investigate this record. Listen to it through, read up about it[1], then listen to it again. I don't know or care much for rap music myself, I can only rate it against rock music, but without a shadow of doubt, Public Enemy's second album rates as one of the most extraordinary, groundbreaking and downright powerful records of all time.

For me, it's the sheer might of the sounds created by the Bomb Squad married to Chuck D's booming vocals that cause the most devastation. It is a masterpiece of production, where the studio guys shine as members of the band. Well-armed with a huge batch of samples, beats and noises, Eric Sadler and the Shocklee brothers concocted a rich stew of sounds that excites to this day. There's so much going on in there, it's difficult at times to make head or tail of it. It takes someone like Chuck D to get himself heard over the top. Yet despite its intricacy, it all makes perfect sense.

But it's not just Chuck's vocals that take centre stage; his fierce polemic contrasts with Flavor Flav's surreal comedy frenzies creating a dynamic that is intriguing, occasionally confusing and frequently astonishing. But let's not forget how 'Nation of Millions' crossed musical boundaries, blending a myriad of samples from the most diverse corners of the musical spectrum. Anthrax and Slayer mix it with James Brown, Bowie and free jazz. It feels at times like some sort of weird experiment, yet the results are so strong, the songs so immense. Bring The Noise and Don't Believe The Hype kick the media between the legs; Caught, Can We Get A Witness? gives a slap to the music industry and legal system for their anti-sampling stance; and in She Watch Channel Zero?! you get the most brutal song that will be played at my funeral, for sure.

The social messages are even stronger. Racism, drugs and direct action against the state are all tackled with equal measures of fury, humour and intelligence. But whatever your political bent, in the end it all comes back to the music, and for me Nation of Millions is one of the greatest and most innovative records ever made. It was fast, dynamic and explosive. It was inventive, inimitable and influential. It was brilliant and, 27 years on, it still is.

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[1] Wikipedia has a decent entry here

The fall of rap?

I wrote this piece a year or so ago, about the same time I was working on my Reading '92 article about Public Enemy. I had intended to use it before now, but could never quite find the right place for it.

What has hip hop become?  Looking at today’s generic blend of mass-produced, mainstream, so-called R&B ‘artists’ (I’ve used that word reluctantly), you’d think the likes of the Sugarhill Gang, Public Enemy and Grandmaster Flash never happened. Kind of like if you look at Keane, the Kooks and Razorlight, with their soft, safe, commercial radio friendly muzak, you wonder if punk really achieved anything.

Rap is like the blues. It is an art born out of oppression, repression, desolation, isolation, injustice, and disaffection. Those affected created their own languages (the creoles and pidgins of the slaves stolen from Africa and held captive by the white man cannot be considered any different to the street slang that evolved in the ghettos of the USA) and used music to express their feelings. While the blues expressed sadness, rap was more about anger and disillusionment and concerned itself with social and political themes more than the more personal woes of blues. Of course, like a lot of things, the more popular it became, the more sanitised and anaemic its output. Where blues went from Robert Johnson to Eric Clapton, rap went from Grandmaster Flash to Vanilla Ice (evidence perhaps of the dumbing down influence of the white man…).

OK, maybe that’s not entirely fair. There are, if you look hard enough, plenty of gritty, rough-around-the-edges blues artists out there today. There are some hard-hitting, confrontational rappers out there too. Sadly, many of them remain underground, buried beneath the sludge that is celebrity, fame and immense wealth and the seemingly inevitable mediocrity that breeds. Rap music has historically been incredibly creative and experimental, fusing numerous genres from soul and jazz to rock and electronica. So why do today’s rap ‘superstars’ all sound exactly the same? Why is there a concerted effort to make everything fit a standard hit single formula? Why is everything saturated in vocal effects and awful screechy ‘oversinging’? It’s either that, or a rather pathetic, juvenile attempt at trying to sound all macho, controversial and offensive. Either way, it’s more about lucrative sponsorship deals and product endorsements than the music these days. Artistry is not even second to image, ego or notoriety.

Kanye West’s latest record 'Jeezy' at least tries to be different musically; it has some of the most exciting, challenging and original sounds I’ve ever heard. But he goes and screws it all up when he opens his mouth - the same tired, clichéd, expletive-strewn lyrics about bitches, dicks and all the other infantile nonsense you get in terrible mainstream rap music these days. The guy is clearly capable of so much more so what is he up to? (For the record, the music on 'Jeezy' is great, but Kanye is a total narcissistic prick and his lyrics suck.)

l-r: Grandmaster Flash, Public Enemy, Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy, Senser

I never owned a lot of rap music, but what I did have spoke to me. Public Enemy, De La Soul, Run DMC, Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy, Senser, Rage Against The Machine, Beastie Boys – not all strictly ‘hip hop’, but all used rap as a means of imparting a message about the issues that affected real people, while blending different styles of music and sounds to create something authentic and meaningful. That, to me, is what rap music is all about.  

Though of course, I’m a skinny-assed white boy, so what do I know?


Soundtrack:

The Message - Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five (from 'The Message')

Famous And Dandy (Like Amos 'n' Andy) - Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy (from 'Hipocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury')

2 3 Clear - Senser (from 'How To Do Battle')

Riotstarted - Public Enemy ft. Tom Morello & Henry Rollins (from 'The Evil Empire Of Everything')

Memories of a thousand* gigs #10

(* probably not actually that many, but who’s counting?)

The Reading Festival 1992
Little John’s Farm, Reading – 28th–30th August, 1992
Also in attendance: Wayne, Andy G, Stu, Clive & Steve P

Part one
It’s generally accepted that Glastonbury is the mother of all festivals. In the early 90s, I attended four consecutive Glastos, culminating in the 25th anniversary festival with that legendary Pulp headline slot.

But the festival I have the fondest memories of, certainly the one I have more stories about, was the 1992 Reading Festival. This was back in the days when it was a stand-alone event, before it became ‘Reading-Leeds’. And of course, this was the year that Reading hosted what some regard as the ultimate festival performance – ‘twas the year Nirvana headlined, their last ever UK show.

Of course, no one was to know it would become the stuff of legend. Nirvana were the biggest band in the world at that moment, so there was obviously a lot of anticipation for that coveted Sunday night slot, but it would be another 20 months before Kurt Cobain’s premature death so the real significance was unthinkable. Strangely though, when I think about that weekend, I don’t immediately associate it with Nirvana. I think of Public Enemy.

Anyone that’s ever been to a music festival will tell you that it’s the event itself that makes it, not a particular band or artist. In fact, the more festivals I attended, the less it became about the music for me. I loved exploring, absorbing the sights, sounds and smells that would inevitably come my way. The people you meet, the company you keep, the food you eat, the various, um, other things you try out – the collective experience of festivals really has to be sampled by everyone at least once before they die.

And so my Reading weekend started out in my beloved VW camper van with five mates – Wayne of course, Andy G, Stu, Steve P and Clive – each of whom was determined to get to the site totally trashed. We arrived early Thursday evening. My camper couldn’t accommodate six pissheads for the whole weekend, so it was decided Wayne, Andy and I would kip in the van, while Stu, Steve and Clive would pitch a tent outside. My grandfather had kindly given me a large polythene sheet when I mentioned to him that the van had a leaky roof. He suggested it could be used as a makeshift awning which when tied to one side of the van, could be pulled up over the roof to keep the rain out and pitched down the other side. That’s what we did, and the lads set their tent up underneath, thus doubling their chances of staying dry in the event of rain.

The weather – the bane of festivals. We always see images of mud-covered throngs dancing in a quagmire that resembles the Somme, and this is how it seems the media loves to portray such occasions. Truth is, I attended four Glastonburys on the trot and came home with sunburn each time. Not a drop of rain whatsoever. The summer of ’92 was generally a good one if I recall, but it had rained the weekend prior to the festival. By the time we arrived at the Reading site though, there had been a couple of dry days and the ground was firming up nicely. The forecast was good and the mood was upbeat. Regardless, we felt rather smug that we had prepared for rain just in case. Van parked, tent pitched, awning in place – we were set. “Crack open another bottle of cider and roll a fat one boys,” I announced to my already inebriated compadres. “It’s time I caught you up!”

My real story begins on Saturday, day 2 of the fest. Friday had passed without incident. I watched the Milltown Brothers, Mega City Four, an immense performance by PJ Harvey, the legendary PiL (during which the ever-affable John Lydon mooned his bare buttocks at his adoring public) and the Wonder Stuff on the Main Stage. My one regret in hindsight is that, for some inexplicable reason, I failed to wander over to the Session Tent to see the magnificent Cardiacs. Stu delighted in letting me know how great they were.

I don’t recall what bands I saw on Saturday, though I’m fairly sure I caught Buffalo Tom’s set, seeing how they had recently released ‘Let Me Come Over’, their third album, a record which I still rate in my all-time top 10. Wayne raved about Shonen Knife[1] in the Session Tent and I immediately felt pangs of jealousy that I hadn’t seen anyone yet who had blown me away like that. Until…

I had no desperate urge to see either headliner that night. I wasn’t into rap music at all, so Public Enemy held very little appeal to me. The other stage hosted BAD II, a ‘new’ version of Big Audio Dynamite. I knew little about them and despite being fronted by Mick Jones, I couldn’t get that excited about them. So I decided to catch the end of Ride’s set, watch the start of Public Enemy, then stroll over to see a bit of BAD II, before finding a doughnut van for supper. What happened instead was one of the most mind-blowing musical experiences of my life.

The one thing I never prepared myself for was the sheer power of rap music. When Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff and Terminator X bounded onto the Reading stage and let rip, they bowled every one of the thousands of witnesses into the middle of the following week. I mean, seriously – Reading had always been traditionally a rock music festival, yet here was a hip hop act, practically unheard of at such an event and almost the antithesis of what many felt live music should be, completely stealing the show.

I stood, open-mouthed in awe, as they fired track after track after track at me with such ferocity, such emotion, such raw unrestrained power – Shut ‘em Down, Bring The Noise, Don’t Believe The Hype, Fight The Power – BANG! BANG! BANG! Public Enemy slayed me unlike any band had ever done before or indeed since (though the White Stripes and Arcade Fire came pretty close). That show was a true epiphany for me. That show took everything I thought I knew about music and shredded it mercilessly in front of my eyes. That show wiped the canvas clean and forced me to think again.  

That show completely fucking changed me.

You see, music has to touch you personally for it to really make sense. There has to be something that resonates in you before you can truthfully say ‘I get it’. Alas, some never experience this and are destined to forever remain tuned into soulless commercial radio stations. Rap music had never touched me like a lot of other music had, so it is safe to say I never ‘got it’.  I was 12 when White Lines by Grandmaster Melle Mel came out in 1983. While I now acknowledge it as one of the greatest singles of all time, I could never have been expected to connect with the anti-drugs message of the lyrics. Its delivery was even newer to me – these guys weren’t singing, they were just bellowing stuff aggressively. But then, rap was still pretty new back then – the first proper rap record Rapper’s Delight by Sugarhill Gang had only come out four years previous.

For nearly a decade I carried with me the theory that rap music wasn’t really worthy of the classification of ‘music’. But that Saturday evening in a field in the south of England I had my perception of the genre altered for good. Rap wasn’t just music, it became performance art.

“IS EVERYBODY HOT?” Flavor Flav yelled to the crowd. A tumultuous “YEAH!” resulted. “We’re gonna pray for rain to cool everybody down,” Flav continued, before leading the crowd in prayer.

Now, I’m not a religious person, but something tested me that evening. Not only were my musical beliefs coming in for a severe battering, but my almost non-existent spiritual side was dragged out of hiding when, within hours of Public Enemy and tens of thousands of disciples (old and new) calling to God to open the heavens, it actually happened. It rained... and how. The first I became aware of it was being awoken by a loud banging on the side of the van (a dodgy lock on the side door meant it could only be opened from the inside). The guys in the tent wanted to come in.

“We’re flooded!” they wailed.

“Has the tarp blown off?” I asked.

“No, we’re pitched in a puddle!”

It was true. The makeshift awning was holding true, but the rain was filling a dip in the uneven ground right where the tent was – they were being flooded from underneath! There was one hell of a storm outside and unfortunately, Steve, Clive and Stu were in the thick of it. Before we knew it, the van was full of the lads’ kit that they’d salvaged before they clambered in themselves and all six of us – one half dry and warm, the other half soaked – attempted to drift off back to sleep. There was mixed success. It was now cramped and humid in that van and I never completely managed to get comfortable again. Besides, I still had She Watch Channel Zero thumping around in my head. Sleep? Not a chance, boyeeeeeeee…


To be continued….

Soundtrack:

• Shut 'em Down – Public Enemy (from ‘Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Back’)
• She Watch Channel Zero - Public Enemy (from ‘It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back’)

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[1] 22 years on, and I will finally get to see Shonen Knife - they play Cardiff next month.