The Rarest Thing: an Insightful Nirvana Article at 28 Years’ Distance

https://www.inquirer.com/news/kurt-cobain-nirvana-heroin-courtney-love-death-suicide-anniversary-20220405.html

I haven’t posted about Nirvana much in quite a long while. Essentially, being consumed by the topic on a daily basis, long into each night after work, left me quite ’emptied’. I’d spent hundreds of hours manipulating spreadsheets of data to provide answers or, at least, suggest thoughts about questions I had about the band’s career. After about half-a-decade, I was done.

One other factor was that, after that kind of prolonged focus, I needed to move on mentally – there are new challenges, new topics. I found myself seeing articles and realising it was increasingly rare they were spinning my head or turning my mind. It’s precisely the reason I never post on Cobain-related anniversaries – I’ve never felt my voice was so special that the world needed one more generic remembrance or space-filling anniversary post…

…The above piece by Abraham Gutman made me glad I never completely relinquished my attention.

It succinctly summarizes Cobain’s life and how a privatized healthcare system fails to intervene with the appropriate treatments that could save lives. Even a cold heart just focused on economic dollars and cents should be able to recognize the vast wastage involved in leaving people either unable to function, or meaning that families lose a care-giver and wage-earner.

Gutman also provides a good summary of his argument on Twitter in extended form:

Dave Foster: A Formative Nirvana Moment

Who was handling drums the first time the name Nirvana appeared on a show flyer?

Who was drumming the first time Nirvana played a show in Seattle?

Who was the guy on drums when Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt of Sub Pop decided they were worth a single?

Dave Foster was drummer for Nirvana during these key moments. A tight three-four months in 1988 saw the band make the jump from the obscurity of Grays Harbor County and gigs around Tacoma and Olympia, to the biggest city in the north-west right at the moment when it entered its ‘Rock City’ moment in the spotlight.

People forget that there were a lot of talented bands circling the Sub Pop label at that time, there’s a tendency to genuflect before ‘unique genius’ rather than recognising that a constellation of circumstances have to come together in order for anyone to get a shot. In Nirvana’s case, being friends with Melvins got them elevated levels of attention; Melvins friendship with Jack Endino got them recording time; Endino’s friendship with Sub Pop got them label notice; Ryan Aigner driving the band around so they could make shows outside of their home area got them into Seattle; the U.K. music press deciding to make ‘a thing’ of Seattle brought attention and opportunity to town; Novoselic’s talent as a bassist and entertainer (as well as his height!) drew notice; Cobain’s talent as a song-writer, vocalist, guitar player and performer (and how closely he fit the long blonde hair/blue eyes mode of American idols) made a difference…

…But the other factor at work in that moment was having a really powerful, reliably heavy and accurate drummer in the form of Dave Foster present. It’s noticeable that Cobain, in his Journals, specifically acknowledged how good a drummer he thought Foster was. It’s rare, in his private notes and unsent letters, for Cobain to note someone’s qualities. He was usually too busy gently skewering people.

I’m always intrigued by the early phases of a band. Once a band is famous, their sound has usually solidified into a known quantity, the line-up becomes relatively sacrosanct, there’s maximum attention and minimum mystery. The early days, however, are where there are the crucial left turns, the doors left unopened, the possibilities abandoned. The drummers in Nirvana certainly intrigue! For starters, there’s Bob McFadden, the gentleman Novoselic and Cobain start practicing with in earnest in autumn 1986 but who leaves after a handful of practices:

An Interview with Bob McFadden: Nirvana’s First Drummer

Then there’s Aaron Burckhard who comes on board – likely in late ’86 – and allows the band to really solidify, get a proper set-list worked up, is with them for their first radio session (which becomes an early demo tape), works on the material that winds up becoming the January ’88 studio demo – the groundwork to becoming a full-time working band. Of course, in that spell, Nirvana still aren’t playing regularly or consistently.

Then there’s the deeply valuable guest spot from Dale Crover who vouches for them in order to get them into Reciprocal. He also gives Cobain and Novoselic a sense of what they could do if they had a dependable presence on drums. That’s where Foster’s skills really come into play. Quite a few of the songs – ‘Big Cheese’, ‘Mr. Moustache’, ‘Sifting’, ‘Blew’ – that would mark the Bleach-era of Nirvana seem to be created with Foster drumming and they definitely fit the ‘Sub Pop sound’ more than Nirvana’s more difficult early songs (‘Blandest’ also seems to arise in this period.

Of course, it’s not surprising Foster’s contributions are unacknowledged. Firstly, there’s only the one known live recording from his time on drums – a real gap not yet filled by anyone coming forward with tapes. Next, he was gone before Nirvana wound up in a studio so the majority of people have never heard his work with the band. Third, disparaging remarks, highlighting youthful indiscretions, appeared in the book Come As You Are mar the perception of his efforts. And, of course, Foster has never been willing to stand up and speak about his time in the band – in his absence it’s not really surprising little there’s little to say. By contrast, Aaron Burckhard has made a concerted effort to connect with fans, give interviews, ensure he’s acknowledged within the Nirvana story. Maybe it’s time for Foster to tell his tale in one form or another?

An Interview with Bob McFadden: Nirvana’s First Drummer

The Stooges Still Rule

A month back I did a big three-part piece summarising the known rarities recorded by The Stooges 1969-1974. In a gloriously timely moment, I learnt around the same time that there was a new five-disc compilation coming out from Cherry Red Records bringing together a bunch of the key live recordings from the band’s final six months. I took the chance to review it here for PopMatters:

https://www.popmatters.com/iggy-pop-stooges-road-tapes-2648939016.html

Meanwhile, if you want to dig deeper, take a look at ‘Rounding Up The Rarities’:

The Stooges: Rounding Up The Rarities Part One

The Stooges: Rounding Up The Rarities Part Two

The Stooges: Round Up The Rarities Part Three

They’re all pretty long n’ detailed so probably only for Stooges fanatics (who likely know most of it!)

I’m just hoping that Cherry Red are going to get involved pulling together all the other outtakes and demos that were put out on various labels in the 80s and 90s. There’s been a lot of re-releasing gone on but it’d be good to see a quality label curate them properly because even I’m not game to go down the rabbit hole into the mass of random compilations out there.

Basic rule: for The Stooges, if you want to go beyond the three main albums (all of which can be readily found with a wide array of outtakes and alternate versions), start with the Easy Action label’s Heavy Liquid box-set, then that label’s live compilations and this new one from Cherry Red. After that, some of the newer represses are decent summaries but I think I’ll wait in hope that some get a grip on the scruff of the neck of The Stooges.

In terms of the best stuff that didn’t wind up on The Stooges’ albums…The material they were touring at the time of their 1971 breakup all sounds enticing but can only be heard in noisy live iterations on the You Don’t Want My Name You Want My Action box-set. After that, you’re into the Raw Power-era: start with ‘Gimme Some Skin’ and ‘I’m Sick Of You’ – then head into the early ’73 rehearsals for ‘Head On’, ‘Open Up And Bleed’ and ‘Emotional Problems (AKA Wild Love, or My Girl Hates My Heroin)’.

The Stooges: Round Up The Rarities Part Three

Doubtful Detroit Demos

Wanted to start by giving credit where it’s most certainly due: if you have an interest in The Stooges then the best source on the web is the Stooges Forum (https://stoogesforum.forumotion.com/). As ever, the efforts of a thousand fans far outstrip any official source when it comes to gathering up the furthest reaches of available information. Also, just a nod toward Cherry Red Records who are releasing a box-set gathering together several of the previously released Stooges shows from 1973-1974, including the two shows issues on the two-disc Metallic KO.

Anyone who has spent any time delving into The Stooges will have come across a lot of accidental mislabels and a veritable torrent of releases re-compiling the same material over and again. Likewise, unless you’re totally wrapped up in the pro-vinyl propaganda, there’s no reason to switch to 12” LP iterations or 7” single versions of stuff you already have. Credit does have to go to Revenge Records and BOMP! for the role they played in surfacing a hell of a lot of stuff in the eighties through the mid-nineties but, from the perspective of 2020, I’m sorely suspicious of any label that isn’t either a major or Easy Action and only the truly crazy, who sincerely require every iteration of every song, need dive back into all the stuff that came out in past decades.

            Obvious (and persistently) mislabeled songs to be aware of are the demos Williamson and Pop put together for the Kill City album in 1975: despite including attempts at ‘Johanna’ and ‘I Got Nothing’, if you’re a purist then these are not The Stooges. I’ve also seen an even later Iggy Pop track called ‘Fire Engine’ wrongly credited. One equivocal case is the cover of ‘Purple Haze’ floating around. In my view I don’t think it’s The Stooges, but if someone presents me with evidence then I’ll bow but I’m also not going to waste time or money to hear it again. The take is spoilt by strangely prominent drums in the first half, then a whole section where the bass suddenly throbs over the top and submerges everything, the song’s balance is totally ruined and Pop’s rendition of the lyrics is both straightforward and seemingly recorded from another room (a 1980s Pop iteration of the song at least gives it an updated post-Berlin vibe).

            Here we move into terrain where there’s a bunch of songs of no great consequence, with no confirmed provenance, no data, but several equally weighted theories namely: it’s Pop and an unknown guitarist working together in London and that the tapes wound up in Williamson’s possession because Pop wanted to show him what he’d been working on; second, that it’s Pop and Williamson prior to the arrival of the Asheton brothers; third, that some of it is outtakes from the Detroit rehearsals or later 1973 rehearsals; fourth, that it’s Pop and Tornado Turner who briefly replaced Williamson at MainMan’s urging somewhere around April-May until June 1973; finally, that it’s leftovers from the Kill City-era or beyond. I am not going to die on my sword for any of these opinions but I’ll at least say what I feel for argument’s sake.

To start with, there are a few pieces I don’t believe can even be called songs. ‘Old King Live Forever’ is improvised guitar noise set against Pop’s stray poetry and scat; ‘Dynamite Boogie’ has a sunny rhythm ‘n’ blues energy but it’s ultimately just another four minutes of pissing about vocally over a basic guitar track; ‘Move Ass Baby’ hops up and down some very basic guitar runs while Pop moves through vestigial lyrics and wordless keening; ‘Delta Blues Shuffle’, in fairness, begins with some atmospheric guitar that echoes, slides, and shimmers in interesting ways — but then it halts and the back-end is just disjointed riffing and noise before Pop chimes in with muffled thoughts not worth deeper contemplation.

Next there are three guitar/vocal covers: a shot at Bo Diddley’s 1955 single ‘I’m A Man’ made a touch more interesting given Pop seems to slip in quotes from other songs (including from ‘The Jean Jeanie’ which was recorded in October and released in November 1972); an attempt at ‘Waiting For The Man’ which sounds like a first run-through on the part of the guitarist though Pop apes Lou Reed fairly effectively; and finally a similarly stripped down ‘I’m So Glad’ by Skip James (covered by Cream and Deep Purple in the late sixties) which is, again, fine but has nothing to mark it out as anything more serious than two buddies killing time.

The next two songs are unique because they consist of guitar, vocals, and drum machine. First, there’s ‘Look So Sweet’ where the drums underpin another accretion of brief riffs and mouth sounds. Second, there’s a cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘The Ballad Of Hollis Brown’ which noodles on for eight interminable minutes. Though the song’s skeletal nature and the prominence of the guitar lends interest, the original is all about Dylan’s storytelling while here Pop’s vocals are run through effects and barely a word can be distinguished. There’s also a full band iteration of this song which, while still too long, sees good work from whoever is on piano with some swaying and surging lines breaking up the steadfast main tempo.

Before discussing dating, there are two significant cover songs that feature a full band lineup. First, there’s ‘Mellow Down Easy’, a couple minute-long instrumental based on a Willie Dixon tune, and including electric piano. Second, there’s a run-through of ‘I’m So Glad’ with no piano which is well worked out with restrained verses and energetic chorus, everything dropping down in unison prior to an even more raging chorus — my only criticism would be that they’ve not worked out how to finish it with the same finesse.

What to make of these 12 waifs and strays…? Groan. My most crucial point would be that I personally don’t find any of them so interesting that I deeply care about tracking them down to the root. Having said that, to speculate, first, I don’t see anything that would give credence to a post-Stooges dating. Second, I don’t believe all of this material is from a single time and place. My reasons for that are that it seems unlikely the band would waste so much rehearsal time on this many random off-cuts; that while there’s evidence of the band jamming on tunes as a breather there’s no other case where they spin their wheels on so much junk; I don’t believe that the band would stand around for this long while Pop and Williamson spit-balled; and finally there’s too much variation between the songs for this to be one source.

Starting simple, I believe the two full band outtakes — ‘Mellow Down Easy’ and ‘The Ballad Of Hollis Brown’ — definitely came from the Detroit rehearsals of 1973: the presence of the electric piano seems telling. While Pop played piano and celesta during the Raw Power sessions and I’ve seen speculation about instrumental/lyrical connections from these songs to Raw Power tracks…I don’t buy it. I believe we’d know officially by now if they were from the Raw Power sessions. While I’m sure ‘I’m So Glad’ is The Stooges, the absence of the piano makes me unsure if it comes from July 1972, or if it’s also from spring ’73 and that Bob Scheff just didn’t take part or wasn’t present.

Next, I see no reason that the drum machine iteration of ‘The Ballad Of Hollis Brown’ was not recorded on the same date as ‘Look So Sweet’. Then my main reason for believing that both versions of ‘The Ballad Of Hollis Brown’ were recorded in the same time period is the way the vocals are obscured on both cuts: it suggests the same location, same mic and recording set-up, and/or the same impulse driving that decision to sink into the backdrop. I lean, again, toward Detroit for both these songs (and both versions of the latter), but it isn’t guaranteed given Pop’s decent memory for what he’s attempted in the past meaning he could have resurrected ‘The Ballad Of Hollis Brown’ in ’73 from a memory of a demo attempt in the summer of 1972. Or maybe the band demo came first and the drum machine efforts really are post-Stooges though nothing suggests it.

For everything else, it’s utterly impossible to decide. I see a similarity between ‘Look So Sweet’ and the four improvisations — ‘Old King Live Forever’, ‘Dynamite Boogie’, ‘Move Ass Baby’, and ‘Delta Blues Shuffle’ — but sonic resemblance just isn’t enough to forge that link or to refute it. If I was in any way certain that some or all of these songs did not feature Williamson then that would make it easier to push them back into summer 1972 or forward into spring 1973 — but I can’t say that (though I do believe it isn’t Williamson). I can understand why a dashed off cover of ‘Waiting For The Man’ would make Pop or someone else think “let’s try ‘I’m A Man’ too” or vice versa — but I’m not convinced the two songs come from the same date and the presence of ‘The Jean Jeanie’ inside ‘I’m A Man’ makes it 1973.

The fact that none of this material seems to feed back into The Stooges makes me want to distance it by supporting the idea that it’s leftovers from an attempt by Pop, having arrived in London, to see if he could gel with a guitarist other than Williamson — or a later attempt to get some fresh writing going with Turner. I could understand them trying some pure improvisation and a couple of covers, but I can’t understand Pop not taking even a single shot at something he had ready and that would later feature on Raw Power. But the fact that I know of no takes of a Stooges song featuring a drum machine or just guitar-vocals could just as equally suggest this is all exceptional and we’re hearing a one-off audition of an unknown guitarist. If Williamson heard and hated it all then that would explain why it all just dies a death after this one set of sketches.

Alternately, if it is Williamson playing, then perhaps on a spare day — somewhere in February-March 1972 — he and Pop tried something different to see if they could take the music they were making in a new direction. Given quite a few of the final songs performed by The Stooges in mid-1973 to early 1974 sound quite different from what emerged from their 1970-1972 heyday, I could believe that, except nothing here ever appears again and I’d still have to believe that they wouldn’t have tried a drum machine or duo take at something that did wind up in a ’73-’74 set-list. I’ll give up there before I go mad spinning the possibilities around!

  • Waiting For My Man
  • I’m A Man
  • I’m So Glad
  • Mellow Down Easy
  • The Ballad Of Hollis Brown
  • Look So Sweet
  • Old King Live Forever
  • Dynamite Boogie
  • Move Ass Baby
  • Delta Blues Shuffle

Final Tour, Final Shots           

One thing that gives me hope for further surprises from The Stooges back-catalog is how studious they were about rehearsing their material. The complete Fun House sessions are already fair testament to that industriousness, but even in 1973 they rehearsed comprehensively ready for their first gig of the year. The same happens again in July 1973 when, in preparation for a week of shows at Max’s Kansas City, to be followed by a short tour, they book time in CBS Studios in New York City. It gives me a slender degree of hope that somewhere there’s a decent rehearsal tape covering the lost 1971 material, and maybe more from later rehearsals at Studio Instrument Rentals (S.I.R.) on Sunset Boulevard between June 15-20 and at Dress Revue Sound Studio on May 6 — there are undoubtedly others.

            With just eight months left to live, hearing ‘Open Up And Bleed’ rise to new heights after the strong demo in the spring is heartening: it opens with a mood of echo and restraint, before pushing into excoriatingly heavy howls from Pop, while the instrumental structure continuing to hold back before it finally slams in heavy. A new song — though possibly first demo’ed under one of the stray names associated with the February-March rehearsals — is ‘Cry For Me’ (AKA ‘Pinpoint Eyes’) which lapses into the boogie-woogie vibe to slightly better effect than other such songs given a few neat lyrics apparently dwelling on a girlfriend’s reaction to the effects of Pop’s heroin addiction and his relative indifference. They’re still visibly working out where to take it, running the song over and over for want of a way to finish effectively. There’s also an update of ‘Johanna’ which keeps its moodiness but has far tighter lyrics and a sparkling electric piano solo before a pretty intense ending that stays the right side of falling apart. Meanwhile arguing the artistic development of ‘Cock In My Pocket’ would feel like musing on penile graffiti — it is what it is. ‘Rubber Legs’ reappears but it’s still going nowhere, it simply pumps away until it’s time for a solo and has otherwise little to distinguish it structurally or instrumentally.

  • Cry For Me (AKA Pinpoint Eyes)

 Tombstone ’74

      Another messy show for New Year’s Eve of 1973 saw Columbia decline to re-sign the band, meanwhile the managerial relationship with MainMan reached its terminus. The band made their way through a fairly stable run of shows from the second week of January into early February before it all wrapped up on February 9 with The Stooges completely adrift. A brand new song, ‘Wet My Bed’ still appeared (seen on the Double Danger record in November and December ’73 iterations then captured in San Francisco in January ’74 on the last disc of the Heavy Liquid box-set) consisting of a good natured sing-along over upbeat Little Richard piano vamping, while the title alludes to the ever increasing level of infantilization created by Pop’s over-indulgences. It’s also a pointer to the key problem with whatever is left of The Stooges by this point, which would be starkly visible at the Michigan Palace, Detroit, on February 9. The last performance captured on Metallic KO’s has an unimpeachable reputation as car crash pornography capturing a band, and a bandleader, in complete collapse. The set-list also emphasized the complete atrophying of the band’s creative edge and ambition: half the set consisted of nothing more than childish audience baiting on the same level as ‘Wet My Bed’.

            Starting with the positive, ‘I Got Nothing’ (AKA ‘I Got Shit’) is a neat change of scene, a remarkably gentle verse with ‘ooo ooo’ harmonies, while the lyrics read like a telling confession of total surrender: “I feel so old today, I feel used and wasted, I ain’t got no way, I got nothing, nothing to say. Lord how I feel so wasted today, I feel burned (sic), I feel screwed, and I got about one more day to live…” The guitar solo is one of the prettiest in The Stooges discography, a soaring, swooping piece that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Guns ‘n’ Roses record. Structurally it’s a pretty standard verse-chorus-verse set-up used to good effect. The other relatively fresh song is ‘Heavy Liquid’ which keeps some forward momentum having gone from being a set-closer on July 30, 1973 (seen on Heavy Liquid) to a set-opener half a year later. It’s a decent up-tempo rock song with a neat instrumental but it’s another sign of The Stooges decay given it’s just a reworking of Gary U.S. Bonds’ 1960 hit ‘New Orleans’ with the lyrics a straight crib. There’s also the relative lightness of both songs indicating the band’s move away from the dirges and nihilism that made their name (and are the core of their influence) toward something more in keeping with the hard rock standards of the time. Williamson may deserve mention in the same breath as Keith Richards or Jimmy Page but The Stooges, by this point, had also traded in quite a bit of what made them distinctive.

            The other three songs just seem to be makeweights dragged out to excessive lengths to kill time. ‘Rich Bitch’ is a spiteful little whip of sexism aimed at god knows who over some twittering piano work all leading up to a skittish instrumental break with Pop exhorting the band to take a few more turns before a few chanted lines, then the song pulls apart again…And jeez, as it winds down Pop repeats the first verse over to no great end, and it just keeps on running. ‘Cock In My Pocket’ is at least enlivened by an opening yelp of “fuck you pricks!” to give it some punch. Otherwise, it’s a long run around a song that really hasn’t evolved since it first appeared, but that’s because there’s just nowhere for the joke to go. At the New Year’s Eve gig at the New York City Academy Of Music they had chosen to wedge ‘Rich Bitch’, ‘Wet My Bed’, ‘I Got Nothing’, and ‘Cock In My Pocket’ alongside each other making for one pretty dispiriting sequence and also evidence that this wasn’t just a one-off accident.

The last song the band played live was ‘Louie Louie’ and they actually turn in a pretty powerful rendition — Pop guiding the band down to a low ebb — with a couple of squalidly effective verses: “a fine little bitch is waiting for me, just a whore from across the way, every night I take her upon the lawn(?), she isn’t the type I lay at home,”/“she got a rag on so I move above, it won’t be long before she’ll take it off, I feel a rose down in her hair, her ass is black and her tits are all there.”

            That’s it. By April 1974 a fragment of something called ‘From The Inside’ would be played on KROQ Radio in Los Angeles making it either the last Stooges piece or the first new song of the Iggy Pop solo career. While Johnny Rotten’s “ever feel like you’ve been swindled? Good night,” is music’s most enduring on stage kiss-off, Iggy Pop deserves respect for murmuring “I never thought it would come to this, baby…” prior to ‘Louie Louie’ and for making his final words a defiant, “you nearly killed me but you missed again, so you have to keep trying next week.” That’s where Metallica KO still dazzles, the band are still tight, they make the most of even the most slender material, and Pop — as well as a lot of smirk-worthy stage banter — seems entirely conscious that he’s playing out every aspect of his psychically broken and exhausted state on stage. There’s an honesty in that which remains stunning, and rare, even at this far remove.

  • Wet My Bed
  • Heavy Liquid
  • I Got Nothing
  • Rich Bitch

The Stooges: Rounding Up The Rarities Part Two

Raw Power: Summer-Autumn 1972

The sketchiness of The Stooges after their June-July ’71 breakup means a lot of what goes on for the next couple years feels like rifling gingerly through the detritus of a shooting gallery trying to avoid discarded sharps and needles. It’s understandable given the band was officially deceased between a show on May 27, 1971 until the resurrected Pop-Williamson-Asheton brothers lineup started rehearsals, and staged a single gig, in London in July 1972. The first half of 1973 was a similarly dead space in terms of live performance: just one show on March 27. It was June 1973 until a more consistent, but still ragged, series of shows developed stretching on until February 1974.

Being strict, the true Raw Power sessions are the July 17-21 1972 Olympic Studio rehearsals, and the September 10 to October 6 CBS Studios album sessions — plus the small number of known sessions that took place around that time (Trident Studios sometime prior to Olympic, RG Jones in August, Seymour’s Walk rehearsals). The Deluxe edition of Raw Power claims to be comprehensive but the claim is rather undermined by how much other material is floating around. There are three unreleased originals from the CBS Studios sessions. ‘Doojiman’ (potentially AKA the appallingly titled ‘N***er Man’) is pretty wild with Pop losing his mind on the mic (there’s even some pure jazz scatting) while the band work over something like a loose stumble in the same turf as ZZ Top’s ‘Just Got Paid’ (released in April 1972). Next there’s ‘I’m Hungry’ which is a slightly faster take of ‘Penetration’ with Pop wailing jokey food-related lines in comedic voices. Then there’s ‘Hey Peter’ which has a gnarly riff and hard beat, but Pop’s delivery doesn’t really gel, he’s really high-pitched and the picture of Peter (some of it food-related yet again) is fairly indistinct. All three of these cuts seem to have been brand new at the time of official release which is rare when so much leaked.

The two real winners on the official release both come from the earlier July 1972 rehearsals. The cut of ‘I Got A Right’ is arguably the best from the 13 takes on the Heavy Liquid box-set (which we’ll come to). ‘I’m Sick Of You’ is also excellent: a lethargic and dismissive ballad that suddenly pivots as initial weariness gives way to apparent anger, or a surge of glee, at the idea of parting company with the intended target. The lyrics repeat themselves in both halves but big deal, it’s a clever move going from the sludgy first half to the incandescent second including a screaming guitar solo from Williamson.

What next? Well, for the Olympic Studio rehearsals it’s best to head back to Easy Action. Their 2005 Extended Play release is inexpensive but entirely redundant given the comprehensiveness of the Heavy Liquid box-set. Heavy Liquid is a masterclass in how a retrospective rarities collection should be treated — damn it’s good! The first disc is the nearest we can currently get to an idea as to what a Raw Power Complete Sessions compilation would look like. In some ways it’s of more interest than the Fun House sessions because these rehearsals — some two-three months before the final sessions — make far greater revisions. It’s a shame that ‘I Got A Right’ underwent this level of work — there are 13 takes here including instrumentals, alt. lyrics, no solos, different effects, etc. — but still didn’t get squeezed onto Raw Power in polished form. Extended Play has a few tracks from those rehearsals rendered in 5.1 sound but the upgrade isn’t really worth it for songs that were far from finished and lack sonic detail worth unpicking. The EP also has an early cut of ‘Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell’ (under the title ‘Hard To Beat’) and an interesting, though not amazing, remix of ‘I Got A Right’ where Pop’s lines are doubled.

Over on Heavy Liquid, ‘Tight Pants’ is a vestigial version of what would become ‘Shake Appeal’ and fades out pretty early. ‘Scene Of The Crime’ is like an angrier Rolling Stones track, stabbing piano running all the way through as Pop roars megalomaniac wish-lists of what he wants and doesn’t want, then it fades again presumably because the band never figured out how to end it. A quick rip of The Trashmen’s ‘Surfin’ Bird’ gives way to a more cohesive take on perennial garage rock band favorite ‘Louie Louie’. It’s OK but the solo isn’t exactly stellar and it’s not entirely clear Pop knows all the words — fine, they get done inside three minutes and it’s a good breather. There’s also a shot at Barrett Strong’s ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ which has some nice drum hustle but the guitar seems tentative until it explodes in good ways on both the first and second solos — just a shame the outro is so curtailed and flat. Beyond ‘I Got A Right’, the other sure-fire-winner is ‘Gimme Some Skin’, an edgy and hyperactive trip essentially made up of a couple of stomping verses and the chorus, with the band then cycling over (a few too many times) on an instrumental segment before a final vocal reprise.

On a recent 2017 compilation, also under the name Heavy Liquid, Easy Action sneaked in a decent untitled instrumental and an early take of ‘Penetration’. The instrumental is certainly more developed than a lot of what has emerged, though that isn’t to say it’s pure gold: the rhythm section stay rock-steady for the full four minutes while Williamson lays down some pretty stunning work, but there’s not much of a structure, it’s just a bed for crackling lead guitar.

  • Doojiman
  • I’m Hungry
  • Hey Peter
  • I’m Sick Of You
  • Scene Of The Crime
  • Untitled Instrumental
  • Surfin’ Bird/Louie Louie
  • Money (That’s What I Want)
  • Gimme Some Skin
  • Hard To Beat (AKA Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell)
  • Tight Pants (AKA Shake Appeal)
  • Penetration

It’s 1973 OK         

   Until the full tapes of the Raw Power sessions from the autumn of ’72 emerge, it’s a fair bet to assume that we’ve already seen the key leftovers on the Deluxe edition and that the tapes are loaded with alternate takes (still, Rhino! Please get on and release it all!) This leads us into the wild terrain that is 1973 when vestigial ideas for a fourth album were kicking about. I think by this point it’s visible that Williamson was a good influence in terms of the quantity of new songs and rough covers the band were kicking around, but I think it’s also fair to say that the quality was suffering — just my opinion and I’ll explain where appropriate.

In preparation for their first gig of the new year, only their second since disbanding in 1971, the band engaged in substantial rehearsals in February (definitely on the 3rd, 20th and 25th) at Studio Instrument Rentals (S.I.R.) in Los Angeles and then again in March (11th, 18th and 19th). The March dates took place at the Morgan Sound Theater in Ypsilanti which billed itself in the Ann Arbor Sun (February 1971) as having been “developed by musicians interested in achieving musical results in a creative atmosphere at an honest price.”

I’d say stick to Heavy Liquid for the majority of this material but there are other sources and versions of note. One official exception is on the official Raw Power deluxe there was the slightly incongruous decision to jump a year into the future to swipe a CBS Studios rehearsal cut of ‘Head On’ from July 1973. Early versions debuted at rehearsals in March, and present on Heavy Liquid, lose the tartness of the piano sound while keeping the overall muscle, so I admit I prefer them despite some distortion in the recording. It’s a winning song, upbeat, energetic, but maybe a touch overlong given it features a lowkey minute-long simmer that builds only to reveal there’s no fresh idea around the corner except ‘same again but slightly harder.’

            In terms of other songs getting an outing in spring ’73, ‘Emotional Problems’ (AKA ‘Wild Love’ or ‘My Girl Hates My Heroin’) has a catchy main riff and a ‘Raw Power’-ish vibe, it’s a definite winner from this period and is sufficiently well developed that the band end in unison on a final beat. Incidentally the ‘My Girl Hates My Heroin’ title comes from one iteration of the demo where the first line seems to be “my girl hates my bad stuff,” which puts it in the same thematic territory as the later ‘Cry For Me’ (AKA ‘Pinpoint Eyes’) with someone trying to intervene in Pop’s escalating issues only to be rejected. The title ‘Wild Love’ similarly reflected a stray lyric.

‘Johanna’ is a moodier affair but seems underdeveloped at this point: Pop can be heard shouting instructions to the band, a decent riff winds over and over for ages, there’s another decent Williamson solo, some of the lyrics seem to be filler — but this is one of the only leftovers from this era that Pop loved enough to retain. ‘Open Up And Bleed’ opens in a similarly downbeat vibe with some great gasped lines and loud/quiet dynamic shifts: it’s perhaps the best thing the band have in close to final form. ‘Till The End Of The Night’ (AKA ‘I Got A Problem’) is like a creepy nursery rhyme with Pop singing at the top of his range over a back-forth swaying tune that is allowed to simmer for the best part of four minutes before it kicks into higher gear, then everything drops away near completely to allow a very stark guitar solo.

            One lengthy effort from the sessions is the seven-and-a-half minute rehearsal of ‘Born In a Trailer’ (AKA ‘Nowhere’ or ‘I Come From Nowhere’). It lacks drums until well into the back-half of this mid-tempo jam. Toward the end everyone suddenly has issues keeping time, it’s hard to tell if it’s deliberate or not, but an additional verse from Pop appears then devolves into ad libs of the line “I was born in a trailer” to fill a few lines. Then the song just keeps going with Pop shouting out an instruction at one point (“now back to the riff!”) and some inconsequential lines (samples: “I got a mind so weird, I ain’t got no beard, I got a beautiful tan, I’m a mean ol’ man…”/“I come from nowhere where everybody’s a square in dirty underwear, and trailer parks are there, and you’ve got to lay your soul just to get out of nowhere…”). Weirdly there’s a near completely different iteration (found on 2009’s More Power compilation from Cleopatra Records) of just under six minutes with really precise strumming and drumming and, though Pop’s vocals are quite buried, the clarity of the instrumentation and the mix is a massive upgrade. Not a clue if maybe it’s taken from a better source or an unknown CBS Studios source for July 1973.

            Two pieces that seem to show the band trying to get something jump-started by jamming round loose ideas are ‘Hey Baby’ — an off-kilter main riff and lots of extemporizing and “yeah yeah” level lines — and ‘She Creatures Of The Hollywood Hills’ — which has a strangely funky vibe, and crashes into a solo after barely a minute. They’re both pretty rough jams with a few attempts to shift the dynamic but in ways that feel off-the-cuff rather than purposeful. The latter reappears at live shows in far more enticing form: check out the performance from the Whisky-A-Go-Go, Los Angeles, in September. It’s become a high pressure drum shuffle with a grinding guitar riff, a heavy breakdown at the three-and-a-half minute mark, before a signature Williamson solo, all made complete by more Pop lyrics focused on sexual conquests and fear of possession. For the final minute-and-a-half things get a lot noisier and the guitars pinball so many held notes and screams across the sound-field that it’s impossible to hear the drums — then a final kiss-off from Pop over feedback: “a man’s soul, you can’t buy a man’s soul, not even in Hollywood. You can’t buy a man’s dreams! Not even in Hollywood, USA.” As a note, there are other song titles that float around but can’t be pinned down, namely, ‘Black Ace’, ‘Love Light’, ‘Sack O’ Shit’ and ‘My Veins Are Crying’.

With Williamson as Pop’s key foil in this era (and perhaps with Bowie’s influence too) The Stooges certainly shifted direction, but — in some ways — some of the 1973 material is a bit of a regression, leaning on roughed up fifties rock ‘n’ roll tropes which sounds punk at first glance but was nowhere near as innovative as what they were doing on The Stooges or Fun House (perhaps it’s telling that the punk generation would adopt the far more nihilistic ‘No Fun’ and ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ as standards). As well as a rough shot at Otis Reading’s ‘Can’t Turn You Loose’ — on which Pop is almost entirely inaudible — in terms of originals, ‘Cock In My Pocket’ is a prime tribute to rock ‘n’ roll’s original raunchiness, updated to straightforward seventies crudeness, with some upbeat piano and standard issue fifties guitar riffs. It’s a presence throughout this final phase of The Stooges but, really, it just isn’t that interesting musically or funny lyrically. It’s a prime example of Pop (and the band’s) slide that part of their set is now half-remembered music from their childhoods matched to playground juvenility. ‘How It Hurts’ (AKA ‘Rubber Legs’) goes in the same direction musically, sparky and upbeat guitar riffs over a bright piano — again, there’s not much structural development or flexibility, it just hammers away at its rock ‘n’ roll clichĂŠs.

In the same territory of pastiche lurks ‘Jesus Loves The Stooges’: on Heavy Liquid it consists of a duet of piano and drums and, though pretty, is a fairly inconsequential bit of middle-of-the-road ivory-tickling. A few takes with vocals and full band exist on Bomp-released compilations, apparently from the same February dates, that reconfigure things into a slurred boogie woogie cabaret tune of varying length depending on the take. That’s another area where my enjoyment of the last year of The Stooges can often wear thin given the fairly one dimensional, but excessively prominent, piano work. Maybe I should just blame it on the rise of Elton John as rock ‘n’ roll’s most prominent force at the time, an attempt alongside the Bowie relationship to ape rock’s latest success story? Maybe it was an attempt to move forward as well as a reaching back but for the first time it feels like cribbing someone else’s moves.

  • Head On (AKA Head On Curve)
  • Emotional Problems (AKA Wild Love, or My Girl Hates My Heroin)
  • Johanna
  • Open Up And Bleed
  • Till The End Of The Night (AKA I Got A Problem)
  • Born In A Trailer (AKA Nowhere, or I Come From Nowhere)
  • Hey Baby
  • She Creatures Of The Hollywood Hills
  • Cock In My Pocket
  • How It Hurts (Rubber Legs)
  • Jesus Loves The Stooges
  • Can’t Turn You Loose

The Stooges: Rounding Up The Rarities Part One

I can’t quite recall how, but I developed a Stooges habit. It isn’t an Iggy Pop habit, it doesn’t extend any further than the collapse of the band in February 1974, I’m simply hooked on Stooges leftovers. My liking for bootleg studio demos, along with a smattering of significant live recordings, has had me writing and rewriting lists of decent outtakes for quite some time. This post is simply an attempt to get it together in my own head given the absence of the kind of rigorous documentation and archive analysis that exists for the Jimi Hendrix catalog which — by comparison — is a masterclass in archival preservation.

In the internet-era it’s become way too easy to dismiss expertise and authoritative perspective, well, when it comes to Stooges outtakes I’d say stick to the clear hierarchy: start with the stuff on Columbia Records or Elektra, then move onto Easy Action who have done great service to the world of Stooges fandom. If you’re truly fixated then consider Rhino’s gargantuan 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions. After that…Well. We’ll come to that. A note on Live At Goose Lake, Live At Ungaros, A Thousand Lights, and the October 1973 Atlanta performance that accompanied the Raw Power reissue: except for the latter, they’re all bootleg-level sound quality but interesting if your ears are tuned to that kinda murkiness. Crucially, no, there are no rare songs — neither Pop’s riffing on ‘The Shadow Of Your Smile’ nor his ‘Georgia Peaches’ poem count — unless sticking a title on every stray sonic utterance of The Stooges is sufficient to constitute a song.

On a personal note, I’m not particularly sensitive to different mixes unless it’s wildly different. In that regard it’s certainly worth having both the Bowie iteration of Raw Power and the (inferior but still cool) Pop version, and while the John Cale mix of The Stooges is worth a listen it’s really clear why the original version that came out deserves to be the canonical cut. I’m appreciative of all the alternate takes that have come out over the years but always quietly wish for something as comprehensive and final as 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions which might seem overwhelming at first glance but, in truth, is very easy to sink into given the familiarity of the material and the jolts provided by tweaks and deviations.

I’m going to break this into three chunks over three days given there’s a lot to cover and each section ends with a quick round up of the key rarities discussed. Intrigued to hear what I’m missing!

Early Days

There’s next to nothing I’ve seen out there from the band’s early days when they were billed as The Psychedelic Stooges: a tiny couple of minutes of what seems to be a live version of ‘1969’ is floating around on YouTube. While there are quite a few alternate takes of known songs floating about, the only totally unheard piece is ‘Asthma Attack’, a noisy improvisation offering sheer chaos for seven minutes. That one song, as far as I can tell, is the closest we’ll ever get to hearing the pre-professional studio Stooges though there’s mention of a 45-minute (I would assume exaggeration) instrumental called ‘The Razor’s Edge’, and of a song called ‘I’m Sick’ being prepped at the same time as ‘Asthma Attack’.

Recently there have been two outtakes from The Stooges album which seem to have official imprimatur though I wouldn’t guarantee it. ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog (Fast Version)’ does what it says on the tin. After a squeal of feedback at the opener, the band rips through the song. Intriguingly it also blends the famous descending guitar riffs deeper into the surrounding instrumentation so it sounds less sparse, the sleigh bell backing is less prominent, everything is flatter but warmer. Pop’s vocals are pitched higher too, he sounds more naturalistic which definitely makes this a good listen. There’s also ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog (Extended Psych Version)’ which has a wind tunnel roar of sound effect going on. Note that there are also some alt. titles floating around: ‘The Dance Of Romance’ is confirmed as ‘Ann’, while ‘Goodbye Bozos’ apparently became ‘Little Doll’.

  • Asthma Attack
  • I Wanna Be Your Dog (Fast Version)
  • I Wanna Be Your Dog (Extended Psych Version)

Fun House

One has to look to the official reissues of Fun House to find entirely fresh outtakes. The band were prolific but every time they hit the studio they only played the things that were essentially close to complete, and each album is pretty much everything they had at the time. From the Fun House sessions, ‘Slide (Slidin’ The Blues)’ is a likeable saxophone-led swing with barely a few words hanging it together and no real twists. Then there are a couple of false starts and two full takes on a song called ‘Lost in The Future’ which unspools at walking pace. Given the fury of Fun House, ‘Lost In The Future’ would have been a real momentum killer: Pop’s vocal delivery is strained, warbling, and unlikeable; there’s not much going on lyrically despite the intriguing title; the chiming guitar phrase is distinctive but weakened though repetition. The other rarity of major interest is seventeen minute cut of ‘LA Blues’ (AKA ‘Freak’) — as well as a neat sub-five minutes Take Two — which is total improvisational freefall in beautiful ways.

Accompanying the Rhino box-set was the single version of ‘Down On The Street’ that has an overdubbed organ that isn’t awful or incongruous, but to modern ears dates it significantly and softens its punk energy. As a side-note, ‘Down On The Street’ also seems to have been known as ‘Down On The Beach’ or ‘On The Beach’ at some point — perhaps a nod to the famous Nevil Shute book — while ‘1970’ is also labelled ‘I Feel Alright’ and ‘TV Eye’ as ‘See That Cat’ in various places.

The key things to me, at this stage of The Stooges’ career, is how rapidly they would pull together an album of material, how little was ever left over, and how clear-sighted they were about what didn’t deserve to develop any further — the sense of moving on at speed.

  • Slide (Slidin’ The Blues)
  • Lost In The Future
  • Freak
  • Down On The Street (overdubbed organ)

Falling Apart in 1971

It’s at this point that Easy Action show their worth. Essentially, if the name Easy Action is on a Stooges release then it’s going to be something of genuine value even if the label has to work with pretty rough material. The You Don’t Want My Name, You Want My Action box-set is a feast. For a start, it’s the only current evidence of the 1971 two guitar lineup of The Stooges — with Jimmy Recca on bass, James Williamson and Ron Asheton on guitar. The last visible live performance from 1970 seems to be the Goose Lake set where they only perform Fun House material, so between September and April they dispensed with the entire Fun House set in favor of a batch of new songs (though they didn’t exactly play out often in that time either). Another joy of the Easy Action box-set is it even includes the band’s final 1971 show at which the band already knew Williamson wouldn’t make it, but were surprised to find Pop didn’t show either. The Asheton brothers and Recca played an instrumental then an audience member volunteered to take vocals for a song christened ‘What You Gonna Do?’

‘I Got A Right’ is the set-opener from the band’s first show of the year onward. It’s strength explains why it’s the only song the band carry through into the Raw Power-era, but also why it vanishes after some intensive work in July 1972: potentially the band were bored of it and simply moved on. It’s such a tragedy given the song deserved professional memorialization: it’s powerful, pugnacious, defiant — everything The Stooges did so well. A crushing main riff, the song bolts out the gate at high pace, while Pop rams his clear message of limitless freedom down the audience’s throat.

The issue with only having live recordings of the rest of the songs is there’s a haze of static over the top of everything and little finesse — but that’s just the way it is. ‘You Don’t Want My Name’ is a high-octane rocker but with a pretty steady structure built around a main riff then a solo, before the pace drops and the band bring everything down-down, and then it all comes back up full force with some serious guitar carnage bringing it home. ‘Fresh Rag’ keeps up the pace with a decent main tune then a two-part solo, before final screams of “and I need ya!” from Pop. ‘Over My Dead Body’ (AKA ‘Who Do You Love’) is a neat change of pace, a head-nodding, swaggering chug with some killer lead guitar. The whole front-end appears to be instrumental, beating the tune into the audience’s heads until Pop saunters in after a couple minutes. The rhythm section are rock solid and provide space for some extended guitar pyrotechnics, the wired vibe of the whole song meaning it wouldn’t have been out of place on Fun House.

There was some talk of ‘Big Time Bum’ (AKA ‘See Me Dancing’ or ‘Way Down In Egypt’) being a single and damn, why not? In the first twenty seconds alone the song kicks out a fanfare opening percussing the ears, then gives way to a spiraling guitar figure that loops down to the ground, before a powerful chopping main verse — the song is a three minute cascade of great ideas. The only sad thing is that the music is so overwhelming barely a word from Pop is audible. ‘Do You Want My Love’ (AKA ‘That’s What I Like’) sees the band refusing to slow down or ease up on the aggressive power, they keep feet moving and it’s a remarkable five minutes or so before Pop seems to sing something close to an actual verse (though it might just be variations of “I Feel Alright!” in a nod to ‘1970’. While a great way to close a hot and sweaty night in a club, it might have needed some trimming and shaping to come to anything in the studio given its pretty much a single idea stretched out to a mind-warping tunnel. There’s a final orgy of release, drum rolls, great heaves of feedback, screeching notes forming a siren panning behind Pop’s swooning ad libs before a clatter of overdriven guitar swallows everything. There’s a brief snatch called ‘The Children Of The Night’ at the end of the first disc of this box-set, but it’s little more than Pop encouraging the audience to howl for mock horror effect.

The trouble with the six songs here is that the band were in such a state of dissipation, so thoroughly and persistently wrecked, that Elektra simply didn’t believe the band could be coaxed into polishing them enough to improve on the underwhelming performance of the two previous albums. An album worth of potential material went into the bin. As a weird sidebar it’s worth checking out the punk band Matt Gimmick who used their own (now lost) tape of a Stooges show from this era to record covers of both ‘Fresh Rag’ and ‘You Don’t Want My Name’ on a 1979 EP.

  • I Got A Right
  • You Don’t Want My Name
  • Fresh Rag (AKA I Need You and then multiple alternate titles given on stage)
  • Over My Dead Body (AKA Who Do You Love, Black Like Me, the horrendous title N***er Man is also mooted)
  • Big Time Bum (AKA See Me Dancing or Way Down In Egypt)
  • Do You Want My Love (AKA That’s What I Like)

Urusei Yatsura Release a Bonanza of 1993-2000 Rarities – Friday August 7

https://uruseiyatsuraband.bandcamp.com/

I remember, back aged 16, visiting a friend called Ewan. We messed around on his drumkit downstairs – only time I’ve ever touched a drumkit – then, upstairs, he showed me an LP he’d just bought and he was sure I’d love. Yep! He was a fair judge of taste and character. We Are Urusei Yatsura became an instant favourite – front to back noisy punk pop with not a weak moment anywhere. Thanks Ewan for introducing me to a band that, to this day, are one of the rare few that make me forget the 24-years that have passed.

Urusei Yatsura – You Are My Urusei Yatsura

Back in 2016 I reviewed the You Are My Urusei Yatsura radio sessions LP for Words & Guitars and let my fanboy soul have full rein – the second-to-last paragraph is my jumping off point for the best news of my summer so far: that on Friday August 7, Urusei Yatsura are doing an online release of a new compilation – Can You Spell Urusei Yatsura: Lost Songs 1993-2000.

The band released an excellent b-side compilation back in 1997, ÂĄPulpo!, which is well worth tracking down given it’s another 13 tracks of pure excellence. But that still left a further 23 b-sides that were left off the 1997 compilation, released on the singles accompanying the two albums (Slain By Urusei Yatsura, Everybody Loves Urusei Yatsura) that came out subsequently, or on the Yon Kyoku Iri EP of 1999.

I can only encourage you to take a chance and make a little Bandcamp investment on Friday if you haven’t already heard them. And, if you have, then I suspect you already know why I’m so enthused. All Hail Urusei Yatsura!

Sex Pistols in America, 1978

A fabled tale of excess, personality clashes, and managerial manipulation, the Sex Pistols’ seven U.S. shows in January 1978 reward revisiting even at so many decades’ distance.

The Sex Pistols’ 1978 U.S. tour looks like attempted homicide. Malcolm McClaren, the band’s 31 year old manager, was hungry for the photogenic controversy that might arise if — instead of playing America’s liberal cities — he sent the world’s most controversial group to country ‘n’ western venues across the Deep South. This was less than ten years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis and yet, relying on stereotypes of Bible Belt religiosity and conservatism, McClaren wanted to acquire audiences who might protest, attack the band, maybe even riot if he was lucky!

From the perspective of 2020, the level of callous disregard for his 20-to-22 year old charges is pretty breath-taking. Even on home turf McClaren knew the band’s reputation made them a lightning rod for violence. Back in June, frontman John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), was stabbed in the hand and knee, and had his face slashed; drummer Paul Cook was attacked by a gang wielding iron bars; then Lydon was assaulted again outside a night club. All Sex Pistols’ management learned was this was a trusty approach for the acquisition of press coverage. If it occurred to him that his strategy for the U.S. could wind up getting someone seriously injured, it was of only passing concern.

The band — Lydon, Cook, Steve Jones (guitarist), Sid Vicious (bassist) — went along with it. Suffering from both the naivety and the idealism of youth, they agreed to put themselves at an unknown level of risk for obscure rewards. The tour itinerary perhaps felt reminiscent of Sex Pistols’ parochial rambles around the U.K. where — after starting off playing London colleges, then the minor club circuit — the band strayed way off the beaten path into small towns like Whitby, Dunstable, Cleethorpes, Penzance, Keighley, Cromer. There was some method to the madness: Sex Pistols’ notoriety short-circuited the traditional route to legend status because few people ever saw them play.

McClaren was also relying on the band’s ability to make the law enforcement community a co-conspirator in the stoking of publicity. In a single year, Sex Pistols had been ordered to leave Guernsey after one night; their celebration on a boat in the Thames was halted; their first album wound up in court charged with obscenity; and Lydon and Vicious had been arrested in separate drug busts — all of which was deemed a manageable cost of doing business. These were bizarre lessons to draw from Sex Pistols’ experiences in late 1976 through 1977 and only made sense if no one really cared about being a real band anymore.

 

Sex Pistols had certainly started out with genuine intentions. The arrival of Lydon in August 1975 made the band a functioning entity able to rehearse. Playing their first gig on Thursday November 6, they were industrious with as many as ten shows under their belts by Wednesday December 10. At that first show they played a set of rough covers and just two originals — ‘Did You No Wrong’ and ‘Seventeen’ — impressively pulling together three more — ‘Pretty Vacant’, ‘Submission’, and ‘New York’ — by end of the month. From then on song-writing proceeded steadily, if unspectacularly, with set-lists beefed up by as many as half-a-dozen covers. Going by their live appearances, ‘Problems’ appeared on February 14; ‘Satellite’ and ‘No Feelings’ on April 3; ‘I Wanna Be Me’ and little-known improvised noise opener ‘Flowers Of Romance’ entered the set on June 29; ‘Anarchy In The UK’ debuted on July 20; ‘Liar’ appeared on August 14; ‘God Save The Queen’ by December 6…

But Sex Pistols’ September-October tour would be their last moment of calm. An already flammable reputation was ignited on December 1 by the appearance with Bill Grundy on the Today show. 17 of their 24 December dates were canceled and they were hounded across Britain by press and protestors; signed on October 8, they were dumped by EMI in early January; Glenn Matlock left the band in February and they had to start teaching Vicious the bass; they signed to A&M on March 10 and were dumped within the week; signed with Virgin in mid-May. After a short run of shows in The Netherlands ending on January 7, the band only played another three times before mid-July.

After writing ‘E.M.I.’ with Matlock somewhere in January 1977, Sex Pistols were overwhelmed by events and essentially over as a creative entity. At least they managed to end the tedium and repetitive sessions and get Never Mind The Bollocks recorded in fits and starts between March and August. The final year of the band would see only two new songs emerge: ‘Holidays In The Sun’ whipped together in April-June, then a revived song from a former band of Vicious’ called ‘Belsen Was A Gas’ which was rehearsed in September. Nothing is predestined, but by the time the band hit America and Lydon was trying to persuade them to attempt a new song in soundcheck, to accompany his lyrics under the name ‘Religion’, no one wanted to know.

Banned, sacked, assaulted, arrested, protested, shell-shocked, and fed-up — Sex Pistols had had sufficient drama in a single year to last other artists a lifelong career. And on a personal level it was just getting worse. Vicious had become a heroin addict, the rest of the band had more than a casual penchant for various drugs, the Lydon/Vicious versus Cook/Jones axis of the band had split again with Vicious aligning with his girlfriend and dealer Nancy Spungen. In the background, McClaren was both a focus of annoyance, and busy maintaining his position by spreading lies and gossip to poison the air between the band still further.

 

The tour was a predictable mess from the start: the four shows scheduled from December 29 to January 3 had to be canceled because the band’s criminal records caused Visa issues. These shows would have been in Homestead, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; Cleveland, Ohio; and Alexandria, Virginia — which makes the claim of a ‘southern strategy’ look like retrospective justification for the silliness of the remaining week-and-a-half tour program. On the other hand, the intention to play a 600 capacity venue in Chicago — when this and San Francisco were the largest cities on the tour — looks like an attempt to guarantee a riot. The desired publicity had an effect too in that the Holiday Inn chain pre-emptively declined the band.

The frayed logic of the tour was on full display when contemplating Winterland. Prior to their departure for the U.S., Sex Pistols had never played for a crowd of more than a few hundred. Now, a mere week after touchdown, they were going to scale up to a 5,400 capacity venue. One could maybe credit a ramshackle attempt to prepare the band, with venue capacity stepping up from 500 in Atlanta, to 700-800 in Baton Rouge and Memphis, to 1,800-2,200 at the other three venues…Except the original tour schedule would have thrown them on in front of 2,000 attendees a night (with the exception of Chicago). It’s more likely an absence of mid-sized venues, rather than managerial benevolence, that gave Sex Pistols some vague hope of acclimatising.

Meanwhile Sid Vicious came undone. It’s hard not to feel a degree of pity for a young man, battling heroin addiction, being challenged to live up to his stage name again and again. There’s a ‘boys don’t cry’ sadness to his actions as he becomes the focus of so much violence and stays dry-eyed trying to prove he could take it, daring people to do their worst. This doesn’t make him any less stupid or indiscriminately violent — he embraced his role with self-destructive gusto. In Atlanta he headed to the hospital after slitting his wrist with a letter opener; he wrote ‘Gimme A Fix’ across his chest (rumours state he cut it in with a razor but there’s no sign of it by Winterland which makes that unlikely); in Memphis he disappeared again — another hospital visit plus a knife wound to his arm; in Dallas he assaults a photographer and security before being beaten by his own bodyguard; before Winterland he stuck a steak knife into his hand when accosted while eating a meal, then after the show he OD’ed in a shooting gallery on the corner of Haight and Ashbury.

McClaren busied himself making things worse. There’s suspicion that he gave Vicious money for heroin, and he relentlessly egged on Vicious’ worst instincts while refusing to get his hands dirty by intervening to look after Vicious either. He also put Jones and Cook on planes between venues — though the two of them behaved so badly on a flight from Tulsa that they were banned by American Airlines — while Vicious and Lydon continued on the bus which felt like favouritism to band members already used to being wound up. There was also resentment of apparent favouritism in the matter of which hotels or motels band members would wind up staying at. By the time of San Francisco, the band knew their shows in Finland weren’t going ahead, there was a grim rumour stirred by McClaren that Charles Manson would produce their next album from prison, now the hairbrained whim of flying to Rio De Janeiro to meet with the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs.

 

The one thing that remained undimmed, however, was the innate talent within the band. Steve Jones is comparable to Ron Asheton in terms of having such a colossal, immediately recognisable, and oft-underrated guitar technique. Similarly, Lydon sounds simultaneously incandescent, hilarious, and thoroughly pissed off at every show — a quintessential frontman. The Sex Pistols in America are reminiscent of the Terminator in the finale of the 1984 film: stripped down, falling apart, still relentless and unstoppable. There are audio recordings, and even video, of quite a substantial quantity of the tour and they remain fascinating documents of that rarest of things in the music business — genuine unpredictability.

 

January 5, 1978: The Great Southeast Music Hall — Atlanta, Georgia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSjK7y9ztTI

In front of an audience of 500 primarily made up of journalists, the bating and the technical issues kick-off from the very first minute. Jones’ guitar cuts out, feeds back, and requires interminable pauses for tuning throughout the show. The solo on ‘God Save The Queen’ is perfunctory, the drums are a methodical clattering din, then the guitar cuts out during ‘I Wanna Be Me’ while ‘Seventeen’ has a false start. At times Lydon’s vocals run headlong into the slightly panicked rush of the other instruments, everything coexisting rather than coalescing, he seems to be straining to keep up. Vicious’ bass seems to have been turned down, at its loudest it’s a dull clumping in the background of a song — occasional cussing (and the cracking line “this one’s about you, it’s called ‘Problems’”) is the biggest impression he makes. “That’s God that is and he don’t like us,” Lydon announces while — to his credit — trying to cover for the band’s issues. Things stabilise from ‘New York’ onward — ‘Bodies’ is pure exuberant nastiness including an incongruous ‘step up’ where the anti-harmonising of Vicious and Jones backs Lydon’s pleas — but then the guitar dies again during ‘Submission’, returning beset by feedback. At their best, there are moments like the solo on ‘Holidays In The Sun’ which is like sheet metal tearing, or the final pairing of ‘Pretty Vacant’ and ‘Anarchy In The UK’ which sounds like gaskets exploding somewhere inside Chernobyl. There’s no way the band could have lived up to their reputation but instead they stooped down and undermined it by the simple virtue of being just another band, albeit one that was undeniably above average.

Finest Rotten-isms of the Evening:

“Now. We came to dance. What did you come for?”

“See the fine upstanding young men Britain is chucking out these days? Just never join an army.”

“Aren’t we the worst thing you’ve ever seen?”

 

January 6: Taliesyn Ballroom — Memphis, Tennessee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLOJcuP930U

The audio source for Memphis is in such wonderfully dissolute condition that the sound from the stage is a thick fug, splintered moments penetrating consciousness through sheer volume while an incoherent blizzard pushes and shoves. Ironically, in that light, at the start of ‘I Wanna Be Me’ Lydon asks for more monitors because “I can’t hear myself! Hello, ‘ello, ‘ello…” Most songs become untamed cyclones that twist and whirl through the speakers. The show itself further stoked Sex Pistols’ reputation for chaotic events with the police sending investigators to Atlanta to check on reports of the band having live or simulated sex on stage, the fire department telling the crowd outside that the show had been oversold and was cancelled, a small riot among the couple of hundred attendees who couldn’t get in and began smashing windows, and the band getting on stage substantially late. Hammering rhythm is the most visible feature throughout with most songs on the tape compressed down to a juddering roar. Lydon’s vocals would feel at home in the poesia sonora scene. The tape seems to cut or pause at points so there’s barely any visible conversation with the audience, which perhaps contributes to the sense of pace and a band back on track after a bad first show, except a good portion of the audience walked out — amusing in light of the battle outside to get in.

Finest Rotten-isms of the Evening:

“I’m not here for your entertainment, you’re here for my entertainment.”

 

January 8, 1978: Randy’s Rodeo — San Antonio, Texas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSxf50yG8fU&t=894s

Near constant whistling and hassle, San Antonio was the kind of nastiness that must have sent McClaren into raptures. Vicious shouting “you cowboys are all faggots!” hardly helped matters and likely served to increase the hail of material hitting the band and the accompanying verbal goading. What’s tragic is it’s one of the few gigs where Vicious’ bass work seems coherent and things are moving forward with intent…For a grand total of four songs. Then Vicious yells, “you faggot fucker!” hauls his bass strap off, inverts the guitar and chops it down into the crowd just missing his intended target — Brian Faltin who attended specifically to protest and provoke the band. Billowing clouds of bass-heavy pulse reduce Lydon’s voice to a scratchy edging with one’s memory of songs filling in the indistinctness of the lyrics, then the second half of the tape he’s suddenly more audible while the instrumental clarity disintegrates. The drum sound is remarkably separated with the cymbals a lightning clash of static, while everything else is a distant rumble. The marching beat that opens ‘Holidays In The Sun’ is gloriously leaden and it’s the most straightforward moments, like Lydon’s screaming during ‘Belsen Was A Gas’ that penetrate.

Sid bass incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXCvQDCc0Zc

Finest Rotten-isms of the Evening:

“I see we’ve got a lot of real men out there tonight…”

“Oh dear, Sid’s guitar fell off!”

 

January 9, 1978: Kingfish Club — Baton Rouge, Louisiana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_UdGtCXkxs

A sub-1,000 venue formerly part of a grocery store, the atmosphere at the Kingfish Club is hostile with audience members screaming “fuck you!” and “throw something at them!” Normally live albums are a grotesque way of fleecing fans into paying for inferior copycats of studio tracks, by contrast, this bootleg quality studio recording buries you somewhere in the crowd with blown out walls of overdriven electricity billowing on all sides. It’s wonderful seeing the rough outline of a well-known song still visible but cracked and pulled apart. The band are on a high all night despite the usual rain of coins and object hitting the stage (and the band), indeed Lydon ad-libs less because there’s so little dead time between songs. Cook shows himself to be the powerful and stolidly dependable core of the band, while Jones is feeling secure enough he can toy with feedback on the outro of ‘Seventeen’. The bass-heavy recording even flatters Vicious on songs like ‘New York’ where there’s no audible indication of the attempt by one fan to give him an on-stage blowjob and he keep stolidly strumming. Lydon is deluged by the band’s raw power, working hard to be heard amid the torrent smacking down on the audience. ‘Belsen Was A Gas’, for all its bad taste, shares a military precision and thuggish pummelling with ‘Holidays In The Sun’ which makes one wonder what the post-Matlock Sex Pistols could have done if they’d made it through January 1978.

Finest Rotten-isms of the Evening:

“I’ve had it with coins!”

“This song is by an old hippie…” (The Stooges ‘No Fun’ follows)

“That’s all because I’m too lazy to do anymore. Good night.”

 

January 10, 1978: Longhorn Ballroom — Dallas, Texas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq3Q8uFJMRs

Another ugly atmosphere awaited in Dallas with the venue owner (whose most notable predecessor was Jack Ruby) trying to cancel — Warner Bros. sternly warned him they would sue — while the police kept a SWAT unit on standby. The night is all about Vicious. Suffering withdrawal and woozily drunk, he drifts about the stage oblivious to his bandmates’ glares. Jones has another night of guitar trouble — he breaks a string early, there’s a plethora of errors, and his usual chunky power is subdued — and he’s increasingly antagonised by Vicious. During ‘Bodies’ he has to stop playing to storm across and plug Vicious’ bass back in, he shouts at Vicious during ‘Belsen Was A Gas’, then resorts to his mic, “Look what you’re doing, not at them!” Every time the band come close to achieving momentum something derails it. After ‘Holidays In The Sun’ Vicious is sucker-punched in the nose and, in their disgust for Vicious, this is the only time Jones (“See the wanker fall over? Big tough Sid falls over!”) and Lydon (“Look at that, a living circus!”) seem to acknowledge one another or agree at any point in the tour. For the next 25 minutes Vicious looks like he’s wearing lipstick, is pink-tinted down to the waist, and engages in spitting contests back-and-forth with the audience. There’s a resurgence as the band rallies on ‘Bodies’ — Jones’ finest solo of the night with Lydon skanking in the middle of the stage — before audience-winning runs at set stalwarts ‘Pretty Vacant’ and ‘Anarchy In The UK’. For the encore, Vicious, whose face is so blood-spattered it looks like warpaint — is flicking V’s while being tailed onto the stage by a minder. ‘No Fun’ looks like finishing the night on a raucous high then suddenly a visibly angry Jones is launching himself at someone in the audience with his guitar and gets at least a shove in before bouncers intervene. The rest of the gig plays out with a man-mountain stood squarely at centre-stage monitoring the crowd and, even after the song ends, Vicious is in a shoving match with security who are simultaneously handling the crowd and him.

(For the full audio including the opening numbers missing from the video check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMq26X3RaK0)

Finest Rotten-isms of the Evening:

“Any more free gifts?”

“I see that we have a whole section of the silent majority over there”

 

January 12, 1978: Cain’s Ballroom — Tulsa, Oklahoma

Unfortunately, only a single minute of audio from the Tulsa show has surfaced along with a few minutes of visuals from the film D.O.A. A Rite Of Passage which is as much focused on the religious protests taking place outside and the police presence both in the parking lot and inside. The venue now has a framed portion of the green room wall with a hole supposed punched by Vicious. The opening band, Bliss, was essentially there because the owner of the venue wanted to give his friends exposure, not because they were simpatico with Sex Pistols — they apparently played the ‘William Tell Overture’ as part of their set. On the day of the show, the ticket price increased because, unsurprisingly given the ridiculous logistics and barely viable sizes of the venues, the band needed more cash. Apparently Lydon started the show by asking: “all you rednecks have come to see the circus?” But then the show itself was apparently tight — a shame it hasn’t survived.

 

January 14, 1978: Winterland — San Francisco, California

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBVDSz5Qd6g

Winterland was neither the ultimate desecration of rock ‘n’ roll, nor the freak show anyone might have hoped for. Police patrols up and down the ticket lines outside, meticulous frisking by the security before entry, a DJ orchestrating audience participation in the form of swearing, and a screen projecting Sex Pistols’ quotes, it all heightened the drama of the night…Then the band walked on and sleepwalked through the show. A large space to fill given Sex Pistols’ impact came entirely from their unique stage presence, it was significantly harder to make a dent when the band were all sick. The flu subdued Jones; Vicious was smacked up (though as a consequence it’s actually the sprightliest he’d looked all tour); while Lydon was visibly exhausted and periodically wiped his nose or face on a spool of tissue or in the crook of his arm. The band were further hemmed in by professional staffing: bouncers led audience members out calmly across the stage, at one point in the encore a member of staff cleared things away from Vicious’ feet. A greater separation from the crowd confined the usual antagonism to a tsunami of nuts, bolts, coins, pantyhose, and spit. Sex Pistols were further plagued by technical issues with Jones breaking strings, his amplifiers cutting out altogether to suck the energy from ‘Bodies’ and ‘Liar’, while every pause was filled with interminable tuning. Possibly a deliberate act by snobby venue personnel, the PA was a mess and Lydon had to call out from the stage, “the monitors are completely off…Hello, they’ve just come back on.” This is the rare recording where the bass is genuinely audible and Vicious, while posing constantly, holds his own more than adequately. There’s a disconnect, however, between the sheer energy of the songs which carries the first half of the show, versus the descending arc in Lydon’s enthusiasm. The band’s figurehead on stage, his usual physical gyrations are suppressed, he clings to the microphone stand, or hangs an arm over it as if struggling to stay upright. ‘Problems’ seems to telegraph trouble and he sings much of it with his arms firmly crossed, maintaining his statue-still stance, his look of intense boredom, until well into the introduction of ‘Pretty Vacant’. For the encore, ‘No Fun’ becomes utterly pointed as Lydon essentially curls up into a ball and croaks out whatever’s left of his visibly shredded vocal chords. But then that moment of brilliance. It’s exceedingly rare an artist says anything from a stage that isn’t trite or uninteresting, few words spoken into a mic have had such resonance they’ve become legend: Lydon’s last words at Winterland are the rare exception and the perfect casual punctuation closing Sex Pistols’ wild ride.

(The soundcheck has also become available in recent years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GX-PZNig70)

Finest Rotten-isms of the Evening:

“If you can put up with that, you can put up with anything.”

“There’s not enough presents. You’ll have to throw up better things than that, this ain’t good enough…That’ll do. Can we have a couple of cameras?”

“I think it’s fun. Do you want your ears blown out some more?”

“Tell us, what’s it like to have bad taste?”

“Ah haha, ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? Good night.”

Tracking Down the Love Buzz 7″

https://www.lovebuzz7.com/

If one believes in a god, then that god provides rules and meaning for one’s actions – though, of course, even then no one else is required to accept your meaning. If one doesn’t place meaning in the hands of a supernatural being, then the meaning of life becomes whatever one chooses to devote one’s own time and energy to – it’s your choice and no one can tell you you’re wrong because it’s something inherently and specifically personal to you. I think there’s amazing freedom in that. By that same virtue, I love seeing people dedicate themselves to labours of love that aren’t underpinned by other motivations like career plans, financial rewards, a desire for influence – no one else may care, but you do, so you do it in spite of obstacles, dismissal, lack of interest, because it means something to you.

https://www.lovebuzz7.com/

The Love Buzz 7″ site is a recent favourite on that score. Massimo Salerno and Mattia Cuda built on work by Joris Baas and Enrico Vincenzi, to create this rather nifty website where they identify and log the owners of the 1,000 hand-numbered copies, and the 200 unnumbered copies with a red marker dash where the number would be, of Nirvana’s first single. Original copies go for several thousand dollars and there’s a quite substantial quantities of fakes out there – a bit of a minefield. What the guys have done is provide a source indicating the features that identify an original, a listing so it’s clear which numbers already belong to a known owner, a map showing where in the world copies have wound up over the years, and a guide to the known test pressings too.

They’ve gone beyond that by adding the stories volunteered by individual owners explaining how they came across their copy, the pedigree of each one and so forth. It’s a rather fun read, for example the way a test pressing of Love Buzz wound up with an east coast distributor called Pier Platters, was purchased by a gentleman called Nihility X, then sold to Discourage Records. Or Chad Channing’s personal memory of snagging the third copy of the single, or the story of Nils Bernstein found under #6.

The photos too are interesting, there’s a certain fascination in the way these repeated shots of the ___ / 1000 box vary in terms of photo quality, position, condition…

The home page scrolls beautifully and intelligently through the core details of the release, the counter indicating that 355 of 1,000 copies have been identified so far – rather impressive for an object as small as a seven inch record and one released 32 years ago – links to the genuine copies currently on sale, and the mission statement to get rid of the bootleg copies…All leading to the submission form at the bottom where people can choose to remain anonymous but are invited to provide their story and/or to have their copy studied remotely to prove its genuine.