THE END OF THE NEW VULGATE

The last post of Carducci’s New Vulgate blog went up today.

TUBEWAY ARMY

"All that we know is hate and machinery" - Gary Numan

I have some sad news for the world. There is such a thing as new wave. It exists. It is more than just a figment of some lame cunts imagination. You’ve heard its influence dribble down through the ages, some diseased and degenerative gene, you’ve watched the hordes of infected electro-lites, felt the pierce of pathetic hook after pathetic hook. While punk trudged onward in the face of new wave and goth and industrial music, there were also new wave, goth and industrial bands that had the same anti-social attitudes, the same affection for profanity and arcane ritualism, and their history is relegated to select yellowing fanzines, warbled cassette tapes, and the spoilt technophiles that have reproduced them in 100010110s for a new degeneration of slime.

It’s a difficult genre of music to write about, if you’re used to considering music with teeth. The withdrawn shudder of over-medicated Marilyn Manson fans, the collapsed nasal cavities of horny Gossip fans; these people can claim genuine connection with the history of new wave as much as anyone. But, there are bands that didn’t succumb to the gestalt of the fabric softener and ice tray miseries, and I’m not just referring to the litany of minimal / cold wave bands that have been rescued from the shoeboxes of middle-aged homosexual Belgians. The first four LPs recorded by Gary Numan, two with Tubeway Army and two as a solo artist, are considered definitive examples of the birth of the new wave. And while the predominant feature of this music is pallid fun time wimpery, Gary Numan offered dystopian, sinister music that shared more in common thematically with the bleak Rudimentry Peni than the shimmering Duran Duran.

Tubeway Army’s first self titled LP opens with ‘Listen To The Sirens’, and the first lines reference Philip K Dick’s Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, one of his stronger novels, the despotic fascist state vs. the paranoid individual, increasingly detached from their own character and sense of self. English dystopian science fiction, from Burgess to Orwell to Ballard, assumes a more literary respectability. PKD would have been, at this stage, a renowned science fiction writer, but still a pulp-ist, and certainly not deserving to be considered in the same class of writing as the aforementioned giants. It’s interesting to consider the effect that PKD had on Numan, whose next record would reference to Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (which became the film Bladerunner).

Numan apparently dragged himself through hell to get onto stage, an autistic introvert without a performative tendency. Most songs on Tubeway Army express an outsider’s perspective, future oriented paranoia. The more active instrument here is the guitar, similar to early Ultravox, but whereas Ultravox had a manic punk energy, Tubeway Army struts, and sometimes plods, and despite a unique, dark presence, there is little indication here that this same band was about to abandon the guitar and embrace the synthesiser, to appear on Top of the Pops.

Replicas opens with a synthesiser salvo, which coagulates into a solid drone, a phased out guitar that hisses across the rest of the song, introducing the dynamic that would carry the next three LPs: minimal guitar, strong mach-men drumming and mesmerising keyboard lines. The lyrics on this are his finest, and indicate an attention to producing science fiction landscapes that shiver under the oppressive weight of an insidious technocracy. Whereas a great deal of the new wave bands would come to present the prosthetic sensibility of 80’s future buzz in aww shucks safe sex shrugging and bright colour sheen, Numan’s autistic genius ensured an ironic empathy with the plight of the replicas of Bladerunner, an intuitive understanding of the power of Philip K Dick’s most memorable sceptical quandary. How do we know we aren’t replicas? Are ‘friends’ electric? The entire album is presented in the close future, paranoid chanting about surveillance culture and horrifying images of rape machines and senseless violence without consequence. This record is his finest, one of the most perfect executions of 1980’s paranoia at the close of the 1970’s.

The Pleasure Principal, also released in 1979, is the first time Numan shed his Tubeway Army (I’ve seen copies of the earlier records released with “Gary Numan & Tubeway Army” on them). The insert features a corny image of the band in future space-nerd costumes, which reduces the power of the cover image, Numan in a plain suit staring vacantly at a glowing red pyramid shape, Numan holding the pyramid over his dial. This record is far less accessible than Replicas, opening with a dark meandering instrumental and his lyrics take on a particularly autistic bent here, less interested in creating powerful images of future shock than exploring the alienated, disaffected ruin of personality that would come to be his most exhausted theme when he was later celebrated by a generation of Reznor slobs. Here, it is still potent and regulated within songs that soar and shriek, and surprisingly this record yielded his first major single, ‘Cars’. Surprising because the song is buried well into the second side, surprising because the rest of the record lacks the pop charms of ‘Cars’, surprising because ‘Cars’ itself seems to be an oblique reference to the Ballard hymnal to machine age perversions, Crash.

Telekon is Numan’s first LP of the 1980’s, and the last in his catalogue that I think offers the kind of distilled menace that would appeal to readers of this fanzine. Whereas he continued to write, up until today, I think he blew his creative load pretty early, and once the aforementioned Reznor appreciation was returned from Numan, his music became a comic expression of the dire, dark energy he effortlessly flaunted on these early records. A recent live show I witnessed presented a gruesome wedding of new metal and industrial aggression into his sensitive fragility, and the sad result was not unlike seeing the pathetic frame of a skinny dweeb who’d spent months chugging protein and shooting steroids, a muscular freak without any self awareness. On Telekon, you can hear the effect that ‘Cars’ had on Numan’s song-writing – perhaps a result of label pressure, perhaps a consequence of his own tired ego. If it isn’t already evident, I don’t read official biographies on musicians or artists I like, because most of them are written by peons who glorify every career move and decision, and most musicians or artists I like seem to hit some middle-aged dementia without any critical ear for their own work. This said, this record is an achievement, and comes too late for A Clockwork Orange and too early for Bladerunner, both movies that would have sounded perfect with Numan on the score. The opening lyric – “and what if God’s dead” – recalls Neitzsche’s mad man at the market, screaming incoherently of the inability of the market-dwellers to cope with the consequences of an expired Deus. It is difficult to think of a pop star at the time who would have followed up a hit single with a record as difficult as this one: no hits, songs decorated with nihilistic abandon. Again, the thematic similarity with the punk bands of the time is striking, but Numan’s approach is not the direct confrontation of punk, but the bizarre perambulations through weird sci-fi imagery that were so distinctly his own.

There was an outsider culture that continued despite the best of the punk bands into the new wave and goth scene, when the same weirdos that a couple years before might have attempted to pick up a guitar and pay tribute to the Ramones were stealing their little sisters synthesiser, downing a couple of their mothers diet pills, and staying up all night in the basements of suburbia trying to rewrite some Kraut-rock sounds into sci-fi savagery, the Orwellian boot grinding your eyes through your skull. History has not been kind to Gary Numan, but listening to these records reveal a distinct vision that was out of touch with his and any time, and will continue to sound like a shot from the future.

An essay from a future issue of Distort about Philip K Dick.

Previously published in Greek fanzine Mountza.

TOTAL CONTROL US 2013

FOR THOSE WHO FEAR TOMORROW

BUY IT HERE.

REVIEW: BIG RED

Big Red #1
“Big Red doesn’t conform to the modern air of fanzine writing, something that puts execution and wit second to laziness and self inflation.”
The introductory polemic to this Melbourne zine lines up a horde of enemies against the wall, without stooping to specify exactly who is copping it. It does provide for a brilliant self inflatory introduction: Big Red won’t review new bands (“most view punk as a tool for self exposure and a societal crutch”), is not for those “who can not reason offensiveness from excellence”, and is dedicated “to the last morsel of intelligible and well delivered punk”.
Features an interview with South Africa’s Wild Youth, who are rightfully compared to Australia’s murder punk, notably Young Identities (reviewed this issue). The Insurgents interview is great: Wes’ dismissal of the band, Brisbane, and hardcore in general is delivered without spare words. Great spiteful reviews, history of punxploitation cinema and a write up on Edith Massey, “Queen of Punk”.
Unique content and visceral approach, with a great eye, most closely resembling Pederast Prophet in style and content, Big Red is / was Flesh World vocalist Liam Osbourne’s magazine, notable for the attention to detail in layout and design, which makes for a worthy keeper…

No hints on where to get this one.

NEW YORK CREW

REVIEW: PAINS

PAINS #6
Hardcore fanzine that is primarily interviews with hardcore bands about hardcore music, with a heavy Canada focus, dedicated to “the boneheads who slam around to moron music. Fuck margarine HC”. I have no idea what margarine HC is, but the Urban Blight tour diary was margarine as fuck, a pretty decent argument that Christian doesn’t take his editorial serious enough.
He’s taken the time to sit down and write out a top 100 hardcore songs 2000-2010, which suggested a particular kind of countenance and patience, and was a unique feature: it would have been nice to read what made the exemplary songs stand out from the thousands of chat scum. Aside from this list, you get very little sense of editorial personality in this issue: great taste, sure, but everyone has great taste in 2012, it’s the defining point of our age, nobody has particularly bad or detestable taste. Public opinion! You gotta go the hard way. Show your might. Show the way.
Fortunately, he’s got some prime content to offset that lack of editorial personality: most important is the Omegas interview, a band with strong presence on record and, obviously, in person, as any interview I’ve read with them has been worth the squinting. Funny fuckheads. The Boston Strangler, Born Bad and Rival Mob interviews aren’t slack, and if anything you could say that where it lacks character, Pains know how to pick the right bands that aren’t gonna throw a drab reply.
Get it here.

REVIEW: HUMAN BEING LAWNMOWER

Human Being Lawnmower #3
Spiv is relentless. Concision is necessary to keep up with him, so I’ll keep it brief. There are very few punk mags that you’d want to read and reread. We know this. Dull writing, boring fuckwits with guitars and no personality… punk invariably means having to be around people who want to rent a character from the past, who speak of agitation in the abstract sense, thespians without genitalia, rebels against toilet training…
Here is the exception! Smart and mean and crude and funny. You will hold onto Human Being Lawnmower. The production values tower over everyone. Spiv’s art grows more distinctive with every scrawl. #3 boasts cover to (heavy cardstock) cover of the dumb punk hits, where punk means The Troggs and Cock Sparrer and New York Niggers and Sweet Lou, etcetera. Six times hot as the sun, and means to hurt EVERYONE.
Try here.

STRAIN

French translation of writing from Distort. Published with a couple of other bestsellers by Ratcharge / Freak Out!

* Distort, une anthologie. Traduction française de textes extraits du fanzine de DX(Total Control, UV Race, Straightjacket Nation, etc), publiés entre 2004 et 2013 à Melbourne, Australie. La rencontre entre la philosophie de Nietzsche, l’éthique de travail de Greg Ginn et la prose tranchante des rock-critics américains des années 70/80 (Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Byron Coley, etc). Sont disséqués/ maltraités/ encensés dans cet ouvrage: Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Steve Albini, Sex Vid, Dry Rot, Stab, Folded Shirt, les h-100’s, Royal Headache, The Ropes, les FU’s, Out Cold, Negative Guest List, le flipper, le phénomène hipsters, le hardcore des années 90, les années zéro, les répercussions du 11 septembre sur le hardcore chrétien, le tout saupoudré d’une montagne de références allant du Velvet aux Cro-Mags, des Stooges à Los Crudos, de Youth Of Today à Eddy Current Suppression Ring. (Traduit en collaboration Ratcharge/ Freak Out!)

Translated with Google into English, back into French, then to English again:

* Strain, an anthology. French translation of texts fanzine DX(Total Control, UV Race, Straightjacket Nation, etc.), published between 2004 and 2013 in Melbourne, Australia. The meeting between the philosophy of Nietzsche, the work ethic of Greg Ginn and strong prose criticism of American rock 70s / 80 (Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Byron Coley, etc..) Are dissected / abuse / leased in this item: Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Steve Albini, Sex Vid, dry rot, Stab, folded shirt, h-100, Royal Headache, ropes, Fu, Out Cold, negative Guest List, pinball, hipsters phenomenon 90s hardcore, year zero, the impact of September 11 on the hard core Christian, all sprinkled with a mountain of references ranging from Velvet Cro-Mags, the Stooges Los Crudos of today’s young Eddy Current Suppression Ring . (Translated in collaboration Ratcharge / Freak Out!)

Order from Ratcharge.

CCR HEADCLEANER

Finally got copies of this ripper here.
Label blab that I endorse: "After a relatively quiet year following their first cassette, Oakland's CCR Headcleaner re-solidified with an expanded lineup but the same inclination for raw, glazed over noise that has captured the attention of discerning weirdos far beyond the Golden State. Increasingly more rhythmic than the atmospheric dirges of the years before, the four tracks on this record range from chaotic noise punk often compared to Puffy Areolas, to more ethereal undertakings not unlike some of the Meat Puppets II album. An ideal primer on redneck psychedelia."