Introduction to the debut issue of Razzmatazz by Josh Clinton.
Hi There, nice to be with you! Welcome one and all to the first ever Razzmatazz which this month features reviews of Elvis Costello & The Roots, Clare, Doug Murphy & Paul Hamilton, and Morrissey. Sandie Shaw once sang Long, long live love. Well I say: Long, long live Razzmatazz. Hope you all enjoy your stay here. Get in touch if there's a band or singer you'd like the Razzmatazz crew to review.Morrissey's classic debut album VIVA HATE has been reissued with a new song (Treat Me Like A Human Being), previously unseen photos and sleeve notes by Chrissie Hynde. Below Simon Paterson gives his verdict:
"Let's pretend that this is exactly the album Morrissey originally wanted to release back in 1988. That way we can dispense with gripes about 'Late Night, Maudlin Street' being slightly edited, or 'The Ordinary Boys' being excised altogether and replaced with a rough, unfinished-seeming song ('Treat Me Like A Human Being'), and the removal of the musicians' credits, and the changes to the album title font (it's now in Old English typeface - suitably Morrisseyan; the fact that it's difficult to read may have tickled him as appropriate), and so on. And let's not waste this short, precious time by throwing lines from his 'Paint A Vulgar Picture' back at him. Let's not finger point. You can get all that stuff elsewhere. We will, unavoidably, have to mention The Smiths, just for contextualisation purposheshhhhh, but really, let's just address the record as a record. The meaning and the moaning.
The opening noise we hear is of the pause button of a reel-to-reel tape recorder being released and a guitarist already in squall mode. That detail, plus the white reggae bass riff and the heavily-gated snare drum, sets 'Alsatian Cousin' (and the rest of the album) in its mid-80s framework. Its production values are deeply dated but the self-eating envy is timeless. Morrissey is consumed by the jealousy of the jilted, demands that he be told whether the one he loves loves someone else. He admits that he already knows full well - he has the gen (the brilliantly saucy detail of 'on a groundsheet, under canvas, with your tent flap OPEN WIDE!'), but he wants to suffer. 'Alsatian Cousin' is a bold and brash opener, with no discernible song structure (like most post-1976 white music there is no musical bridge), Morrissey rolling his Rs with ham actor gusto, and the song collapses in an unreconciled mess (much like love itself when it disappears). The same situation is addressed later in 'I Don't Mind If You Forget Me' - scholastic references link both songs - but in a more stoic, less vengeful manner. It's a buoyant, chirpy tune, a kind of laughing back the tears coping mechanism, but it has a lyric that has always irritated me: "Rejection is one thing, but rejection from a fool is cruel". That doesn't make sense. To be rejected by 'a fool' is surely preferable to rejection from a lover, close friend, parents or hero figure. "Rejection from a fool is bearable" would have been a better line, don't you think? What? You reject my suggestion? Well, you're a fool and your rejection is bearable.
'Little Man, What Now?' takes its title from a Hans Fallada novel but Rev. Morrissey takes his reading from a 1969 copy of the 'TV Times' or 'Look-In'. Like 'Alsatian Cousin', it's an atmospheric if tuneless cameo, with Morrissey keeping a steely grip on the slippery edges of remembrance. Has he ever revealed the identity of the 18 year old star? Does it matter? What is of importance here is the commitment to hold close and dear the stuff that magic springs from. Morrissey is that rare bird who seeks to fly to where the spirit might live (in 'Hairdresser On Fire', recorded during the "Viva Hate" sessions, he pleads to his affection-object, "Can you squeeze me into an empty page of your diary and supernaturally change me?"). He knows that materialism, with its in-built obsolescence, will never satisfy - and maybe that is why he has radically transformed (disfigured, some might argue) his back catalogue, leaving his fans "truly, truly disappointed". Morrissey sings plaintively and compassionately, not so much for the mysterious figure but for his fast-receding past, his only security.
'Everyday [sic] Is Like Sunday' is a masterpiece of album programming. This is the reward for surviving the opening two challenging songs of which die-easy Smiths fans would not have been too enamoured. (And this is one of the great aspects about "Viva Hate". From this distance in time, it's hard to recall that The Smiths were in a creative cul-de-sac and Morrissey was in danger of becoming lazy and self-parodic after only four years. Producer and co-writer Stephen Street managed to keep one of Morrissey's feet in a comfy slipper and the other in a hiking boot.) 'Everyday [sic] Is Like Sunday' is a culmination of Morrissey's gifts. Hairpiece 100's Nick Heyward, when interviewed about the craft of songwriting, singled out 'She's Leaving Home' by The Beatles, acclaiming the use of the verb "clutching". I similarly applaud '… Sunday' for its opening line, one of the great British lines in Pop, "Trudging slowly over wet sand". He then miraculously caps that scene-setter with a genius piece of Hancockian tragicomedy - "Back to the bench where your clothes were stolen." Street's grand, proud orchestration, cheerily teetering on the precipice of Last Night Of The Promposity, supports every acute lyric detail ("Etch a postcard" - an excellent observation; that's what you do because your pen has leaked). It is here where Morrissey puts his ambivalence to its limits - does one succumb to the drudgery of it all, or does one relish and exult in the broken-kitchen-sink comedy? Like the Jewish joke - "The food in this restaurant is terrible!", "Yes, and such small portions!" - Morrissey, in his travels and travails, has had a dreadful time and will be going back for some more as soon as possible.
'Bengali In Platforms' is supposedly racist but I don't see that. The line "Life is hard enough when you belong here" is contentious, yes, but - like "Rejection from a fool is cruel" mentioned earlier - I think it's just poorly expressed. What has been overlooked is the comic image he planted in the song's title: The protagonist is both out of step with fashion and clumsy and ill-fitting in society. It's deeply hypocritical of music journalists to accuse Morrissey of racism whilst their earphones are blasting anti-Semitic or misogynistic rap into their thin heads. And, no, I'm not upset about Morrissey's recent statement to the effect that he would vote for UKIP. He's from a long line of Right-of-centre Mancunians - Ian Curtis voted Conservative in 1979 and is therefore solely responsible
for 11 years of Thatcherism; Anthony Burgess, John Cooper Clarke, Shaun Ryder and Mark E. Smith are non-Socialists - so his political leanings are of no surprise or concern. '… Platforms' is a pretty tune with an acid message beguilingly sung. And if it's discomforting to some sensitivities, it shouldn't cause sleepless nights. It's a truth-ache, that's all.
The strength and resilience of "Viva Hate" is in Morrissey constantly pushing his talents to the limits, seeking new ways to say the same things, or finding fertility in well-tilled fields. And, in the narrow scope of British indie pop, he is willing to experiment and be daring. 'Late Night, Maudlin Street' is overlong, and lyrically somewhat pointless, but what holds the interest is its very rambling nature and the point that it doesn't really have a point. It's a mind unravelling before your very ears but, typical of this coy boy, there is no full disclosure. As he crooned in 'Shoplifters Of The World', "My only weakness is - well, never mind". What is revealed is his terror of age (and, by logical process, and quoting Larkin, "then the only end of age"). On the final track, 'Margaret On The Guillotine', he requests that Thatcher die because "people like you make me feel so old inside". Morrissey's tragedy is he never felt young and all his life is a wistful longing to be elsewhere and somebody else. It's his pain that has provided us with so much pleasure. Forgive him his trespasses, even though he forgives no-one else theirs. He is not a perfect human being and "Viva Hate" is not a perfect album ('Treat Me Like A Human Being' is forgettable; I was forgetting it as I was listening to it) but that's not important. What's important is whether I would be sadder without either in my life and the answer is "Yes". Warts and all, I need him around to make pronouncements that have me chewing my fists and I need 'Suedehead' to restore my faith in the transportive power of Pop."
Album of the Month: Walk Us Uptown Elvis Costello & The Roots. (Blue Note).
Costello has never been a musical snob. The man has recorded Country songs, Punk songs, produced Ska albums, recorded duets with crooner Tony Bennett and made records with string quartets. Costello has also never made a secret of his love of soul music. One of his best selling singles in the U.K was his take on the Sam and Dave classic I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down. In more recent years he has collaborated with legends such as Solomon Burke and Allen Toussaint. Although it's probably fair to describe Chewing Gum (from his late 80s album Spike) as being "bottom lip biting, white man funk" but this album is something else.
His collaborators The Roots haven't put a foot wrong in twenty years and every record they've released is worth buying. To many The Roots are best known for being the tight little house band on Jimmy Fallon's chat show. After performing an excellent version of Black & White World with Costello on Fallon's show, Roots main man Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and Mr Costello originally thought they'd put out an e.p for Record of The Day. However, the fine ideas and brilliant mistakes just flowed and flowed.
If you're a fan of Costello classics of yesteryear such as Watching The Detectives, Pills and Soap, and Invasion Hit Parade - you are in for a treat. A few of his tracks have been re-worked, re-imagined or just played about with in a very happening way. The recent Metalica/Lou Reed collaboration was an idea that should have been left on the drawing board but this is something good.This collection of songs isn't Costello trying to be a Hip Hop artist and it isn't The Roots trying to sound like angry young New Wavers - it's something entirely new and exciting. Co-producer Steven Mandel is a vital ingredient as are The Brent Fischer Orchestra who appear on five tracks. This album is a killer and sounds better on each listen.
The Wise Up Ghost-website is up: http://www.elviscostello.com/micro/wise-up-ghost/
Kitty Davies' review of Games by Claire and Fishes by Doug Murphy & Paul Hamilton.
Claire 'Games'
(https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/games-ep/id660705276)
/ Doug Murphy & Paul Hamilton 'Fishes'
(http://bisonics.bandcamp.com/track/fishes)
These two
songs are diametrically opposing bookends to that immortal yet temporal thing
called 'love'. Claire revels and glories in it - the newness and freshness, the
love of being loved, the loveliness of loving. 'Games' is a summer(y evocation)
of love. 'Fishes', by contrast, is the voice of a son burnt by love and now
wandering and wondering in a dead wintry landscape.
Musically, 'Games' and 'Fishes' are poles
apart - Claire's sound is synthesised, mechanical, predictable, familiar
(redolent of young love in bloom - the synthesis of minds, the mechanical
nature of sex, the predictability of rituals of love, the ache to become
familiar, getting to know all about you); Murphy & Hamilton's sound
abruptly changes from the opening gambit of squelchy late-70s new wave
(sarcastically satirical about the whole notion of putting down confessions in
a Light Entertainment node; each line of the first verse is punctuated by
onomatopoeic guitar effects, underlining and undermining the blows dealt by the
bullying nature of Life) to a long, low-key vaguely menacing jazz riff that
rises and falls like cold waves. Whereas Claire deploy repetition - the
electronic, steady drumbeats, the one-line celestial melodic hook, the single
note keyboard rhythm - to celebrate the oneness of true love, Murphy &
Hamilton go to the other extreme by utilising repetition to signify the
solitude and loneliness of a loveless state. Claire's tune is all-embracing,
it's a dance tune (and who dances alone?). Murphy & Hamilton's is oppressive,
it's a contemplative song (and who contemplates with another?).
Lyrically, 'Games' is static; love is here
and here it will remain. There are no shadows, not even in the brightly-sung
refrain, 'It's all right / It's all right / As long as I can be with you'. It's
a clear expression of wishing. 'Fishes', for all its six minutes, has no chorus
and its lyric, like fish, moves constantly - from the outer reaches of the
universe down, down, down to planet Earth and right down into a specific scene
(I won't spoil it; the 'fun', such as it is, is following the narrative though
to its tragically hilarious/uproariously sad end).
Vocally, too, Claire and M & H are
incompatible. Hers is a voice of the now-times; she has the patented ululation,
the sensual longing, she is in tune and in time, she dips and soars, she is
perfectly pleasing. And this is all right. Because love is all right. M &
H, however, is the voice of the out-of-tune-with-the-times and
out-of-time-with-the-tune. Stripped of the power of love, he moans, drones,
screams and shouts. It sounds wrong. Because being out of love is wrong. But
it's not wrong. This is pure naked emotion, an exorcism. It's a truth-ache in a
pop world where so much else is a true-fake. 'Games' is a song of innocence -
adorable, shimmering, shiny, shallow innocence - and 'Fishes' is a song of
(hateful, fearsome, dark, deep) experience. Both are brilliant in their own
worlds but don't ever expect them to get together over a couple of drinks.
And Finally HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO... President Barack Obama whose special day is on the 4th of August
Obama says: "I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is dumb war. What I am opposed to is rash war."
