More Mary Hansen (Stereolab) Obscurities

I was in the casino last weekend to play a little poker and make a couple of bets on the NFL playoff games scheduled for that weekend. The place I go has a huge sports book, with multiple giant screens covering a vast back wall, showing every current game (football, college and pro basketball, hockey, etc.) being played at that particular time on various broadcast networks.

As I was walking in to the space to place my bet at one of the automated machines (go Kansas City!), I was jolted when I suddenly heard Stereolab's "Lo Boob Oscillator" blasting at top volume all around me. Now, Stereolab isn't generally what you'd expect to hear coming out of a casino's music system... so needless to say, I was momentarily confused, as I couldn't immediately place the source. Then I looked up and one of the display screens, and saw it was running the following commercial for Hotels.com:

I couldn't believe it - a huge corporation choosing to set their ad to a tune by a band that I'll wager the vast majority of Middle American viewers had never heard of, and one of my favorite songs of all time, as I've related in a previous posting here! Now, I'm not overly superstitious... but I took that out-of-the-blue Stereolab encounter as a good omen... as it turned out to be. I not only won my football bet that night, but also came away with a solid win at the hold 'em tables.

As I've detailed time and again here, I adore Stereolab, and over the years have managed to gather up pretty much all of their recorded output as a group (or "Groop", if you will), both albums and singles, along with many of the band collaborations and individual member side projects. In the past, I've posted a couple of these harder-to-find releases here earlier, including the Rose, My Rocket-Brain! tour EP from 2004 and the Eaten Horizons Or The Electrocution Of Rock art-house release from 2007.

I was ecstatic when they reformed in 2019 after a ten-year hiatus, and went running like a bastard to their show at Boston's Royale back in September of that year, a couple of months before COVID hit (damn, hard to believe that show was THAT long ago...). The concert was superb, and even with the long break, they didn't seem to have missed a beat (and yes, they played "Lo Boob Oscillator"). But seeing the group up on stage that night once again made me wistful for the presence of Mary Hansen, their late percussionist, keyboardist and background vocalist, who died in 2002. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Mary brought an ineffable quality to Stereolab's music:

Hansen's voice was the perfect complement to Sadier's; their singing styles and vocal range were very similar . . . but different enough to add nuance and color to many of the band's songs.

So, in the wake of a previous request for these items from an intrepid blog visitor, I thought I'd post a few more releases I have that feature Mary's work.

• Europa 51 - Abstractions

Over the years, Stereolab's drummer Andy Ramsay has been the catalyst behind an number of the band's experimental singles/EPs, offshoots and collaborations, Either with his bandmates or working independently, Ramsay has appeared on, written for or arranged releases with artists as diverse as The High Llamas, Ui, Wire, The Charlatans, Add N to (X), and many, many more. In the past, I've featured some of his work here on this blog. But this release was probably his most eclectic.

Named after Roberto Rossellini's early '50s Italian film starring Ingrid Bergman, Europa 51’s lone album, Abstractions, is the work of Ramsay and fellow Stereolab member Simon Johns, also featuring Mary Hansen, High Llamas members Dominic Murcott and John Bennett, jazz bass player Simon Thorpe and classical harpist Celine Saout. The album was a hybrid project that combined styles like lounge, jazz, bluegrass, and folk. While this album sounds somewhat like Stereolab from time to time, in many ways it goes far beyond anything The Groop had ever done - unfortunately, with somewhat uneven results. Mary's vocals are featured on tracks 4 through 7 ("Voyeurism", "Three Steps In The Sun", "Golden Age Of Gameshows" and "Free Range Corona"), and are lovely as always. But be sure to check out the entire album - it may not all be to your taste, but you will definitely find sounds that pique your interest.

• Splitting the Atom - Splitting The Atom EP:

Another Ramsay one-off, a short-lived project with Stereolab's sound engineer Simon Holliday and Peter Kember, a.k.a. Sonic Boom (Spaceman 3, Spectrum, etc.). Only 2,500 copies of this EP were pressed for release on black vinyl, making it one of the rarest Stereolab-related discs. Mary Hansen added vocals to one track here.

Trivia: "Monkey Brain" (vinyl pops and all) was later used as the soundtrack to a short film/digital video called "four" by Man and Martin, described as "four whole minutes of pulsating thought muesli, ultra-violet and ultra-compact bulletproof adventures for ages four years and above" (Man and Martin is graphic designer, sculptor and AppleMacintosh convert Andy Martin). "four" premiered at the onedotzero2 digital film festival at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London in May 1998. Here it is, if you'd like to see it:

• Various Artists - Spooky Sounds Of Now:

An ostensibly Halloween-themed compilation CD - plus a very cool comic collection in book form ("Spooky Tales", subtitled 'Spirit Summoning Stories', edited by Mark Baines) - all housed in a lidded box. In addition to inclusions from alternative heavy hitters such as Jad Fair, Yo La Tengo and The High Llamas, this release also includes a short track by Blips, "Blip^/Blip~", featuring Stereolab's Tim Gane and Mary along with Sonic Boom once again. It sounds a lot like what was released on the Turn On side project, also released that year - hard to tell if it was an outtake from that session or not. No matter - it's a pretty good tune.

Here's the full track list:

1. Dymaxion - The Haunted Radio
2. Blips - Blip^/Blip~
3. Jad Fair & Jason Willett - Werewolf of London Town
4. Two Dollar Guitar - The Lonliest Monk
5. Herald - It's Under The Waltzers
6. Kooljerk - Mailor Jeune
7. Mount Vernon Arts Lab - Scooby Don't
8. Cylinder - Red Moss
9. Pink Kross - Spooky Dooky
10. Mystery Dick - Screambirds
11. Amplifier - Cat Whisker
12. The Yummy Fur - Saturday Night Mo-Mo
13. Dick Johnson - Vertigo
14. Angel Corpus Christi - Clown Sex
15. Project Dark - Full Length Mirror
16. G. Mack - Red Moss [Frame Trigger]
17. the Dramatics - Hallucination of a Deranged Mind [Inspired by Coffin Joe]
18. Yo La Tengo - 3D
19. Supermalprodelica - L'etat De Grace
20. High Llamas - Spool to Spool
21. Will Prentice - Singing Floorboards

• Alternative 3 - Original Soundtrack Recording:

In June of 1977, England's Anglia Television aired a documentary called 'Alternative 3' on its weekly Science Report program. The episode was presented as a factual expose, in that the show's investigators had found evidence that life on Earth was soon to be doomed to extinction from global warming, and the two superpowers of that time (Russia and the United States) had been secretly working together for decades to terraform and eventually

colonize the Moon and Mars with selected superior humans - leaving the rest of us here on this planet to die off when the inevitable end came. The show detailed what appeared to be a global 'brain drain', with scientists, engineers and other highly skilled technicians and thinkers from all over the world seemingly disappearing or dying - but, in the course of the program's investigation, finding that they all had been recruited for the interplanetary program, and sequestered at a secret base to work on it. 'Alternative 3' was filled with interviews with authoritative personnel and film footage showing the level and scope of work on this secret plan up to the present day.

Within minutes of its airing, network and government phone lines were inundated with thousands of calls from jolted viewers, demanding more information on this all-too-real effort. Needless to say, 'Alternative 3' was all just a big hoax, a spoof of similarly styled conspiracy documentaries from that period. It was originally planned to air on April 1st (April Fool's Day) of that year, in order to drive that point home, but due to production issues was not broadcast until June 20.

Needless to say, it freaked a whole lot of people out, in the same manner that Orson Welles' radio broadcast of War Of The Worlds caused mass hysteria almost forty years earlier. Although Anglia Television and the show's producers freely and readily admitted that it was fake, the basic points and premises of 'Alternative 3' live on to this day in various forms in other global cabal/UFO/extraterrestrial conspiracy theories.

The score for the 1977 broadcast was composed by no less than Brian Eno, who subsequently released a portion of it on his 1978 album Music For Films. And in 2001, a collective of musicians (including Stereolab, Add N to (X), Richard Thomas and others, all recording under the Alternative 3 moniker) recorded and released an 'alternative' version of the film score, allegedly for a feature film on the hoax that was scheduled for release that same year (I didn't find any evidence that this movie was ever produced or released, however).

This album is promoted on the label's website as "Super fried electronic madness. Long lost sessions mostly recorded at the Centre of Sound in London plus some dubs done at the ‘labs studio, stretched and twisted into dense and filmic slices of electronica." Can't really argue with any of that description!

 

So here for your listening pleasure is a smorgasbord of Stereolab's Mary Hansen-related ephemera:

• Europa 51 - Abstractions, released by London-based experimental music label Lo Recordings in 2003;
• Splitting the Atom - Splitting The Atom EP, put out on Stereolab's own Duophonic Super 45s label in 1997;
• The Spooky Sounds Of Now compilation, launched by Scottish independent label Vesuvius Records, also in 1997; and
• Alternative 3 - Original Soundtrack Recording, another Lo Recordings release, put out on April 30th, 2001

Have a listen and once again contemplate and revel in the artistry of the late, lamented vocalist, who left this world way too soon - you are still missed, Mary, by multitudes of music fans.

And as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

• Europa 51 - Abstractions: Send Email
• Splitting The Atom - Spiltting The Atom EP: Send Email
• Various Artists - Spooky Sounds Of Now: Send Email
• Alternative 3 - Original Soundtrack Recording: Send Email

Various Artists - No Alternative

 

Holy smokes - this seminal compilation is THIRTY YEARS OLD this week!

To understand why this disc is so essential, and so celebrated, I direct you to Stereogum's writeup on it from ten years ago, on No Alternative's twentieth anniversary - can't add a word to this superb summation.

I'll just save my breath, and instead provide you all with possibly the best and timeliest collection of then-rarities and unreleased songs by some of the giants of alternative music of that period.  Here's No Alternative, released on Arista Records on October 26th, 1993.  Enjoy this great throwback to an interesting and exciting era in modern music, and, as always, let me know what you think.

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T.R.A.C. (Top Risk Action Company) - Nice Up The Nation: The First Demos

 

Of Schulz... and Strummer... and second acts.

(Just read this over; this is a pretty meandering post... but it gets to the main point soon enough.  Just bear with me...)

I read a lot - that's my thing.  I rarely if ever watch TV; I'd much rather spend the evening with a book in my lap and a drink at my elbow, especially on these warm and fleeting summer nights up here when I can do so on my front porch.  

My tastes are pretty eclectic; in the past couple of months, I've gone through Patti Smith's Just Kids, F. Scott Fitzgerald's first three novels (This Side Of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned (the ending of which I HATED) and The Great Gatsby (for the first time in more than twenty years)), David McCullough's final book (before his death last year) The Pioneers (which frankly in my opinion wasn't as compelling as any of his previous histories - no offense, but I think he should have hung it up after his second-to-last one, the brilliant The Wright Brothers), Barbara Tuchman's Stilwell and the American Experience In China (superb, although sometimes hard to keep track of all the Chinese names), Nathaniel Philbrick's Battle of the Little Bighorn history The Last Stand, and all three volumes of Edmund Morris' comprehensive biography of Theodore Roosevelt's life and presidency.  While taking in these larger tomes, I usually read other shorter/less-serious books for "dessert", such as obscure Jim Thompson hardboiled crime novels I didn't get through the first time (like A Swell-Looking Babe and Pop. 1280), Wild and Crazy Guys (documenting the rise of comedy mavericks like Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy in the '80s and '90s), and a recent compilation of Shary Flenniken's raunchy and insightful Trots and Bonnie comics from the old National Lampoon magazine.

I buy new books practically every other weekend, and have what I think is a pretty decent home library.  But I rarely if ever buy books just to "buy" them - I read everything I purchase, because something looks interesting and informative to me.

With that being said, there's really only one series that I collect just to "have", due to one of my childhood obsessions - the Charlie Brown cartoon reprints.  In 2004, Fantagraphics Books published the first in a series of books containing the entire print run of Peanuts, Charles Schulz's beloved, long-running and internationally famous comic strip.  Starting with the first strip published in 1950, Fantagraphics released two volumes a year, each volume containing two years of strips.  Over the next twelve years, the publisher put out what ended up being a total of 26 volumes capturing every comic printed between 1950 and 2000, along with a final volume containing collection of Schulz strips, cartoons, stories, and illustrations that appeared outside of the daily newspaper strip.

It's my personal feeling that Peanuts, and Charles Schulz, peaked in the Seventies.  By that time, the cartoonist had been drawing the strip for over two decades, and had all but perfected the complicated interplay of relationships between the characters.  And most importantly during that period, the character Snoopy had yet to take over and dominate the strip - the dog still interacted somewhat with the other characters, and his activities complemented those of (ostensible main character) Charlie Brown and the gang.  

But by the end of that decade, Snoopy's fantasy lives (the WWI flying ace, Joe Cool, novelist, etc.) began to be the focus of the comic.  He no longer needed any of the other strip characters to "be" - he just needed his imagination.  In support of this new focus on Snoopy, Schulz began constructing a entire side life for him existing apart from that of the other Peanuts characters, beginning with the 1970 introduction of Snoopy's bird friend Woodstock... and in the years that followed with beagle members of Snoopy's immediate family, including Spike, Belle, Olaf and the like.  In my opinion, this shift of focus dragged the entire strip down and completely screwed up the overall dynamic.  I was a huge fan of Peanuts when I was a kid, but after around 1980 I ceased to pay very much attention to it.

With that said, over the years I've collected every volume of the Fantagraphics Peanuts series up through the first thirty years or so of the strip, through the early 1980s run - the initial fifteen books.  But I've never felt quite "right" about stopping there.  As you can probably determine from my music posts, I'm a completist, and I like having a full set, whether that's the total discography of a band I like or all the books in a particular collection.  So last year I began a search for the remaining volumes, and found what I thought was the next in the series for sale at a discount on eBay, The Complete Peanuts: 1981 to 1982.  When it arrived the next week, I took the new book down to the section of my library containing the other Peanuts volumes... only to find that I ALREADY had a copy of that particular one, which I must've purchased unconsciously in years prior.

I couldn't return it, and I wouldn't just throw it out, so I did the next best thing; there's a really good used bookstore across town from where I live, which has thousands of volumes in various genres on sale and also runs a decent book-buying program.  I figured I could take my unneeded tome over to the shop and get a few bucks out of it, or possibly swap it out for something on sale there that I might be more interested in.

That weekend, I went over to the bookstore and made a deal with the proprietor for a reasonable price for my book; it was in almost-new condition, so I did pretty well.  Instead of taking the money and running, I took the time to look around while I was there, to see if there was anything that semi-struck my fancy.  And I found it in the "Popular Music" section - Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer, a 2007 biography of the Clash frontman, written by his longtime friend, music journalist Chris Salewicz.  As I've mentioned before, The Clash are one of my all-time favorite bands, so I couldn't buy this book fast enough...

...And I found it well worth the acquisition.  Salewicz's excellent book goes through Strummer's life in intricate detail.  I found the following review on the GoodReads.com site - I heartily concur with every word, and can add nothing to this succinct and superb review:

The Clash was--and still is--one of the most important groups of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Indebted to rockabilly, reggae, Memphis soul, cowboy justice, and '60s protest, the overtly political band railed against war, racism, and a dead-end economy, and in the process imparted a conscience to punk. Their eponymous first record and London Calling still rank in Rolling Stone's top-ten best albums of all time, and in 2003 they were officially inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Joe Strummer was the Clash's front man, a rock-and-roll hero seen by many as the personification of outlaw integrity and street cool. The political heart of the Clash, Strummer synthesized gritty toughness and poetic sensitivity in a manner that still resonates with listeners, and his untimely death in December 2002 shook the world, further solidifying his iconic status.

Music journalist Chris Salewicz was a friend to Strummer for close to three decades and has covered the Clash's career and the entire punk movement from its inception. With exclusive access to Strummer's friends, relatives, and fellow musicians, Salewicz penetrates the soul of an icon. He uses his vantage point to write the definitive biography of Strummer, charting his enormous worldwide success, his bleak years in the wilderness after the Clash's bitter breakup, and his triumphant return to stardom at the end of his life. In the process, Salewicz argues for Strummer's place in a long line of protest singers that includes Woody Guthrie, John Lennon, and Bob Marley, and examines by turns Strummer's and punk's ongoing cultural influence.

One of the main areas of Strummer's life I was eager to get to in reading this book was the circumstances behind the dissolution of The Clash in late August 1983, when Mick Jones was summarily dismissed from the group.  Over the years, there have been various conjectures, claims and counterclaims surrounding who exactly pulled the trigger on Mick and why - was it Bernie Rhodes, who reentered the band's orbit as manager in 1981, after being dismissed from that role three years earlier?  Was it a decision by Joe alone, or a joint one with fellow band member Paul Simonon?  The book is sort of wishy-washy in terms of definitively pointing the dirty stick at anyone in particular, and I won't spoil anything for those of you who haven't had the chance to read it yet... although reading between the lines, Strummer does not come off looking particularly well in this episode.

Mick reflected on the internal politics that eventually split up the group during an interview for the BBC 2 programme Def II, circa 1990:

“It all started going wrong actually when Topper left…Topper left and it was never really the same, but we could have carried on, but then I got fired (laughs)…but we’d really stopped communicating by that time. We just managed to maintain a grunting level of civility, you know, before, but it was kind of all set up as well, you know, I was set up really, and that was kind of political, behind the back.

People were moving and trying to be influential, and different people were coming between members of the group, you know, things like that. All the things that start happening, you know, when you become really successful… you become a different kind of asshole. I turned up the day I was fired and got me guitar out, you know, and I think it was Joe it was who managed to muster up the courage to say that he didn’t want to play with me anymore, and when somebody says that to you…I just packed my guitar…just whoa… hey, you know, OK bye, and that was it. I walked, and Bernie came running out after me with a cheque in his hand, you know like a gold watch or something…which added insult to injury, but I took it anyway, and about two days mourning, and I started on the next group.”

The timeline of Jone's immediate post-Clash work has always seemed a bit scrambled to me; memories of participants in that period that I've read are variously contradictory and confused in terms of time periods and activities.  So I've tried on my own to come up with a plausible sequence, based on all of the information I could gather...

I'd always been under the impression/assumption that Jones formed Big Audio Dynamite in the weeks after his departure from The Clash.  But apparently that wasn't quite true.  Jones' initial post-Clash landing spot, within days of his dismissal, was as a member of General Public, Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger's new project formed in the wake of The English Beat's breakup earlier that year.  With Mick on board as lead guitarist, General Public became a British New Wave/ska 'supergroup' of sorts, containing former members of Dexy's Midnight Runners and The Specials along with The Beat and The Clash.  But Jones' tenure in the group was short-lived; by the late fall of 1983, less than three months after leaving The Clash and halfway through the recording sessions for General Public's debut album All The Rage (where he contributed guitar to "Hot You're Cool", "Tenderness", "Where's The Line?" and many other tracks), he had already moved on.

Jone's next group, Top Risk Action Company (T.R.A.C) came together, it seems, in early 1984.  The story, as told by saxophonist John "Boy" Lennard (ex-Theatre Of Hate - Jones was the producer on that band's only LP, 1982's Westworld), is a bit inaccurate in regards to time, in that Jones had departed The Clash six months earlier - perhaps the 'spliff' smoke mentioned below left him somewhat confused:

"T.R.A.C. came about when I was at Mick's place. He got up to phone the press to confirm he was leaving the Clash... He came back, rolled a spliff and said he wanted to start a band with Topper and I."

As mentioned above, Jones also asked former Clash bandmate Topper Headon and Basement 5 bassist Leo Williams to join the nascent band with Lennard and himself, and the quartet began rehearsing and recording demos in the early spring of 1984.  But in hindsight, I don't believe that Mick was serious about prepping an actual album for release with this group.  He appears to be just exploring and experimenting with different sounds at this time for his own benefit.  In addition, Top Risk Action Company almost immediately faced some band turmoil; Headon's on-again/off-again heroin addition made a serious resurgence during this time.  As per Lennard again:

"I think [Mick] didn’t feel confident Topper could hold it together and was feeling overwhelmed and [therefore] closed it down [by sacking Headon]."

After Headon's firing, rehearsals became more sporadic, and Lennard began drifting away to other projects.  With that, T.R.A.C., as a viable enterprise, was over and done with before the summer of 1984 was out... not that this appeared to be any great loss for Jones.  It seems clear now that Mick himself wasn't too keen on pursuing his evolving musical direction with that group of musicians, and all of the demos the band recorded were shelved.

Into what remained of T.R.A.C. (namely Jones and Williams), Don Letts and Greg Roberts were recruited in July/August of 1984... and from the ashes of that former band rose the phoenix that was Big Audio Dynamite.  BAD's first gigs were in October 1984, and their debut LP This Is Big Audio Dynamite was released in November 1985, sparking off a decade of successful and critically-acclaimed albums and gigs.

That isn't to say that what Top Risk Action Company came up with pre-BAD was a bunch of crap.  What survived of the band's demos were recently recovered, remastered, and released on a bootleg CD.  Stylistically, the songs on this disc are to me somewhere between Mick Jones' genre-hopping dance songs on Combat Rock (e.g. "The Beautiful People Are Ugly Too", "Atom Tan", "Inoculated City") and proto-Big Audio Dynamite post-punk dance/funk/reggae (indeed, the demo version of "The Bottom Line" here was reworked and released on BAD's first album). 

Here's the full tracklist:

1. The Prolific 

2. Winning (Napoleon Of Notting Hill) 

3. Gone To The Dogs 

4. Ringmaster 

5. Astro Turf 

6. Interaction 

7. Nation 

8. Apprentice 

9. Ducane Road

10. Fare Dodgers 

11. The Bottom Line 

12. Euroshima (Edit)

13. Euroshima (Unedited)

 

Lineup: 

 

Mick Jones: Vocals/Guitar 

Topper Headon: Drums 

Leo Williams: Bass 

John "Boy" Lennard: Sax

On the whole, this release may not be everyone's cup of tea.  But at the very least, we can get a glimpse as to what was going in Mick Jones' mind at the time, and get a sense of his music creation process.  

I'll leave John Lennard again with the final word regarding T.R.A.C.:

"I thought it was a creative period for him but Mick is slow to bring it up. Great memories!"

Here for your listening pleasure and to add to your musical memories is Nice Up The Nation: The First Demos, a bootleg compilation of Top Risk Action Company tunes recorded during the summer of 1984.  Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Various Artists - Until The End Of The World (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

I was saddened to learn of the death in Pittsfield, Massachusetts last week of singer and actress Julee Cruise. About four years ago, she announced that she was suffering from systemic lupus, a painful autoimmune condition that left her depressed and unable to move and walk. Reports state that she took her own life at her home, with The B-52's song "Roam" playing as she died (Cruise was a touring member of The B-52's in the early 1990s, replacing Cindy Wilson who took a few years off to raise her children; I remember seeing her on stage at a band show I attended in Washington, DC during that period).

In a post I wrote almost a dozen years ago, I detailed how I first came across Cruise's music and my impressions regarding it - the melancholy, haunting quality that both repels and attracts the listener. After the release of her debut album Floating Into The Night in 1989, Cruise issued a follow-up, The Voice Of Love, four years later. As with the first album, almost all of the songs on her sophomore release were written by director David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti, so the sound and atmosphere are remarkably similar to Floating Into The Night. The Voice Of Love is more of a continuation of her debut, rather than a stand-alone entity. If you liked the first, than this one will be right up your alley as well.

Between these two albums, Cruise recorded a Lynch/Badalamenti-modified cover of an old Elvis Presley song, "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears", for the soundtrack to Wim Wenders' scifi drama Until The End Of The World, starring William Hurt. The plot of the film had something to do with in a finding and using a device that can record visual experiences and visualize dreams... but the end result was so confusing and convoluted that the few people who DID go to see the movie were left flummoxed by it. Cashing in on his success with small, cerebral films like Paris, Texas and Wings Of Desire, Wenders managed to secure a budget of $22 million for this latest film, an amount more than the cost of all of his previous films combined. And he proceeded to spend every penny of that money, spreading his production over almost half a year with setups in 11 countries.

While Graeme Revell (co-founder of the Australian industrial band SPK) was commissioned to compose the movie theme and other incidental music for the film, Wenders asked a number of his favorite recording artists (including Cruise) to contribute songs as well for inclusion. For their selections, he asked them to anticipate the kind of music they would be making a decade later, when the film was set. It was Wenders' desire to use every song he received to its fullest extent that ultimately contributed to the overall length of the film. The initial cut was reportedly TWENTY HOURS long, from which the director and producer whittled down to a more standard running time versions of 2 1/2 and 3 hours (which Wenders called the "Reader's Digest" versions). There is also reportedly a five-hour "director's" cut of this film which has been screened at various festivals over the years.

...Not that any of that mattered. The truncated versions of Until The End Of The World were released to theaters, first in Germany in September 1991, and later in the U.S. that December, and overall the flick was a commercial failure, managing to gross only about $830,000 against its $22 million budget.  Critics at the time savaged it; Roger Ebert gave the film 2 stars out of 4, describing it as lacking the "narrative urgency" required to sustain interest in the story, and wrote that it "plays like a film that was photographed before it was written, and edited before it was completed". He went on to say that a documentary about the globe-trekking production would likely have been more interesting than the film itself.  Other reviewers were even less kind.

But while the film flopped, the soundtrack was, frankly, amazing, featuring great songs by some of the top alternative performers of the day.  Wenders chose well.  Here's the soundtrack lineup:

1. "Opening Title" – Graeme Revell
2. "Sax and Violins" – Talking Heads
3. "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" – Julee Cruise
4. "Move with Me (Dub)" – Neneh Cherry
5. "The Adversary" – Crime & the City Solution
6. "What's Good" – Lou Reed
7. "Last Night Sleep" – Can
8. "Fretless" – R.E.M.
9. "Days" – Elvis Costello
10. "Claire's Theme" – Graeme Revell
11. "(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World" – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
12. "It Takes Time" – Patti Smith (with Fred Smith)
13. "Death's Door" – Depeche Mode
14. "Love Theme" – Graeme Revell
15. "Calling All Angels" (Remix Version) – Jane Siberry with k.d. lang
16. "Humans from Earth" – T Bone Burnett
17. "Sleeping in the Devil's Bed" – Daniel Lanois
18. "Until the End of the World" – U2
19. "Finale" – Graeme Revell

Personal favorites on this disc, in additon to the Julee Cruise song, include R.E.M.'s "Fretless", Depeche Mode's "Death's Door" and the Jane Siberry/k.d.lang collaboration "Calling All Angels".  At the time, most of these songs were unavailable anywhere else, making the compilation a gold mine of rarities. All in all, the soundtrack did better than the movie, eventually reaching #114 on the U.S. Billboard Top 200 Albums chart in 1992.

So, in honor of the life and art of Julee Cruise, I proudly offer to you all Until The End Of The World (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), released on Warner Brothers Records on December 10th, 1991.  Enjoy, and as always... well, you know.

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Various Artists - The Fall: A French Tribute

 

Once again, here's my annual post commemorating the death of Fall major-domo and 'Godlike Genius' Mark E. Smith, who slipped this mortal coil four years ago today.

There's even less to talk about in regards to The Gruppe this year. As I've noted in prior commemorative yearly posts, the silence in FallWorld continues to settle. The last post on the Official Fall Website was in February 2018, the month after Mark died, and its discussion board has been dormant, with the last new post in May 2020, nearly two years ago. The "unofficial" (and in my opinion, better) website The Fall Online website hosted its last posting in June 2020. At least The Fall Online Forum there is still fairly active, with new posts and discussions almost daily. But I've definitely noticed a decrease in the scope and level of activity there. At least there are some Facebook group sites, such as "Mark E Smith & The Fall: It's Not Repetition, It's Discipline" and "The Mighty Fall", trying to hold up their end.  But it's distressing to see widespread memories of my all-time favorite band gradually fading away.

Imperial Wax was on hiatus for most of 2020, as the COVID moratorium on live music entered its second year. However, in October of last year, the band played its first gigs in almost two years, and continued with another one earlier this month. They appear to be expanding their concert slate in England and on the Continent further into the year, and have mentioned that they are in the process of writing their second album, which currently has an unknown release date scheduled.

Brix and The Extricated, Brix Smith-Start's much-maligned band made up of former Fall stalwarts, a group I have heaped tons of scorn and derision on over the years, appears to be no more - thank God.  Brix announced that she would be releasing a solo album, Valley Of The Dolls, later this year, and also putting together an all-female band made up of "post-punk feminists", including former members of My Bloody Valentine, to take out on the road sometime this spring. With typical modesty and humility, she added that the group would be "going under the name Brix Smith or possibly Brix Smith Group, I haven’t decided yet. It’s time for me to put my money where my mouth is and take it out there!"

(Man, the narcissism and relentless self-promotion NEVER ends with her, does it?)

Not much more left to say, so I'll just get to the music.  For your review this year, I'm offering a compilation of reinterpretations/re-imaginings of some classic Fall tunes, all done by French artists.  I love sets like this - not only do you sometimes get interesting, off-the-wall takes on songs you know well and love, this album also shows the worldwide reach and influence of The Fall's music.  I highly recommend it. 

Here for your perusal is The Fall: A French Tribute, released on Teenage Hate Records on November 15th, 2019. Enjoy, and use this disc to keep Mark E. Smith and his band in your thoughts for just a little while longer. And, as always, let me know what you think.

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The Kelley Deal 6000 - Go To The Sugar Altar... Plus

Happy Birthday to famed musicians and identical twins Kim and Kelley Deal, who were born on this date in Dayton, Ohio sixty years ago today. In honor of this day, I thought I might as well post the rest of Kelley Deal's output I currently have in my possession.

Both of the twins got into music during their teen years in Ohio, working up songs in the home studio they built in their parents' basement, and playing folk- and country-laced originals and covers in and around the Dayton area (with Kim on guitar and Kelley on drums). This went on for a couple of years until the mid-1980s, when Kim got married and moved to Boston; Kelley stayed in Dayton and started working as a technical analyst.  Kim found a job in the Massachusetts biochemical tech industry, and that was her main focus in life until one day in March 1986, she came across an unusual advertisement in the "Musicians Wanted" classified section of the old Boston Phoenix newspaper that read, "Band seeks woman bassist into Hüsker Dü and Peter, Paul and Mary..."  On a whim, Kim answered the ad (she later found that she was the only person who did) and met locals Charles Thompson and Joey Santiago, old college roommates who were thinking about forming a band.  The trio began jamming together, and that's how the band The Pixies were formed.

Even with Kim on board, the rudimentary Pixies were still without a drummer. Kim contacted her sister Kelley back in Ohio, and subsequently paid for her to fly out to Boston to audition behind the kit for the band. Although both Thompson (soon to be known as Black Francis) and Santiago approved, Kelley wasn't confident enough in her drumming to join up, and opted to move back to Ohio. Kim then recommended another drumming acquaintance, David Lovering, a friend of her husband's she met at their wedding reception the year before. Lovering signed on, and the group was complete.

In a post I published a decade ago, I briefly provided an overview of the formation of The Breeders in 1989, the result of the dissatisfaction Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly were feeling regarding their roles in their then-current bands (Donelly was a member of Throwing Muses). Kim asked Kelley to join the new group and assist with the recording of their debut album Pod, but Kelley was unable to participate because she couldn't arrange to take enough time off of her analyst job. However, after Donelly left the group, Kelley quit her job and joined her sister's band in 1992, assuming the lead guitarist role (although at the beginning, she had NO IDEA how to play the instrument).

Many moons ago, I related to you all the story of my initial encounters and brief long-distance semi-friendship with Kelley Deal during the mid-to-late 1990s. In that narrative, I related how she and The Breeders were riding on the crest of global commercial and critical success, in the midst of a triumphant world tour capitalizing on their hit album Last Splash.  It seemed to me at the time that everything was going right for the band; little did I know how much turmoil was occurring behind the scenes, and how much things were getting out of hand for Kelley. Demons already long present in her life began to take over, exacerbated by the long hours of life on constant tour. Taken from a 2002 feature article on the group from The Guardian newspaper:

The Breeders spent several months during 1993 and 1994 touring, and it was during this period that Kelley's long-standing addiction to heroin stopped being a secret and started being a problem. When the band returned home, the Deals immediately started work on the follow-up to Last Splash, but in autumn 1994 Kelley was arrested for possession, and by the beginning of 1995 she was in rehab in Minnesota.

As I mentioned in that earlier post, Kelley got busted by the feds when she received a half-pound brick of Black Tar heroin from her dealer at her home address.  The subsequent felony charges could have landed her in jail for an extended period.  But her family pulled together to support her, and saved her from the slammer - not that she appreciated it at the time (also from The Guardian):

Kelley insists that her family drove her to the rehabilitation centre themselves, and that meant that when her case came to court, she wasn't convicted. "I hated my family," she admits. "They were all against me, they didn't understand me. I didn't think I had a problem."

She was ordered to report to the famed Hazelton rehab center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she spent much of 1995 in a structured, isolated environment, getting treatment for her addiction. Kelley's time at the clinic also helped her find a up-to-then untapped wellspring of creativity and inspiration, and for the first time she began penning her own songs. At the completion of her program at Hazelton, Kelley was gradually eased back into society, moving into a halfway house in nearby St. Paul for further observation and treatment. While there, she met and befriended Jesse Colin Roff, a local guitarist and drummer also undergoing drug rehab, and (tentatively, at first) began sharing with him some of the songs that she wrote while at the center. Intrigued and inspired, the two began jamming together and collaborating, and Kelley began plotting a return to active recording.

The duo began gathering like-minded musicians, including David Shouse from The Grifters and Jimmy Flemion of The Frogs, and by early 1996 Kelley was confident enough in the abilities of herself and her band (christened The Kelley Deal 6000) to enter Minneapolis's Terrarium recording studio to work on a debut album. Go To The Sugar Altar was completed in a month, and issued in the late spring of 1996.

Go To The Sugar Altar, to me, is the sound of a band, and a musician, finding their/her feet. The songs (all written either by Kelley herself or in conjunction with various band members) cover a number of genres: straight-ahead rock, some punky thrashing, a dollop of blues and even a dash of country thrown in from time to time. A lot of these songs sound somewhat like glorified demos... but that may be due to the nature of the circumstance, with Kelley producing and funding the project herself from whatever limited funds she had at her disposal. With that being said, most of the songs are winners, and Kelley's voice is a treat; it has the same familiar sound as that of her sister, but unlike Kim, who tends to bury her voice somewhat in her recordings, Kelley's is out front the entire time, and has an appealing tone and growl. Some of my favorite songs off of this album include "Dammit" and "How About Hero":

 

Comparing the Deal sisters' immediate post-Last Splash releases of the time [after The Breeders went on forced hiatus in the wake of Kelley's drug problems, Kim assembled what was originally intended to be a "new Breeders", but instead evolved into The Amps, and released a so-so album (Pacer) in late 1995], I feel that Go To The Sugar Altar is the truer follow-up/continuation of the hit Breeders sound.

The band's debut album met with decent reviews, and the group hit the road that summer for shows all across the U.S., drumming up support for the disc.  I saw The Kelley Deal 6000 a couple of times that year, as I mentioned in my earlier post, and at every show took the opportunity to try to say "hello".  During their tour, the label released the Canyon EP, containing the lead cut from the album along with the non-album track "Get The Writing".  I picked up both over the course of that year.

After their extensive tour, the group returned to Minneapolis in the spring of 1997 to record their sophomore album Boom! Boom! Boom!  During these sessions, Kelley and Jesse Roff took a little time apart from the other band members to record a two-song side project, titled Carnivale, under the moniker Solid State 6000. This single didn't expand upon the sound ideas that ended up on the full band album, but serves as a superb companion piece.

These were the final releases by Kelley on her own. After the Boom! Boom! Boom! tour ended in early 1998, the group went on indefinite hiatus, and Kelley returned to the Breeders' fold, where she remains to this day.

It's been a quarter-century since the band's debut, and while they didn't last very long, The Kelley Deal 6000 and related projects shouldn't be relegated to just a long-ago memory, or regarded as a 'flash in the pan'.  Kelley definitely had some things to say, and it is to her credit that, in the wake of all that was going wrong for her at the time, she was bold enough and adventurous enough to step out on her own and present to the public what was on her mind at the time. I enjoyed this group very much while it lasted, and miss heading out to see them in the small clubs they played around the country during that time. And on a personal note, it was an honor and a privilege to have Kelley as my friend, even for so brief a time.

With that being said, for your listening pleasure, here are:

•  Go To The Sugar Altar, the debut album by The Kelley Deal 6000, released by Nice Records (Kelley's label) on June 4th, 1996; 
• The band's Canyon EP, released later that summer; and
• The Carnivale single, released by Solid State 6000 on the same label in mid-1997.

Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

The Kelley Deal 6000 - Go To The Sugar Altar: Send Email
The Kelley Deal 6000 - Canyon EP: Send Email
Solid State 6000 - Carnivale (single): Send Email

The Fall - Sussex Morning

A continuation of my annual commemoration of the death of band leader, group stalwart and all-around indie music genius Mark E. Smith, who died three years ago today, on January 24th, 2018.  I know I have said this every year since that fatal day, but Smith and his band are still sorely missed, by myself and thousands of other rabid Fall fans.

By now, I've pretty much given up on seeing any 'new' Fall product hit the shelves... As I've mentioned before, in the wake of the demise of a band with such a broad and discerning fan base, usually labels will make every effort to scour their vaults for unreleased or alternative versions of songs to gather into "expanded editions" of existing albums or collections of heretofore unheard music. I mean, heck, look at what's happened with David Bowie's catalog over the past five years - they're still finding and putting out quality sets, like the fine Conversation Piece early-career compilation in 2019. Somehow, that hasn't been the case with The Fall.  Perhaps it may be due to their convoluted recording history across a multitude of labels (although that didn't seem to deter other career-spanning Fall compilations released before Smith's death)... but I'm beginning to suspect more and more that there just isn't that much studio-recorded stuff out there to cull from.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, needless to say, limited the activities of the post-Fall bands. Imperial Wax spent most of the spring and summer of 2020 hunkered down, but during the fall began work on their second album, a follow-up to 2018's Gastwerk Saboteurs. And it appears this band is gearing up in anticipation for the 2021 concert/festival season, assuming that it comes to pass. So good luck to them with those endeavors.

Brix & The Extricated have been silent all year (mercifully so, in my opinion), with no shows or releases in 2020. However, just today Brix announced a couple of new projects for 2021, including a solo album (her first standalone release since fronting The Adult Net more than thirty years ago) and a book about The Fall. We'll see how all of that turns out.

Probably the most significant Fall-related news over the past year was the June 6th death (at the age of seventy-two) of former band manager and Smith girlfriend Kay Carroll. The hard-nosed Carroll ran the business end of The Fall from 1977 until falling out/breaking up with Smith in the midst of a U.S. tour in the spring of 1983 (Mark rebounded swiftly, hooking up with Brix in Chicago little more than a month later). Kay remained in the States and ended up settling in Portland, Oregon, where she worked in nursing for several years and went through a couple of husbands. It's generally understood that the Fall song "An Older Lover" was written by Mark about her (she was eleven years Smith's senior). The Guardian carried an obituary a couple of weeks after her passing; here it is.

Anyway, like I said earlier, I don't think we're going to see any new Fall studio remainders put out anytime soon, if ever. And I believe on more than one occasion I've clearly expressed my low opinion for the various Fall live sets and soundboard recordings that have been released over the years. Receiver Records, Cog Sinister and Castle Music have clogged/saturated the market with sketchy, poorly-captured band gigs from locales worldwide, so much so that I have made little to no effort to collect many of them, finding them not worth my while. However, I will occasionally stumble across a live set that breaks that half-assed mold, and actually brings something to the table. My offering today is one of these.

This disc was the initial offering from a blogsite/poster named Hanleyfender, a site that was active off and on between 2009 and 2013, and specialized in making available live versions of Fall shows.  This recording covers some of the poster's favorite live Fall songs from various locations during the 2006-2007 timeframe; here's some additional information regarding tracks and participants:

1. Intro (Over Over loop. L.A.) 23.05.2006
2. Senior Twilight Stock Replacer. Brighton. 31.03.2007
3. MES Birthday 50 Year Old Man. Bilston. 05.03.2007
4. Over Over. Aberdeen. 15.03.2007
5. Fall Sound. Brick Lane London. 12.03.2006
6. Theme From Sparta F.C. Malaga. Spain. 21.01.2007
7. Hungry Freaks, Daddy. Edinburgh. 13.03.2007
8. My Door Is Never. Reading. 28.03.2007
9. Coach and Horses. Brick Lane. London. 11.09.2006
10. Mountain Energie. Los Angeles. CA. 23.05.2006
11. Reformation. Brighton. 31.03.2007
12. Palais Interlude. Hammersmith Palais. London. 01.04.2007
13. Scenario. Brick Lane. London. 12.03.2006
14. Systematic Abuse. Brick Lane. London. 12.03.2006
15. White Lightning. Brighton. 31.03.2007
16. Blindness. Bournemouth. 10.09.2006
17. Outro (Loop 41. L.A). 23.05.2006

The Fall:
Tim Presley (Guitar). Bab Borbato (Musicmaster Bass). Orpheo McCord (Drums).
Dave Spurr (Bass. He’s not a Yank). Mark E. Smith (Vocals). Elani Smith (Keyboards)

Additional Hanleyfender notes:

"Generally considered by me to be the greatest Fall live compilation ever. 'Mountain Energie' also considered by me to be the greatest ever audience recording ever captured by The Fall."

This recording was originally made into a limited edition (50 copies) of CDs sent out to friends of The Consortium, the music blogging group Hanleyfender was affiliated with. But since then it's become a little more widespread - but not by much. It's still an awful hard Fall comp to track down.

So here it is for you all to peruse: The Fall's Sussex Morning, a fan-assembled compilation of live tracks prepared and released in 2009. This assemblage is offered up both in tribute to and in memory of the great Mark E. Smith, and to keep alive the music he and his band made for over forty years for at least a little while longer. Enjoy, remember, and as always, let me know what you think.

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The Fall - Cerebral Caustic (Expanded Edition)

By May of 1995, my military tour in Christchurch, New Zealand was winding to a close.  I'd already moved out of my rented house in Casebrook at the end of March, and all of my household goods had been crated and were aboard a cargo ship somewhere in the Southern Pacific Ocean.  The command had 

moved me back into the Airport Gateway Motor Lodge on Memorial Avenue, a short distance away from the airport and the command headquarters of the Naval Antarctic Support Unit (NASU). The Airport Gateway was where I lived for the first few weeks after arriving in country; I was placed right next door to the original room I'd occupied a couple of years earlier. So my New Zealand adventure definitely seemed to be coming full circle.

I'd already gone back to the States in early April, for a week-long "Officer Transition Seminar" being held at a base in San Diego. I didn't want to go, since I considered it a total waste of time and travel resources. The course was ostensibly for junior officers who were leaving the service, but who were still relatively undecided as to what they wanted to do out in the civilian world. By that time, I'd already received word that I had been accepted to the several graduate schools I had applied to, and had already locked in on the University of Virginia as where I'd be commencing my MBA studies that coming fall. So my immediate post-Navy future was all set for the time being, and as I predicted, the course was a boondoggle and of no value to me. I spent the mornings and early afternoons of that week striving to pay attention to career advice and strategies that really didn't apply to me, then running out to my rental car and driving two hours north to Long Beach to hang out with old friends, having fun with them every night, capped off with an epic Vegas run that weekend with my friends before I flew back to Christchurch. Life was going pretty good for me at that point.

Back in New Zealand, I still had

my car, my gold Porsche 928, there with me.  I was planning on having that shipped back with my other furniture and other belongings earlier that month, but an unusual opportunity arose.  A local film production crew had put out a casting call for local Americans to appear as extras in a film being shot in nearby Lyttleton.  The director Peter Jackson, fresh off of his breakthrough critical success with the 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, was tapped by Universal Pictures to helm his first

big-budget movie, The Frighteners, starring Michael J. Fox.  Jackson was allowed to film in New Zealand, just so long as he made the setting look similar to a Western U.S. locale (this involved mainly switching around/transforming a lot of the local road signs and driving on what, for New Zealand, was the "wrong" side of the road). With the majority of local Yanks being involved with/employed by NASU, this meant a large group of us went in to audition for walk-on roles, at a space the production company had established in downtown Christchurch. I went in, hoping for one of these stand-in-the-back supplementary parts, but to my surprise, the crew asked me if I'd like to have a (very) small speaking part, which I happily accepted. The producers were also looking for American-style left-hand drive cars to feature in the film; when they discovered I owned a Porsche of that kind, they got very excited, and started making inquiries into featuring my ride in some of the scenes.

On the day that I and several other local Americans were slated to shoot, we gathered under a cold, wet mid-fall April sky (remember, the seasons are reversed in the Southern

Hemisphere) in the parking lot of the Wunderbar, a funky, quirky little bar and local concert venue in Lyttleton.  The Wunderbar's parking lot had been commandeered by Jackson's crew, and covered with trailers containing costumes, makeup facilities and electrical equipment. I was there for two days... and in all I can say that my first experience on an authentic movie set was a miserable one - a lot of sitting around, eating whatever Craft Services put out in terms of food for the cast and crew, then being herded around here and there like the inconsequential cattle the staff regarded us as, and enduring endless reshoots. I never came within spitting distance of Michael J. Fox or any of the other principal actors, and my much-anticipated speaking part was removed before filming even began. I made it into a couple of background shots, but apparently these ended up on the cutting room floor. Seeing the film after it came out, I didn't see or recognize any of my other local compatriots in any scenes either. It seems that they really didn't need us after all.

After all of the initial hullabaloo about my Porsche, the production company never got back to me about using it in the movie. I waited a couple more days to hear from them, then gave up and made arrangements to put my car on one of the last ships that would get it back to the States so it would be there waiting for me when I got there in early June. For the remainder of my time in Christchurch, I used one of the NASU vehicles to get around, a a beat-up old right-hand drive pickup truck decidedly less eye-catching than my own car.

The new Supply officer who was to take over my duties had arrived in mid-April, and by early May I had pretty much transitioned most of my duties to his responsibility. I still had some final work to do, but I was feeling a bit at loose ends. Before I left the region, I wanted to make one last run over to Sydney; I'd been to Australia a couple of times already for some R&R, and always had a good time there. I went there the year before with my buddy Tim, who ran the NASU Navy Exchange, and we had an excellent time - attended an Aussie Rules Football match, went to the top of the thousand-foot high Centrepoint (Sydney) tower, and visited several of the pubs and venues in the Rocks district, the city's Party Central. When I asked him if he'd like to go back with me on my farewell trip, he quickly agreed. We booked accommodations, the command cut our travel orders, and by the early morning of May 17th, we were over the Tasman Sea, en route to Sydney International Airport.

Our arrival later that morning was somewhat of a disappointment.  The hotel we booked sight-unseen overlooked the water at Circular Quay and looked swank in the advertisements, but when we got there to throw our bags down, we found that it was minuscule. To this day, it remains the smallest fucking room I've ever stayed in that managed to squeeze in two beds, a desk and a TV. We were both pissed, but sucked it up, since we figured we weren't going to be spending too much time in it anyway.

The first thing we did in town that afternoon was jump on the Sydney Harbour Tours ferry out of Circular Quay for a swing around the length and breadth of the waters surrounding the city.  The boat took us right

under the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge and past the Opera House (where I had attended a show almost a year earlier), and out almost to the entrance on the Pacific.  While on board, we began chatting up these two twenty-something Dutch girls who were also visiting the city.  While their final ferry destination differed from ours (we were going to get off at Taronga Zoo), they seemed pretty receptive to our dialogue, and elicited promises from them that we would all meet up later that evening at a bar on the Rocks that Tim and I had found during our previous visit.  We were both feeling pretty large by the time we walked through Taronga's gates.

Initially, I wasn't all that jazzed about spending my first hours in Oz walking around a menagerie.  But the zoo, the largest in Australia, turned out to be incredibly cool, full of (what was for

us) exotic animals like emu, platypuses, wombats and koalas.  We spent hours wandering around the place, taking everything in; it turned out to be a highlight of the trip, and highly recommended, should you ever find yourself out that way.  But as fun and interesting as it all was, as the afternoon wore on, Tim and I were anxious to get back to our shoebox hotel room and get ready to meet up with those chicks from Holland later that evening...

...which, of course, turned out to be a bust.  The girls never showed; I'll assuage my pride here, and charitably assume that they got lost and couldn't find the place we recommended (yeah, I'm sure that's what happened...).  No matter; there was booze available there, along with music and madness, so Tim and I settled in for an extended drinking session that concluded with us stumbling out of a cab back at our shit-ass hotel in the wee hours and drunkenly passing out in our beds.

We woke up late the next day, close to noon; the combined effect of drink, our extended walkabout and the time zone difference between Australia and New Zealand doing us in.  I wanted to get some shopping in while I was there, to pick up some souvenirs for myself and for people back in the U.S.  So we went into the city for those retail errands.  During our excursion, I happened to walk by a local record store, so I popped in to see what was new.  I was very surprised to find a brand-new CD by my favorite band, The Fall, in the bins - a new work titled Cerebral Caustic (In hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have been THAT surprised, as The Fall tended to put out a new album every year or so...).  Anyway, I immediately bought the disc, intending to listen to it later, and brought it with my other purchases back to the hotel in the late afternoon.

Tim and I were looking forward to heading out again that night and seeing what was what with the local female population, but we had to get something to eat first.  We ended up at, of all places, the Hard Rock Cafe's Sydney location (probably because it was something semi-familiar, and we couldn't be bothered with coming up with something different).  We spent the early evening eating burgers under a display case featuring what was purported to be Sid Vicious' actual leather jacket, which was kind of cool.  Then we headed out, walking the streets around Darling Harbour toward the Rocks once again.  En route to the

district, traversing down George Street, we came upon what appeared to be a wild, crowded bar called Jacksons On George, and decided to stop in for a gander.

I walked in to this jam-packed venue, and instantly met the eyes of an absolutely lovely woman standing halfway across the large room.  Not to say that I'm "all that"... but for whatever reason or vibe I was putting out, she froze in her tracks and seemed to completely lock onto me.  To me, she was... well, I've used this Raymond Chandler quote before, but I'll use it here again to describe her: "Whatever you needed, wherever you happened to be—she HAD it."  Her laser-beam eyes never left me as I played it cool after meeting and acknowledging that first glance.  I walked across the room towards the bar on the far side with Tim in my wake, passing close by her - but not TOO close.  Didn't want to appear overeager!

Ordered a couple of beers for myself and my buddy, all the while keeping a sideways look in her direction; she remained locked onto me.  Excellent...  Our drinks arrived, and after a couple of minutes of chat, I told Tim I was going to go out into the crowd and "mingle" a bit.  And SOMEHOW, I ended up right next to this girl, and we began dialoging.

Her name was Viv, and she lived in a distant suburb of Sydney, but was there in the city spending a long weekend of fun and clubbing with a girlfriend.  I told her my deal as well, then brought both her and her friend over to where Tim was holding up the bar for an introduction.  My buddy quickly sussed out what the situation was and assumed the role of 'wingman' in regards to Viv's friend... not that it helped my cause; the other girl was not about Tim AT ALL.  However, Viv and I were hitting it off like gangbusters.

We all spent a couple of hours together at Jacksons On George before moving down the street to a couple of other local pubs, with Viv and I enjoying each other's company more and more... in inverse proportion to her friend, who began to grouse about the hour, how tired she was, etc.  It seemed that any further progress would be blocked for that night.  Viv told me that they had plans the following night to visit Reva, a dance place in central Sydney, and asked me if I would meet her there.  I said that I would, all the while thinking "Try and stop me!"

The next day, the 19th, was pretty much a blur to me - I was looking forward to the evening.  I'm sure that Tim and I did some stuff around town, and I think I might have listened to my new CD; I simply don't recall.  What I DO recall is arriving at Reva slightly after the appointed time (my buddy had begged off, preferring to do his own thing that night) and finding Viv there with a couple more of her girlfriends.  Once again, she seemed very happy to see me; as such, she and I didn't stay at Reva for very long.  I spare you the details; suffice to say that we had a fun night together.

The next morning, I made my farewells to Viv, and staggered/dragged myself back to my Circular Quay hotel for a couple of hours of shuteye before Tim and I had to catch the flight back to Christchurch later that day.  All in all, I was pretty pleased with the way my final visit to Oz turned out...

...Except that as it turned out, it wasn't my last trip to Australia while I lived in that region.

Before I left Sydney, I'd provided Viv with my phone number in New Zealand (remember, cellphones weren't really affordable or widely available yet in the mid-1990s), and shortly after I returned there to my motel room in Christchurch, I began hearing from her.  Apparently, she had REALLY enjoyed my company there in Australia, and was eager to see me once again, so much so, that she was willing to foot the entire bill on a swank weekend for two in downtown Sydney, including a round-trip flight from where I was and a room at the Four Seasons (she had come into more than a little money recently, and was amenable to splurging).  Needless to say, she didn't have to lobby me very hard... six days after getting back from Sydney, I found myself running to board another late-night plane going back in that direction.

But before I left, I took the opportunity that week to unwrap and listen to my new Fall CD.  Cerebral Caustic marked band leader Mark's ex-wife Brix Smith's return to the band after a five-year hiatus (a situation I detailed in a previous post).  Brix immediately brought her music aesthetic back into the group; half of the songs on this album were co-written by her.  But, in my opinion, I can't say that her return infused the band with a shot of innovation or energy.  Cerebral Caustic was the second in a series of mostly "meh" albums that The Fall put out in the mid-90s, in the wake of 1993's

critically acclaimed and commercially successful (Top Ten on the British charts) disc The Infotainment Scan.  There were flashes of brilliance on Cerebral Caustic, particularly in songs like "Rainmaster", "Life Just Bounces" and "Feeling Numb".  But all in all, to me, the album just felt like sort of a generic and by-the-numbers Fall release, without any real drive or inspiration behind it. 

Perhaps this was due to band turbulence and stresses on Mark caused by Brix's quasi-return (she didn't move back to England, but stayed mostly in her new home in Los Angeles, flying in for the group's recording sessions and gigs).  Already a heavy drinker, Mark began hitting the bottle big time during this period, leading to periods of incapacitation, warped judgements and angrier-than-usual outbursts.  He unexpectedly fired keyboardist Dave Bush just as the recording sessions for the album were being completed (for years, there were rumors that he wiped all of Bush's contributions to the record and had them rerecorded).  And later that year, he booted stalwart guitarist Craig Scanlon, who had been with the band since the late '70s, for equally unknown reasons.  Releasing an album in the midst of this turmoil was probably not a good idea... but Mark was going to do what he was going to do, and no one was going to make him do otherwise.  But this instability remained, and was carried through the next two lackluster Fall albums,

1996's The Light User Syndrome and and 1997's Levitate.  As I wrote before, The Fall didn't really get its shit back together until 1999's The Marshall Suite, recorded with almost an entirely new band after the remaining early members quit the group after the Brownies punch-up/debacle during their American tour the prior year.

In any event, that was my take on the latest Fall album as I arrived back in Sydney that Friday night and found Viv waiting for me at the airport.  The next three days were excellent; we had an amazing time running around the city and canoodling back in our gold-plated hotel suite.  Dining out, dancing, shopping, seeing the sights, checking out the high- and low-lights of Sydney, all the places that she knew about that I had missed on my earlier visits - it was just nonstop fun.  When Monday rolled up, far too quickly for us, I was very unhappy to leave the place, and her.  But, regretfully, duty called, and I got back on the plane that morning, heading back to Christchurch.  I will say that I flew back home to New Zealand with a big smile on my face...

That smile quickly faded upon my arrival at Christchurch International.  I sauntered off the plane and into Customs for what I figured was going to be another routine "wave me through" check-in... but I was stopped as the desk by a steely-eyed Customs officer, who demanded to see my official documents.  It was only then that the realization struck me: I'd spent so much time in New Zealand - living in the neighborhoods, going to the shops and pubs, learning all of the side streets and short cuts - that I essentially considered myself a local.  As far as I was concerned, Christchurch was my home.  But in the eyes of the entities running the state there, we were little more than official long-term guests, representatives of the U.S. government traveling on American passports.  As such, we required authorized documents - official travel orders - from a recognized U.S. facility there (such as an embassy or a military base) in order to leave and return to New Zealand without any undue hassle. 

In my zeal to get back to Sydney to hang out with Viv that weekend... I kind of forgot to get that sort of documentation from the NASU Administrative Department. So without that official OK, the airport official regarded me not as a fellow Kiwi, but as an undocumented scumbag trying to slip into the country.  He starting making noises about "deporting me back to Australia", which wouldn't have been good at all.

I tried explaining to the guy that I wasn't a tourist, but I actually lived there, and showed him my New Zealand driver's license and Bank of New Zealand ATM card, among other items, as proof.  But that cold-blooded bastard wasn't buying it.  Finally, I told him I could clear this situation up with one phone call, and used the phone at his desk to call the NASU Main Office.  Oddly, there was no answer... so I tried again, with the same result.  It was then that the realization struck me - it was Monday, May 29th... MEMORIAL DAY - and the office was closed for the American holiday.  Damn.  I had no idea what the home phone numbers were for anyone from NASU who could assist me.  In a word, I was screwed.

It was only then that the Customs official's attitude softened somewhat; I guess he figured out by then that I hadn't been

BSing him about living there.  Instead of sending me back to Sydney on the next plane, he would provide me with a ten-day Visitor's Permit, to get me back into the country and give me time to get things straightened out.  This was the perfect solution for me - especially as my last day in New Zealand was scheduled for June 8th, only nine days away.  I gladly accepted the stamp in my passport, and made my way out of the airport as quickly as possible.  But I spent my last few days there as a "visitor" in my own country, as it were.

That's how that situation ended... but it wasn't the end for Viv and I.  After I got back to the States and entered grad school, she and I stayed in touch constantly through letters and the occasional phone call.  During the break between my first and second years at UVA, we decided to meet somewhere mutually convenient for both of us... so in the latter part of the summer of 1996, we reconnected in Maui for a week, which was as epic and awesome a trip as I've ever had, even surpassing my last sojourn with her in Sydney a year earlier.  After that vacation, I didn't see her for many years, although we remained constantly in touch.  She still lives near Sydney, and got married a couple of years later to Joseph, a local Aussie-by-way-of-New-Zealand, a staunch and outstanding guy.  And I got to see them both a few years ago, when they came over to New York City for a visit and I met them there.  We're all great friends now, and any such feelings I may have had for her - longing, lust or whatever - have long since fallen by the wayside.

She's still piping hot, though... and on occasion I think back on the days when we first became acquainted, twenty-five years ago this week, and smile a secret little smile of remembrance.  These occasions to reminisce occur more often then not when I hear a song off of Cerebral Caustic, which I've been playing slightly more in recent years and starting to semi-appreciate, even if my initial mediocre assessment of it hasn't changed all that much.  It was all great fun, way back when, but that's life... and like the man, Mark E. Smith himself, once said:

"...life just bounces so don't you get worried at all;

And life just bounces so don't you get worried at all."

No worries indeed.

And to alleviate your worries - yes, I AM offering up this album for your listening pleasure! 

Here's The Fall's Cerebral Caustic, Castle Music's 2006 expanded edition of the 1995 release originally put out on Permanent Records on February 27th, 1995.  The first disc contains the original album lineup; the second disc includes a four-track Peel Sessions recording from December 17th, 1994 (hence the prevalence of all the Christmas songs; however, the Peel Sessions version of "Numb At The Lodge" crushes the album version ("Feeling Numb"), IMHO...), ten early mixes/rough tracks from the album (which prove that the rumors regarding Dave Bush's contributions being wiped were unfounded), and a couple of promo items, including a brief interview with Mark and Brix.  Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

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