El Condor Pasa No Pasaran!

I have a massage on my knee over the weekend at a “Healing Arts” centre, where Alternative Medicine is practised. This is “Alternative” in the sense that :

a) Nothing whatsoever can be proved to have any effect . (If it did it would be, uh, “medicine” )

b) It costs an arm and a leg

c) There are lots of self-help books around like “Who Moved The Cheese?” ( Elevator pitch: who gives a fuck ? Get over it! )

d) You are forced to listen to terrible musak

It's the last that gets to me. I’ll happily waste discretionary spend on a dippy masseuse fiddling with my cruciate; I’ll put up in a manly way with being relaxed , which always makes me tense ; but I draw the line at being forced to listen to plangent library music produced in some masturbator's bedroom.

This rubbish will drive you to the Samaritans: retro synth washes, quasi-Indian nods & winks to quarter tones, and , worse , duff samples of instruments you never want to hear, ever. We’re talking Tabla. Wind pipes. And - cruellest cut of all - Northumbrian bagpipes! All in 4/4 . WTF! No, MAC obsessive Garage-Band producer dude, they don’t use this time signature in classical Hindustani music.

The melody line goes on and on and on and on , stoner-style, bar after bar after bar after bar of undecodable voices, Gregorian chanters meet The Cocteau Twins on drugs,with gear so stepped on you can see bootprints in the snow .

It's as pointless as the wallpaper tunes that cod Peruvians mug you with in the Underground; the bowler hated muppets who you’d rather pummel to the ground and do six months bird than hear a single hemi-demi-semi quaver of El Condor Pasa. Not on your nelly, cabron!

In this alt-world of emotions and scented candles, the music’s not optional. & here's the rub, if the operation is successful ,the patient will pass away, assassinated by a cheap smile. Not me, pal. I break the rules & ask for the CD player to be turned off.

A froideur falls like an ice storm.

Black clouds gather .

It looks like rain.

In the end we are all dead.

Bennett & the Golden Amex

Thinking about the myriad dumb things I've done, Gang of Four recording "Hard" in Miami with the useless Albert Brothers is right up there.

This potentially career murdering choice was bulldozed through by our machiavellian manager Bennett , because he thought Nile Rogers, our No 1 choice of co-producer ( when Chic was uncool & pre Let's Dance) cost too much and the Alberts were the nuts! And we gave in! Doh! Which meant Hard didn’t become what we dreamed of it being - a post post-modern post-disco confection ( which made Green's brilliant Wood Beez era work so irritating to hear when it came out 2 years later.) We should've been insomniac in a New York loft with Arthur Baker & an 808, not with 2 bearded fuckwits in Hawaiian shirts reminiscing about Dionne & Aretha .

Whatever, one night we're dining in a ritzy Miami restaurant after a hard day laying down tracks in Criteria sound, a marching powder addled BeeGee's studio . The band's joined by Bennett and his pneumatic Personal Assistant, H- . He's wearing, as always, tennis whites and his assistant has forced her impressive rack into a rib-breaking boob tube. We look like shit, as always.

The next table, a plaid clad salaryman and pant-suited partner, dressed like they spent a million dollars in Woolworth’s, are angry. We're ruining their evening . “It’s disgraceful they let anyone in here dressed like that” says the man to the woman, “ They should throw them out!” He won’t give it up.

We're professionals and ignore this, since Andy’s busy ordering the most expensive wine in the world because we think that someone else, like EMI, is paying! No! We're ripping off ourselves! Brilliant, not! But H- is wound up by the backchat from the dead zone and grabs Bennett’s wallet to leap over to the suit's table. “See this!” she says , waving it at the man in tartan as the credit cards concertina down in their little plastic pockets “See this!” she says “ This is a GOLD Amex! THIS IS A FUCKING GOLD AMERICAN EXPRESS CARD!”. It's getting out of hand, so Bennett says he’ll schmooze things out. He pulls H- off, jabs fatboy in the chest and says “I wore clothes like yours when I was poor! ” Good gag, but when the guy heads out of the restaurant, we’re told by the sommelier a few minutes later, he's seen in the parking lot with a handgun to maybe pop Bennett when we leave! It would've been a dream come true! But, sadly, cops are called . We've all had a drink. We've all got homes to go to.

But if you don’t have a dream how you gonna make a dream come true?

Sitting on a Virgin train is horrible. Two-tone announcements ruin my fitful dozing, ugly augmented 5ths, is it really a G sharp followed by a C, who can tell with these tired ears, but what philistine came up with this torture?

In mainland Europe, steeped in the Romantic tradition , a dream of democratic pluralism and joy is embedded in the mellifluous beeps and bongs of public announcements ; even Mussolini wouldn't mess with it; concordant thirds , sweet memories of Beethoven seducing us as we optimistically careen through the night toward the Mediterranean sun, life enhancing bings and tings doppler effecting by.

Not on Virgin , with its vicious neo-Schoenbergian frequencies haplessly knocked out to remind us that modern life doesn't deliver Le Corbusier but high rise slums built on the cheap by lump labour . It says : the misery of private equity will grind your dreams of happiness into the dust. Outside the trains don't run on time. True!

Musicians must get paid!

UK music posted a newspaper ad yesterday which really connected with me. It reproduced a blog from Falco, whose recent recording was illegally posted on the internet 8 weeks before scheduled release for so-called fans to download this for nothing. This totally devalued their work, destroyed any potential spike of interest in the band, meant they had no subsequent increase in audience, sinking any boost to their gig fees and ruined their hopes to make their mark from their music. I don't know Falco's work , but I felt for these guys. It's wrong.

Falco is just one of many victims of the rip-off notion that creative people's work doesn't deserve to be paid for; that resisting filesharing is luddite and old school; that simply saying that filesharing is wrong is somehow uncool (typically advanced by crews who've already made a career packet and are established live acts commanding decent fees) ; that the music industry ( whatever that is, these days ) has only itself to blame , so who gives a toss; and that it's right that a Mars bar is paid for but not a song.

The winners are criminals and new technology bores who think talking about new distribution paradigms will help musicians make a living, but really make an income from talking themselves into some blogosphere media guru commentariat rep. It's contemporary vicious capitalism at work by guys in sloppy tees and jeans masquerading as hipsters. Filesharing is not about friends swapping song lists or copying tracks they love to their buddies. It's about the bulk transfer of masses of data - songs! - facilitated by crooks & ISPs for misguided fans.

The pathetic recourse proposed last week by FAC ( the Featured Artists Coalition) is to send a warning letter - scary! - to the worst offending filesharers to tell them to stop . But if they ignore this, and the theft persists, they'll get another letter! Whoah! & third strike, they'll support squeezing their bandwidth! Strong stuff! It's pathetic. It's like saying that restricting shop hours would limit shop lifting! Musicians' livelihoods are at stake along with their support networks, roadcrews, suppliers, set designers, sound engineers , studio owners and myriad others. I have contempt for the apologists who won't stand up to this organised theft.

Gang of Four is lucky. Last month we got a gold award for Entertainment! celebrating the sale -the sale! - of 100, 000 units in the UK over the last 30 years. Are we the last generation of non-pop bands who'll ever again be able to do this? We earned little bits here and there when we started, which meant we could afford to keep at it, get signed , make records and attract an audience so that relatively early on we earned a wage & could do the job fulltime. Technology creep is dooming musicians to perpetual dayjobs. To hell with poverty! Say no to illegal filesharing! Don't do it!

Eddi Reader has an adventure with the Gang

Last week we played Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leamington spa The Forum, London, and appeared on BBCTV's " Later with Jools Holland" . On LWJH's Friday show we played 2 songs formerly banned by the BBC, "Tourist" & " I Love a Man in a Uniform ". The first because of the sexually licentious "rubbers" word. Saucy! The second , because it linked joining the army with lack of job opportunities. Get away! And shagging, of course. Just like back then, with the Falklands war, in a sea of unemployment, army recruitment is booming and disadvantaged working class boys are sent off to do our bidding in Afghanistan, and are abandoned when they come home.

Eddi Reader guested with us on BV's for these gigsShe's a wonderful singer, and a lovely person, and musical royalty in Scotland, laden with Brits & Ivor Novello's & MBE's & sunglasses & golden shoes. GOF was her first professional gig many years ago, when she bunked off from her factory job in Irvine New Town to audition for our "Songs of the Free" US tour. Her home town was famous for two things:

1/ Robert Burns lived there
2/ It had Scotland's dirtiest beach.

We discovered Eddi after a miserable couple of days fast-forwarding through the wierdo and wannabee auditioneers who want to be in a band but have zero ability and don't bother to learn the songs. You see this every week on the X Factor, but in real life it's hard to be nice to these timewasters, like Cheryl Cole is. I never had the eye lashes , either. Eddi walked in, all arms and legs, sang a verse and chorus and got the job. She was on The Old Grey Whistle Test the following week and in the US the week after , to be supported all around the States by our young buddies REM, before they were famous. Her first gig with us was in the mammoth 250,000 audience "US" festival with The Police, B52's, Talking Heads etc.

We've had a fine time this week. Teenagers in the mosh pit, oldies in the seats ( and on stage) . Mark Heaney's been sensational, solid, funky , on it. Thomas McNeice's bass super cool; funky but with the heart of a rocker. Gill trademark magisterial. Here's Friday's set list! Guess the rock'n'roll reference in the pic! Points mean prizes!

A playlist for today ( but only today)

Gill & I were asked to come up with a 20 song playlist the other day. Here it is. It’s hard to put the music you love into a bag. Today’s list won’t be the same as tomorrow’s. But today, and every day, there is Jimi Hendrix , all time greatest guitarist , taking us to a place beyond language, where every note, chord, squawk and feedback squeal meant something urgent, existential, real . An artist whose take on the US national anthem leaves no doubt that this product of an instant - the pure beautiful sound of metal strings vibrating in a magnetic field- means No! to the Vietnam war ( and by extension all unjust wars ) and racism and oppression and Yes! to beauty and freedom and the possibility of justice.
Here are artists who carve words into sparkling mountains of and wit and insight; Joni Mitchell’s morose beat memoire with its eccentric phrasing and vocal swoops ; Robert Johnson, buddy of Beezelbub , who slept with every woman he minded to and whose music, the fount of all rock and roll, travelled by freight train from the Delta to Chicago to be electrified by Muddy so that middle class Brit white boys like the Stones could invent their louche wall of doped out devilry. And Bob , on a highway , too, who inspired me with this song, aged 11, to want do something with my life that wasn’t straight or square or boring. A song of pure genius funny, clever and sour as a lemon squeeze.
Pop is a wonderful thing : Kylie’s superb piece of brainwashed dancerama, Marvin’s Gaye’s joyous masterpiece, I-Roy’s brilliant cover of the schmaltzy classic and the Beach Boy’s classic confection of rehab miserabilism .
And music now is so good. Hail The Stripes & I Heart Hiroshima & MC5’s mutant grandchildren, The Hives! Kick out the jams and enjoy!
1. Voodoo Chile ( slight Return ) Jimi Hendrix
2. The last time I saw Richard Joni Mitchell
3. DVNO - Justice
4. Back in Black - AC/DC
5. One nation Under a Groove - Funkadelic
6. Death from Above- Smashing Pumpkins
7. Hate to say I told you so - The Hives
8. Highway 61 revisited - Bob Dylan
9. Ain't No Mountain High enough - Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
10. Cross road Blues - Robert Johnson
11. Work it - missy Elliot
12. Sympathy for the devil - stones
13. Star spangled banner - jimi
14. Honey bee - muddy waters
15. First cut is the deepest - I ROY
16. If You See Her, Say Hello - bob D
17. Surf’s up - beach boys
18. 7 nation army - stripes
19. sisters - I heart hiroshima
20. Kylie - can’t get you out of my head

The studio is a poisoned chalice

Writing and routining new songs at Gill’s studio over the weekend, and worrying over a noisy pot on the mixing desk that just wouldn't quieten down, we got to talking about Les Paul , and his genius. As Brian Eno pointed out , the three greatest leaps forward in the creation of music over the last two hundred years were the invention & perfection of the piano; the creation of the Symphony orchestra and the invention of the multi-track studio

Les Paul invented the third, a curse that cost him his mojo. Recorded music more or less stopped being being about performances in real-time and became constructions over time. Every snap, crackle and pop of imperfection could be tweaked and smoothed. You could, finally, the dream of A&R men everywhere, polish a turd. Steely Dan and Coldplay became possible. Sometimes, you wish you could just roll back the clock.