Press Color, Lizzy Mercier Descloux (Light in the Attic Records, 2015)

Snooping around the margins of the late-disco era, 1978-1982, as I like to do, and in this case looking up the sub-genre of "dance-punk," I came across this 2015 Light in the Attic Records reissue of Lizzy Mercier Descloux's Press Color, originally released on ZE Records in 1979. 

The first few times I played the CD I was totally wowed on several levels: the low-key finesse and style of LMD's French dance-punk music, its occasionally credible disco energy, and especially by the mystery of how the heck I had not noticed LMD before?! Many listens later, and having read Vivien Goldman's illustrative liner notes, I realize LitAR and Michel Esteban, co-founder of ZE Records and LMD's long-time creative partner going back to her roots in France, deserve a lot of credit for the revelation of the music packaged all together on this reissue. And if you have any interest in Goldman's musical bailiwick, the global intersection of post-punk, arty punk with funk, reggae, disco and Latin musical gestures, and in particular those vintage post-punk years of  '78 and '79 this reissue collection is an essential add to your musical library.   

Actually, the original Press Color album had already crossed my radar in the 2000s but briefly and mildly dismissively. The album is only 24 minutes long, breaking rock era conventions and making the album billing feel like a little hype. There's one passible post-punk novelty, Arthur Brown's "Fire" reimagined quite effectively (very rare) as a disco song. The signature "disco" sound of a looped electronic bassline provided by guest Moog synth guy Alan Wentz. I actually might have heard this one randomly somehow in the early '80s, it has that kind of vague familiarity, but it left no great impression. The rest of the EP is whimsical, musical, DIY post-punk, flatteringly kindred to what the Raincoats were doing about the same time on the other side of the Atlantic but without the poignant dark punk social realist turns.   

But this LitAR Deluxe Edition-- and must say I've not been impressed by a lot of DE's before-- compiles all LMD's earliest recordings from 1978 and 1979 on ZE Records into something more like a real album in length, 46 minutes, and a more emphatically whole expression of LMD's music in this period. LMD was generally billed then as No Wave, part of a crowd of artists that hung around CBGB's and The Kitchen. She flirted with reggae and Afrobeat like many post-punkers in her day. 

(Sidebar: What are the greatest examples of people from loosely associated No Wave crowd making good disco or dance club music? Arthur Russell's Dinosaur L "Go Bang!" or Liquid Liquid's "Cavern" (both '82) come to mind but not many others? Let's also mention here Delta 5's No Wave adjacent Brit post-punk classic, "Mind Your Own Business," the original and in later EDM remixes.)

Tracks 1-8, the '79 Press Color album, makes up actually less than half the tracks on the LitAR reissue CD. Added on, presumably Esteban had a big hand in what gets packaged together here, are all LMD's recorded output from '78 and '79. A six-song EP of her No Wave edgy performance art duo experiments with guitarist D.J. Barnes, Tracks 10-15, from '78. And then tracks 9, and 16-18, were never released until 2003 but at least two of them for sure, and one of those, "Hard-Boiled Babe," has to be the single best song here, were recorded in 1979 but unfathomably never released back then. And then the last track, "Morning High," is some sort of reprise of a LMD collaboration with Patti Smith from the mid-'90s, re-commemorating their mutual affection for 19th century poet Arthur Rimbaud. Which arguably still fits this '78-'79 retrospective because, turns out, LMD was already hanging out creatively now and then with Patti Smith in the 1970s (see photo). 

Again, news to this rube but LMD first visits NYC as a wee 17-year old French teenager in 1975, writes a book of poetry and illustrations called Desiderata with the help of rock luminary Patti Smith, and was also a favorite love muse of NYC punk rock icon Richard Hell. I don't know if this qualifies her for NYC's 1970s art rock Hall of Fame but she's definitely getting shout-outs at the induction ceremonies. 

Looking at Desiderata as an old geezer now, and an agnostic know-nothing about poetry, it strikes me as blunt and energetic but maybe a slight work in the NYC's '70s literary canon? Patti Smith's introduction sets the stakes pretty high, and maybe steals the show? Shamanistic hippy punk woman mud wrestling with her male idols of modern art: "We are all the children of Jackson Pollock," a "licensed killer," a monster like his brothers, de Kooning, Gorky, and Rothko she chants and wails like only Patti can. After the gonzo art world intro, though, LMD's poems feel more solitary, humbler, existential, fewer allusions to artistic idols and much less world historical art and poetry combat. The most lasting for me was her reaction to hearing Burning Spear for the first time, 10, Dec, '77: "I feel my lanky sides/Misery. The mores of my race mystery-bitterness Foreign. Percussion almost alive. I will never recover from it."  

I also thought I knew a lot of the catalog of ZE Records in their heyday, LMD's creative partner Esteban's NYC record label: Kid Creole, Cristina, Was (Not Was), Material, The Waitresses, Suicide, Sweet Pea Atkinson. I loved me some ZE Records in those days. But I still somehow missed Lizzy Mercier Descloux?! All the records on this 2015 collection came out originally on ZE Records but I think I jumped on board with ZE Records just about the time LMD left ZE for her 4-album solo career with Island Records in the 1980s. Her early records on this collection didn't rouse much commercial attention in the US but they did catch the ear of Island Records honcho Chris Blackwell, who sponsors her '80s albums. When, unbeknownst to me and apparently most music fans in the US, LMD turns herself into this indelible French version of Paul Simon, even beat him to making a record with musicians from South Africa in 1984 (hear her Zulu Rock) and put out a quartet of global pop albums in the '80s that were semi-popular in France but went largely unnoticed in the states. But that is getting ahead of matters here. 

I even have a vague memory of ZE's 1981 Mutant Disco compilation. Tracks like "Bustin' Out" and "Out Come the Freaks" were favorites at the time but the title felt like a bit of a misconception to me. Finding Smith refer to everyone as the "mutant" spawn of Pollock has to be relevant source but at the time I expected more synths and dystopia based on the name. But what I got was more of August Darnell's hyped-up Latin-disco fantasias. Which I quite liked, mind you, but wasn't what I'd call 'mutant disco.' The concept did not completely land with me, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. In retrospect, LMD might have have helped put the concept across but she didn't have a track on that original ZE comp. 

I actually didn't first hear LMD's music, or so that I can recall, until ZE's bigger 2-CD Mutant Disco comp came out in 2003. Again, many of the ZE tracks on that bigger comp I also recognized from back in the day but LMD's three songs were more or less new to me and actually did strike me as more 'mutant disco'-like than a lot of the other ZE material. I liked the way LMD played with synths and sequencers and her Leftfield French disco diva persona. Sassy and playful; dry and ironic. (Bjork comes to mind as another kindred artist.) Anyway, LMD's vibrant personality jumped out at me but I still think even then I thought of her as more of a novelty one off, like Cristina, in neither case true, but if all you knew were "Fire" or "Drive My Car" not an unreasonable conclusion either.

But rather than just a reissue of Press Color the 2015 LitAR CD is a complete collection of LMD's earliest records from 1978 and 1979, before she embarks on her 4-album solo global pop career on Island Records. She's often categorized as No Wave in this earliest musical incarnation but there's more humor and sheer musicality in LMD's records than anything you'll find on Brian Eno's No New York comp of No Wave bands from the same period.The single off Press Color is a disco novelty combining synths and sequencer tempos with LMD's French and endearingly limited English. LMD's version of Peggy Lee's "Fever," wherein she translates "Fever" as "Tumor," and spells it "Tumour" on the vinyl release, personifies LMD's goofy gothic free spirit. Goldman calls her a post-punk chanteuse. 

Even her specific No Wave experiments, Tracks 10-15, the EP she produced under the moniker of Rosa Yemen in '78, crude, minimalist, and edgy as you might expect No Wave to be, still show off LMD's musicality and uncanny ability to convey so much with her largely indecipherable (by me) chirping and yelping. There's maybe a little Marlene Dietrich, a little Mary Margaret O'Hara, or some talk-singing French siren I don't know very well, Jane Birkin, in LMD's music? At any rate, she's no great singer but her singing always conveys so much charisma, and coupled with her remarkably intuitive DIY musical instincts generates an accomplished sound rare coming out of the late-'70s No Wave scene in NYC.  

"Hard-Boiled Babe," recorded in 1979 with its electro chill-out vibe, and its droll, Noirish, commentary about Hollywood turning people into whores, could be a Trip Hop hit from the late '90s, think Portishead, or some deep cut off a MIA mixtape from the 2000s. Recorded in '79 it sounds remarkably accomplished and futuristic. I have to assume the 'whoring' subject matter blinded Esteban to the original's hit potential but "Hard-Boiled Babe"is LMD's most fully-realized and poignant song in English from this period. And coming full circle feels like a '79 model to Vivian Goldman's '81 post-punk cult classic, "Launderette."  

Broken up again into its constituent parts I can see how LMD's early '78 and '79 records might have misfired in the US. The French, of course. The silly humor might have rubbed some angry punk artists the wrong way. Her affect, on record anyway, isn't nihilistic. It's tough and game for adventure but not submissive or revengeful. Her disco forays are charming but not full on bangers. There is always a sense with these early records that LMD is trying stuff on, experimenting, like an artist. Maybe that put off the "authenticity" crowd at CBGB's? 'She didn't sound angry or manly enough? But pull all her '78 and '79 records together, as the LitAR Press Color reissue collection does, and what I hear is a super talented stylist and one of the most musical and accomplished documents of the late '70s NYC post-punk No Wave movement I've come across. 

Joy Division vs New Order

From Ron Flipkowski's Politics Bulletin on Meidas+: 

… Agent Michael Feinberg’s resigned from the FBI: “The newly installed Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Norfolk Field Office, Dominique Evans, made clear to me that, at the direction of Dan Bongino, my career with the organization had—for all intents and purposes—come to an end. It would be an understatement to say that I had not expected this. In fact, I was in the midst of preparing for a potential move to DC to take on a new position at FBI headquarters.”

… “But, it turned out, I had made a terrible mistake: I had remained friends with someone who had appeared on Kash Patel’s enemies list. How did Bongino find out about this private friendship? I honestly don’t know. What business was it of his? None at all. Was I accused of any sort of misconduct? No. It didn’t matter. Under Patel and Bongino, subject matter expertise and operational competence are readily sacrificed for ideological purity and the ceaseless politicization of the workforce.”

… He said Patel and Bongino were going after him because he was friends with Peter Strzok: “Our own friendship began with a discovery that we liked the same bands and shared an interest in trying new restaurants. Most of our conversations since he left the Bureau have involved debating the relative merits of New Order versus Joy Division.”

Joy Division An Ideal for Living (1978): Maybe not Ian Curtis's best moments ("She's Lost Control"? "Love Will Tear Us Apart"? "Dead Souls"?) but JD's gothic riff rock power is right there on their debut 7". Manchester's Declaration of Independence from the '77 punk rock pack. 

New Order "Blue Monday" (1983): Best selling 12" single of all time. Dylan's "How does it feel?" recontextualized with epic bass bounce and a minor-key goth melody.  The electro-disco bass sound they picked up in NYC not long after The Clash did the same in the making of "The Magnificent Seven." After the understandably tentative feel of Movement, this single and their second album, Power, Corruption, and Lies, signal a great leap forward in terms of the rhythmic use of synths and electronics. Still elegiac but less claustrophobic and more seductively danceable.

Not the final word on the either/or question but I'm more a why-not-both kind of guy anyway. No say where Strzok and Feinberg are on this question but I'm more interested in what they think than Patel or Bongino, for sure.  

Aging Pub Rock Eminence Nick Lowe at the Tractor Tavern on a Saturday Night

Went to Nick Lowe show at the Tractor the other night. Not sure if it was as good as a "Rollers Show" on a Saturday night for Lowe and his buddies back in the 1970s but perfect in its way for my first rock show since before the pandemic. 

Long hiatus, too long, but I've always been a little ambivalent about live music. I attended lots of shows in my 20s and 30s, witnessed many great ones, but overall have to admit the ratio of good shows to meh or even bad ones for me was always disappointing. And the bigger the venue the worse the ratio. I think I can count on one hand the number of good shows I've seen in an arena size venue (Springsteen, Prince, Neil Young, P-Funk, Roy Orbison, Everly Brothers)? Even less in a stadium; and all pre-Jumbotrons at that. And I never warmed much to outdoor music performances until I accepted them as a different beast altogether; a concert in a park on a sunny afternoon, the music more incidental, part of the background. Combine all that with an aging body, standing around for hours taking an increasing toll, and once I hit my 40s my live music attendance became far more picky. A small handful of shows in clubs or theaters in any given year was good for me. 

And then Covid hit. Never liked crowds either, or standing in line much, although a sweaty crowd in a hot club, the band into it and feeling the energy, was always a welcome exception. But the pandemic, with all its weird people reactions, YOLO, "masks are for sheep," and anti-vaxxer idiocy just blew my live music hesitations up into a No Way am I risking rubbing up against some superspreader moron to see some live music. Not necessary. I'll listen to my records; thank you very much. 

Now once vaccinated, and my super old parents survived a bout of Covid, I began to lighten up a little about crowds. I resumed attending some crowded sporting events; still found crowds a little creepy but I survived. And now Nick Lowe, nonetheless, is my first indoor live music event back in my preferred live music small club setting since January 2020; The Delines, and the Mekons a short time before that, as I recall. And I survived, again, and as has always been the case with good live music I feel a new positive energy for going to shows. That, right, will last at least until I attend a show that turns out meh or lousy. 

That won't be Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets, at any rate. LS are a crack outfit that perform in wrestling masks. One or two members go back to the Raybeats and NY Rocker days in the early 1980s but this particular configuration came together in Nashville in 1988. Superb musicians, playing driving surf music and classic pop instrumentals, they aren't Rockpile but they're the next best thing or here and there maybe even better. They can do post-Everly Brothers country rock, Rockpile's (Dave Edmunds, Billy Bremmer, and Terry William's) wheelhouse, but get most excited doing pop novelty stuff, New Wave, and Bubblegum pop. They encored Saturday's show with Shocking Blue's "Venus."  

Nick is obviously proud of the band and they him; and they play together like a loose mutual admiration society. Watching Lowe hold court like this it occurred to me what a pivotal role as an affable ambassador to the wider pop world Lowe must have played for all the oddballs and eccentrics at Stiff Records in the '70s punk/new wave England. He produced the first five Elvis Costello records (all 'A' albums, says me). He produced The Pretenders first hit single, a cover of the Kink's "Stop Your Sobbing." Also brilliant. And a whole bunch of other good punk rock or pub-rock-meets-new-wave records by The Damned and Graham Parker and Dr. Feelgood and Carlene Carter and Wreckless Eric and John Hiatt, etc. 

I was actually surprised to be reminded that Rockpile play on Lowe's first two solo albums, Pure Pop for Now People (1978; known as Jesus of Cool in UK) Labour of Lust (1979), because of how much those albums departed from the country rock model of previous Dave Edmunds and Brinsley Schwarz records that Lowe played on. Obviously, in retrospect, Nick with those two eponymous solo albums was trying to score with the New Wavers. But three Top 40 hits in the UK, one in the US ("Cruel to be Kind"), weren't enough commercial success, apparently, and after those he went back to production and eventually his true roots pop preoccupations, never abandoning the corny humor. Still, as far as peak 1978 to 1982 New Wave albums go, posterity might celebrate Nick's first two solo shots more than we did back then. They'd both rank high on any peak New Wave album list I could come up with, that is for sure; Talking Heads, Cars, Devo, B-52s, XTC, Parallel Lines, This Year's Model, Dare? Pure Pop and Labour of Lust were uptempo, jangly, and hooky classics. 

When I listened to Lowe's album from last year, Indoor Safari, his voice sounded diminished. Not surprising, as he's 75, for crissakes! But mediocre material on the album, "Trombone," for instance, comes to life in person with Los Straitjackets. And live, in person, Nick's old voice adds a fragile emotional power when he slows things down. I teared up as he milked every last drop of sentiment out of versions of "What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding" and, to end the show, an acoustic version all alone, to finally drive everybody out he jokes, of "Alison" or "My Aim is True."  

Nick's tall, thin, rakish in a shock of white hair and Clark Kent glasses. A charmer, he primes the crowd with stories about the wild going's on at the show the night before and wry cryptic references to the chaos outside. I associate a particular condition, an infatuation, say, with 20th century pop music, with a scene in the 1995 film 12 Monkeys. Bruce Willis, a crazed refugee from a future dystopia, drools over Fats Domino's 1956 version of "Blueberry Hill" playing on a car radio. A fetish for the 20th c pop music jukebox. Lowe is a product of this condition, as am I, and in Nick's specific case he loves everything rock & roll between 1954 and 1965 and distills it into ageless pure pop for, well,  honestly, yesterday's people, or surviving 20th c pop music loving people, but  hopefully, somewhere, some Now People too.    

Chrome as Space Rock Avatars and Cyberpunk Pioneers

My short playlist case for Chrome as underground proto-cyberpunk musical missing link to Erik Davis's High Weirdness in California in the 1970s. 

Damon Edge, creator of Chrome, after recording Visitation, 1976, their debut, sent the record to Warner Brothers but they rejected it. They told Edge it sounded like a "messed up Doors album." He took this as a compliment, of course. I might want to add a 'messed up stag Jefferson Airplane' but, yes, very apt. This is the only Chrome album that has such a bad '60s hangover vibe and isn't yet characteristically post-punk. 

What if NYC's band Suicide lived in the Bay Area and had a thing for sci-fi Alien Soundtracks, consider Chrome's second album that came out in 1978? "Chromosome Damage" might be a worst case scenario. Bad trip psychedelia meets DIY tech. Helios Creed joins the band on the second album to solidify the nucleus of Edge and Creed through Chrome's classic period, Alien Soundtracks to 3rd from the Sun (1982). 

"Zombie Warfare (Can't Let You Down)," off Chrome's '79 album Half Machine Lip Moves. Maybe their best album but there are several other legit contenders. As live music fantasies go Half Machine Chrome double-billed with the Wipers, not inconceivable, generates sci-fi psychedelic punk rock mind-melding live music energies. Cum feel the noize. 

Here's Chrome, if I'm not mistaken, and I could very well be, but from what I could gather, 1980, "unreleased studio outtake," so tossed out but, more significantly, tossing off seemingly effortlessly a prototype of a particular feedback heavy guitar band emo-screamo vocal style that anticipates bands like Husker Du and Nirvana and Guided by Voices. Although, I can't say for sure how much actual guitar Chrome uses in this take because all the instrumentation sounds, as usual, heavily treated and filtered. Still, more rootsy and soulful than typical Chrome. 

Chrome's New Wave bid, "Animal," off Red Exposure, 1980. I admire the boldly abstracted pop move but understand longtime fans find it a slight sell-out. 

From the 1981 Chrome album, Blood On The Moon, another album contender. "The Need." Chrome's mature sound is a visionary amalgam of jittery punk, bad trip psychedelia, space rock, and a kind of space rock musique concrete that would morph into industrial music in the 1980s. Creed's noir guitar sound also a big influence on Sonic Youth.  

I've tried less successfully with Chrome before. There is a muted quality to the production that makes everything sound distorted and staticky and so alienated and impenetrable but once you stop trying to get to some clear narrative center the sculpted, conceptual, abstracted shards of muted noise rock are catchy. Some wag on youtube mused, "Chrome are for Hawkwind fans into industrial music." That sounds about right to me. 

Chrome are a combo of psychedelia, punk rock, and obsessive uses of DIY technology. High-low weirdness from San Francisco, California, in the 1970s. Hardcore fans seem to favor '82's 3rd from the Sun as a kind of aesthetic culmination but my sense of the album is it's when they settle into a more conventional dark metal sound and lose some of the weird charm of their earlier records. Edge leaves the band and moves to Paris in '83, ending what I'll call their classic period.   

Hedwig & the Angry Inch (2001)

"Angry Inch," Hedwig & the Angry Inch: In theatrical form as pure a piece of punk rock as you're likely to find in the 21st century. The sound is rooted in early '70s glam rock, T-Rex, Bowie, so it's transgender glam rock punk rock. Intense, funny, and brutally poignant. This is the DIY punk aesthetic in the 21st century, tightly scripted and catchy as hell. Cinematic punk rock. 

"The Medium Was Tedium" b/w "Don't Back the Front" The Desperate Bicycles (1978)

 Simon Reynolds, in his book Rip It Up, argues the Desperate Bicycles were more important to the developing DIY ethos than the arty moves made by '77 punk rock bellwether record labels like Fast Product or Factory. The DB's were from London, and didactic as the Gang of Four but not as collegiate or sarcastic or ironic. The drummer on this single was 14. Their direct DIY message: "It was easy, it was cheap-- go and do it!" In other words, start a band and make a record. If we can do it, they said, you can too.  

This is the 'A'-side of the DB's second single, "The Medium Was Tedium" followed by the 'B'-side, from 1978.  

"Don't Back the Front" 

Punk Rock Tuesday

"Nothing," The Enemy (1978)

Chris Knox in a 1978 punk rock mohawk. The Enemy were one of the first punk rock bands from Dunedin, and for some mark the beginning of the "Dunedin sound"; New Zealand's indie rock sound documented and spread by Flying Nun Records. Very crude live recording. A guy in the band, probably Knox, complains about not being ready to play for the people who traveled a 100 miles from Christchurch to see them. Flying Nun was formed in Christchurch. Proto-NZ punk rock. 

Bonus: Knox's next band, Toy Love, was definitely ready to play. A power pop songfulness pokes out of their headstrong noize. 

"Every 1's A Winner," Hot Chocolate (1978)

 

"Every 1's a Winner," especially after yesterday's jury verdict: 34 counts, trial by a jury of his "peer" Americans, unanimously concluding former POTUS not above the law, including some juror that gets all their news from Truth Social (wouldn't recommend it): all counts, all GUILTY. Finally, some law and order. Add cheating in the 2016 election to his conviction for rape and financial fraud and NY is doing their part, finally. (After all, they ought to be doing something for launching this sadistic clown Frankenstein of corporate rule and culture war violence on the world.) Besides, there's still his failed coup attempt and stealing top secret documents from the government (that he's likely already traded with his murderous dictator besties around the world?!). How can Grump be a candidate for office with such charges and indictments unresolved!? SCOTUS and the legal system delaying the prosecution of a failed coup attempt and potential treason is a colossal democratic fail and a Constitutional crisis, and yes this will be on the test come this fall. But convicting Cheetolini for his crimes, any of them, trying to keep voters from learning he was bonking prostitutes while his wife was at home with their baby right before the 2016 election, any crimes, are always wins. Face it, the biggest threat to election integrity in America is Trump and his Republican party. Takeaway: "Every 1's a Winner" whenever Trump loses.  

And disco at another cheesy peak. Hot Chocolate. 1978. Actually, they had at least one song on the singles chart in Britain every year between 1970 and 1984. Errol Brown, the leader, was of West Indian ancestry, eventually a Thatcherite conservative, and something of a metrosexual (see video). Obvious influence on Roland Gift and the Fine Young Cannibals in the 1980s. I like "You Sexy Thing" and "Brother Louie" fine, also, but especially go for this one. The swagger in the raunchy fat bass, the fuzzy, buzzy guitar riffing: soul meets Abba-esque Euro rock & roll. In the video the group comes-off like a professional garage band. "Every 1's a Winner, babe, that's no lie, you never fail to satisfy." Culminating with another big female chorus gushing "Satisfy." The goofy sensual charm is winning, or wins me over anyway. 

Also, family resemblance with the Miami disco sound of TK Records; or more disco sounds with West Indian influences, at any rate. Thank God It's Disco Friday. 

"Flame Thrower Love," Dead Boys (1978): Punk Rock Tuesday

Between 1976 and 1982, or thereabouts, there was NYC punk rock, British punk rock, LA punk rock, and then, really, okay to great punk rock scenes in every other provincial city in North America, no doubt England, France, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, and eventually nearly everywhere, apparently. But in the US, anyway, Cleveland was the capitol of the provincial city 1970s punk rock scenes: The Styrenes, Electric Eels, Rocket from the Tombs, Pere Ubu, The Pagans, and the Dead Boys.   

"Soft Space," Soft Machine (1978)

More psychedelic disco; or space disco or electro disco, etc. Some hybrid disco form from late-Disco era, 1976-1979. Strobe light synth drums racing neon lit city streets at night. Band from early '70s Canterbury scene, England; better known for jazzy progressive rock.