Big Fish Little Fish Mini Vault event Feb 6th

MINI-RUMPUS1Only two and a half weeks until the Big Fish Little Fish ‘Out of this World’ Mini Vault event in Waterloo. Saturday 6th February | 11am – 2pm. Robin Hexstatic played this last year and I’ve been looking forward to it for ages because it has a space theme. If you’re unfamiliar with the BFLF concept it’s a day time party for families with under 10 year old children that goes under the banner ‘2-4 hour party people’. Kids have lots of activities to get involved in, can get dressed up, there’s a parachute dance and the parents can relive tunes from their clubbing heydays.

They’ve got a whole heap of extras at this one including Korg synth and gadget workshops. Info and tickets here
The last one I did at the (admittedly free) Southbank was a roadblock that had to be stopped halfway because of the number of people trying to get in. It all ends mercifully early and you emerge, blinking into sunlight to realise it’s not breakfast time but not long until dinner.

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Found In Sounds #12: Malcolm McLaren special

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Malcolm McLaren would have been 70 years old today, here’s a collection of articles surrounding his seminal ‘Duck Rock’ album release in the early 80s from Sounds. Click to enlargeMcLaren Sounds 4.12.82 2web
I’ve added a small news piece about the Double Dutch girls to the interview above to fill space. Big interviews were frequently cut up and placed at different points of the paper and I’ve cobbled this one back to a double page spread.

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Above: The Garry Bushell-penned review of ‘Duck Rock’ which is rather damning – see the three ads below that were run in the paper the next week, all deftly extracting a rather different angle using quotes from the piece. There’s a definite whiff of Paul Morley on the tagline at the bottom and this would have been around the time when he and Trevor Horn, the album’s producer, would have been setting up their ZTT label.

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It quickly became common knowledge that McLaren had ripped off several compositions and taken writing credits on the album (something he had already done with Bow Wow Wow and would do again with ‘Fans’). Not even two months after the album’s release the writs were already flying.
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Back in 1981, Fred Vermorel – never one to mince his words and badly burned by his experience with Malcolm over the extremely dodgy ‘Chicken’ magazine – laid into him over two pages. It’s hard to justify what McLaren was intending with this publication (and I wouldn’t try) and thankfully we’ll never find out. There’s also a piece about the pirate fashions McLaren and partner Vivienne Westwood created that they launched Bow Wow Wow with.
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RIP Clarence Reid aka Blow Fly

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I found the record above at a carboot sale around 1987 in a muddy sports ground in South Park, Reigate. It was shortly after I had started to ‘dig for breaks’, inspired by hip hop and sampling, in as much as a skint 17 year old could ‘dig’ in a small town 30 miles south of London with only an Our Price, a Woolworths and one other indie record shop to excavate. I had no idea what this was but, with a cover like that and on a label called Weird World, I wasn’t about to leave it in the box.

There were no track titles and for good reason; ‘Shake Your Ass’, ‘Bad Fuck’, ‘Suck It’ and ‘Spread Your Cheeks’ were some of the delights contained within. But I knew the signs were good: black artist, 70s release, the word ‘Disco’ put me off a bit but there were all those other LPs on the back too. Who was Blow Fly? The dude in the mask and home made super hero (villain?) suit presumably, and why were all these women naked around him? The ‘For Mature Adults Only’ sticker needn’t have been on there, it was pretty obvious that this wasn’t for kids.

I got it, probably cost 50p, and never showed my parents that particular cover. It contained enough profanity to sink a ship as Blow Fly took established songs and changed the lyrics to suit his dirty mind. The classic ‘What A Difference’ took ‘What A Difference A Day Makes’ and turned it into ‘… A Lay Makes’ while ‘Suck it’ paraphrased ‘Do It ‘Til You’re Satisfied’. Purile stuff for sure and the blueprint for every Blow Fly album I’ve ever heard since but hilarious stuff to a teenage boy. With no internet it was impossible to find out more about the masked man and it wasn’t until I started touring the States in the late 90s, buying from a wider range of records, that I found out who he was and picked up the other albums on the back cover.

The Fly was the alter-ego of Clarence Reid, record producer and songwriter since the 60s, who had started changing the lyrics to hit records for a laugh at parties. Recording an album of them, he created the Blow Fly persona to protect his respectable career name and the rest is history. ‘Disco’ isn’t his best album (and he got sued good and proper for that ‘What A Difference…’ cover) but I’ll remember it with the most affection as it was the first one I found and for introducing me to his weird world. RIP Clarence Reid aka Blow Fly.

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Kosmischer Läufer

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I’m extremely late to this particular party but have to flag them up for the care and attention that’s gone into the presentation and back story of these releases. There are now three volumes of ‘Kosmischer Läufer’ (Cosmic Runner) released on Scottish label, Unknown Capability Recordings. Subtitled ‘The Secret Cosmic Music of the East German Olympic Program 1972-83’ and packaged in beautifully designed 70s-era psychedelic sports graphics on black, red and yellow coloured vinyl (see what they did there?), with a biography that gives a new twist on the ‘unearthed private tapes from unknown Krautrock-inspired musician who rates Kraftwerk, Cluster and Neu! as influences’ story.

This particular angle concerns a certain Martin Zeichnete who was working as a sound engineer in Dresden with his ear to the sounds of the emerging West German underground in the early 70s. Martin, a runner who had the idea to make music for athletes to train to, is spirited away to Berlin by the authorities to work in secret on just such a project for the ‘Nationales Olympisches Komitee’ to help strengthen their team for the next Olympic bid. The music is a perfect distillation of the motorik, synth-driven grooves you’d expect when thinking of the above influences and I don’t believe the story for one minute as the sounds are too clean and knowing.

But that doesn’t matter because the music contained therein is good and, coupled with the entertaining setting, you want to believe it. Sometimes music is all about the mindset and these releases set you up and frame the work perfectly. I’ve lost count of the amount of music I’ve listened to in the wrong mood or place and initially dismissed only to hear the same thing again later and be knocked out by it simply because the circumstances and setting were different. Had I heard this dry, without the illusion (or is it? – yes it probably is) of the liner notes and cover art, then maybe I’d have reacted differently to it – I’ll never know.

Some of the best music is made by artists making their own myths – Boards of Canada, Kraftwerk and yes, Bowie while we’re still all on that page – and these releases do it with love and care. Now, has anyone got a copy of vol. 2 at a decent price please? Buy vinyl and digital from here.

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Updated Openmindesign site

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I’ve been spending a bit of time updating my Openmindesign portfolio website this week as well as making art for the new daily ‘Kosmischer Debris’ series on Instagram, hence the minimal activity on here. The portfolio is now way easier to get around, I’ve taken a lot out and stripped it back to the bare essentials, although there’s still 20+ years of work on there.

There’s a new format series that I’ve been meaning to start on here but I’ve been too busy to implement it and also, The Vinyl Factory made a return visit this week for a second round of the ‘Freaky Formats’ series which should be up shortly. I’m editing a huge 28,000 word interview I did with Mr Scruff for Dust & Grooves and have finished a 45s mix for the 45/7 Vinyl Club which will debut in March. There’s more but I don’t want to shout about it right now…

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Blackstar thinking

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Woke up still thinking about Bowie this morning. Watched a bit of the BBC coverage in the wake of his death last night and was struck by a vintage interview clip which ended with the reporter saying that he wasn’t your average rock star. Bowie countered that he was wrong and that he wasn’t a rock star at all.

Elsewhere some pundit they’d wheeled in seemed to want to press home the title ‘The Picasso of Pop’ in relation to him and repeated it in a couple of instances. Personally I found the analogy tacky, Bowie wasn’t like anyone else, more like parts of many people and comparing him to Picasso is a limiting comparison. As someone else pointed out yesterday, no one is ever proclaimed as ‘the new David Bowie’.

In the lyrics to ‘Blackstar’ he states what he is and he isn’t;

I can’t answer why (I’m a blackstar)
Just go with me (I’m not a filmstar)
I’m-a take you home (I’m a blackstar)
Take your passport and shoes (I’m not a popstar)
And your sedatives, boo (I’m a blackstar)
You’re a flash in the pan (I’m not a marvel star)
I’m the great I am (I’m a blackstar)

I’m a blackstar, way up, oh honey, I’ve got game
I see right so white, so open-heart it’s pain
I want eagles in my daydreams, diamonds in my eyes
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar)

Something happened on the day he died
Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a star star, I’m a blackstar)

I can’t answer why (I’m not a gangster)
But I can tell you how (I’m not a film star)
We were born upside-down (I’m a star star)
Born the wrong way ‘round (I’m not a white star)
(I’m a blackstar, I’m not a gangster
I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar
I’m not a pornstar, I’m not a wandering star
I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar)

What a Blackstar is I have no idea but it seems he wanted to be remembered as something or someone unique and unclassifiable rather than a ‘pop’ version of someone else.

The top image is included for no reason other than it’s the combination of two iconic designs, the Ziggy Stardust flash now seemingly becoming the main graphic identifier for Bowie. I don’t know who did the image but it’s fun.

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RIP David Bowie

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In shock, see the post before last, the new album was on since Friday, I’d revisited ‘The Next Day’ as a result. Bowie has been in my life since my first memories of radio and Top Of The Pops and now he’s gone. A huge loss for music and another legend taken from us by cancer. Watching the video for new album track ‘Lazarus’ over the weekend I now realise the significance of the final scene. What an exit, a career orchestrated down to the last days. RIP David Bowie

UPDATE: There have been some lovely tributes cropping up in my social media feed today, this one from Christian Ward is beautiful. “Been thinking about what to say. Figured art would say it better. See you Star-man. Thanks for the music”.

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Sophie Harrington did this via Twitter which says it allSophieHarringtonBowie
Continuing the Ziggy Stardust theme, Shindig magazine posted this…
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Rough Trade are donating all profits from sales of the artist to Cancer Research for the whole of January.

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PS. Just remembered that there’s a little nod to Bowie in the text of ‘The Search Engine’, see if you can find it.

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