TO WHERE I AM NOW

Thanks to everyone that has managed to find some music or cloth that they like through the Bandcamp page. Also if you didn’t manage to make it within the 24 hour period you can still get records or T-shirts, it’s just that they charge us a commission. If you wanted to order Handwritten & Illustrated Lyrics, the MOAT vinyl (with CD) or a Honey Mink Forever T-shirt probably best to go via Olivia because we have those items here at the In Deep Music Archive and that will save us those commission charges.

With the death yesterday of The Sweet’s bass player and sometime singer Steve Priest one might say, “We just haven’t got a clue what to do”. It reminded me of my clothes before I discovered scoop neck T-shirts and loon pants. I remember Dare had a classic pair of silver and black platform shoes with stars on them. I had my own pair of spectacular platforms that were a fluorescent blue but actually not as cool as Dare’s. I also had a pink denim suit with big lapels. We went on a school trip, to London I think, but we weren’t allowed to go unless we had some respectable clothing and for some reason we weren’t allowed to wear our school uniforms. This is all very hazy but I do remember that I bought the suit (or my parents did) at Burton’s in Chester which was equidistant to Liverpool. I’m not sure if I was being image conscious or whether all the clothing looked like that, the shoes, the shirts, it wasn’t till I saw that picture of Janis Joplin inside the gatefold of In Concert that I went more Hippie. I remember when I found the brown brush denim, low waist jeans. They were so cool. I used to wear them to school until one day I was caught by the headmaster’s secretary and told not to be seen in them again. It was probably around then that I decided that the first chance I got to leave this prison I would take and at 16 I was gone. Music was the thing and having to wear a school uniform from the 5th year in to the lower and upper sixth was just not going to happen. University just wasn’t an option, not because of my brains but because of the clothes you needed to wear to be allowed to study for pass results to be accepted. It was too late anyway, guitar had taken over and controlling my mind, there was no turning back.

We walked past one of the churches in Penzance today where we took this photo. It was a Wesleyan chapel and apparently the cross where I am sitting was once on the roof of the building but it was hit by lightning (those angry gods) and is now there in the garden. I had to jump the gate to get in there because it’s now privately owned. This reminds me to mention that chapel I was talking about a few weeks ago that was for sale. It was £100,000 but in the middle of June it’s going up for auction starting at £50,000…dear God…

Tomorrow we are in the studio starting on a new project. Dare was in today downloading files onto the computer. At this point we don’t know what the project’s name will be, but it has been written by one of my sessioneers, Ahad, who lives in Istanbul. I’ll be playing bass and guitar and producing with Dare also engineering. Eddie, who is playing on all the records we make down here these days (Noctorum, MOAT, Space Summit) will be playing drums. I’m calling it AA, Ahad’s initials, because I have a solo album by one of the girls (Theresa Wayman) from Warpaint and her solo project is called TT and it bleeds cool so I thought AA sounded cool, too. It’s just my pet name for the project. But let’s not talk of pets, thanks for everyone’s kind words.

Olivia is in the other room making packages for the Bandcamp project. She’ll be sending everything out on Monday. Other things will be sent from the US. I hope that this crazy world will sort itself out and that the US election in November will be the beginning of a new era. There’s so many mad leaders in the world today, I don’t need to name them, mad stupid, ignorant. When do we get what we deserve, or is that the problem?

Music today reflects the death of Steve Priest, bass player and sometime singer with Glam Rockers The Sweet, he was 72. The band had thirteen top twenty hits in the seventies and nobody can forget their look and lead singer Brian Connolly’s hair. It was probably that look which had him severely beaten up in the seventies so that he had trouble singing on the Sweet Fanny Adams album (1974) due to injuries to his throat. The violent morons never go away and why do they get so angry when they see pretty men? Tonight’s listening begins when The Sweet are escaping their Teeny songwriters and Pop hit producer Phil Wainman and start working with Mike Chapman instead – just for one album, a step towards producing their own records.

Desolation Boulevard is the first album where they were released from the chains of the Pop hitmakers, Chinn and Chapman, and wrote their own classic Pop hit with Fox On The Run which reached No.2 in the UK charts and No.1 in Germany, a worldwide hit. Chinn and Chapman are still involved in the album, writing The Six Teens and Turn It Down, but this is the album where the band wanted their autonomy and got it. (Although the US album has a different track listing with more Chinn/Chapman songs.) Nobody really seemed to notice what a great band they were singing Bubblegum melodies dressed in their Mum’s reversed blouses and wearing silver trousers, yellow jumpsuits and pink boots. They were in fact talented musicians and in the seventies the singles always had a great Rock track on the B side where they sounded more like Deep Purple or The Who than a Teen sensation. Mick Tucker, who sadly died in 2002 from Leukemia, was a flashy drummer with double bass drum and twirling sticks and even the drum solo on this record is listenable. There’s a cover of My Generation where the band were in fact more at home than what they were known for. A great melodic Rock album for all of you that ever raided your Mum’s wardrobe for the photos but spent a lot of time at home practicing as well.

Give Us A Wink (1976) was their first album with all the songs written exclusively by the band. The record didn’t chart in England but made the Top 10 in Sweden and Germany. It was a departure for the band, some sort of missing link between Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack and Deep Purple’s Machine Head. I imagine that the teen fans were deserting them in droves and fans of heavier music could only see them with their Glam Rock image and catchy hits. Plus the teen fans were getting older and times were changing, Glam didn’t have much life left in it. Doomed to failure marketing-wise but not musically and of course as usual with The Sweet nobody cared about skills, their image wasn’t about that. They had a single, The Action, opening Side 2 that was a Top 20 in the UK and the US and Top 10 in Canada. It’s a really good seventies melodic Rock album.

By 1977’s Off The Record their popularity was seriously waning but you’d never know it by listening to the album. There was always Germany and Sweden and they would ultimately have their popularity last longest in those places, their last two albums not even released in the UK whilst they were still together. Off The Record has great high harmonies like Queen, lots of guitars and catchy songs, but no memorable singles.

Level Headed, the last Sweet album with a hit, was a change of direction abandoning that harder Rock sound. The hit was of course Love Is Like Oxygen, those high harmonies and catchy melodies remain. I always loved this song, there’s just something about the simplicity of the riff that I always found attractive and then there’s the intro riff and if that’s not enough the instrumental middle part that sounds like something from Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. Then there’s the disco outro, bizarre. The song in an edited form reached No.9 in the UK charts, No.10 in Germany and No.8 in the US. On the album you can hear Steve Priest singing lead vocals on California Nights and guitarist Andy Scott singing lead vocals on Dream On and Fountain, that’s three of five songs on Side 1. This was to be lead singer Brian Connolly’s last album. Connolly died in 1997 aged 51 (after a life of chronic alcoholism and heavy smoking) of liver failure, kidney failure and the consequences of multiple heart attacks.

I couldn’t leave the night without listening to some of their super hits, so glad I did, so harmless. Blockbuster, Ballroom Blitz, Teenage Rampage, Wig-Wam Bam, Co-Co, Funny Funny, Little Willy, Poppa Joe, Fox On The Run, The Action, Love Is Like Oxygen. The Sweet have now only one member alive, guitarist Andy Scott who recently made a record with Suzi Quatro and Don Powell from Slade. He has a very silly haircut.

Song Of The Day is Cascade from Rhyme. Simple and partly inspired by Julian Cope’s Pop period it seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

Cascade

(Oooh, cascade!)
(Oooh, cascade!)

A seaweed look at you
Through the salty beach
The blossom stone’s a flower
The acrobat’s a peach

You gave a pebble party there
Why is it no one came
You sold yourself to a shiny man
And spread yourself insane

(You) Take the heart out of slightly weighted clouds
(Oooh, cascade!)
If you’re a cascade I wish you’d touch the ground
(Oooh, cascade!)

From crumbled peaks
I sentenced you to me
Your skin was shrinking
Into paper dolls that see

You climbed out of your scrapbook
Lit matches to your find
You burn your very own escape
Returning back inside

Take the heart out of slightly weighted clouds
(Oooh, cascade!)
If you’re a cascade I wish you’d touch the ground
(Oooh, cascade!)

Take the heart out of slightly weighted clouds
(Oooh, cascade!)
If you’re a cascade I wish you’d touch the ground
(Oooh, cascade!)

You shout a language you hope no one will know
(Oooh, cascade!)
And sinking into lasting death, again you start to grow
(Oooh, cascade!)
You start to grow
(Oooh, cascade!)
No one will know
(Oooh, cascade!)
We’re like a rolling stone
(Oooh, cascade!)
Whoa…

(Willson-Piper)
Rhyme (1989)