Thursday, April 4, 2019
housess in motions
David Stubbs writes: "In 1980, A Certain Ratio were supposed to cover Talking Heads' "Houses In Motion" with Grace Jones on lead vocals. She never completed them, and the Hannett -produced session languished in the vaults. This new recording, featuring Jez Kerr's guide vocal, is based on those original recordings, with a new video. "
As I recall from interviewing Martin Moscrop for Rip It Up, the idea - cooked up between Island and Factory - was to do a whole album with ACR as Grace Jones's backing band. That never came to anything though.
But I do remember the news item in NME that specifically announced the "Houses In Motion" collaboration, and the comment by the one of the band, "we're gonna take a Talking Heads song, do it properly".
(The snidery evident here perhaps coming from the fact that there was a belief among ACR that the T.Heads turn towards funk came after ACR supported the Heads on an early tour of the UK. Hence the jostling tone of that quip - revenge for being ripped off. Don't believe that myself - T. Heads were surely already mad for discofunk before the first album.)
This "House of Motions" by ACR feat Grace that never transpired is one of those phantasmic music-paper-sired folk memory things
One I recently came across - didn't know this from the time, wouldn't have cared then, but now it tantalized when I saw it in the Uncut special edition on her life and work - is the fact that Joni Mitchell wanted The Police to be her backing band on one of her early Eighties albums. But presumably they - while flattered, one suspects, and probably fans of her - politely demurred, no doubt rather busy what with the superstardom and the world tours. She particularly liked the drumming and approach to rhythm in the Police.
(The whole of the rest of Sting's career essentially was coming from the same mis-place as Mingus now i think about it.)
What other tantalizing should-have-beens were there? Proposed collaborations, albums of cover versions, side projects and solo albums ... unrealized dreams
Ooh, well one is that Bowie planned a Pinups #2, devoted to the American Sixties this time... not that tantalizing to me i must admit, as I dislike Pinups #1
Another one is Eno's desire and intent to produce Scott Walker, this is in that period between "The Electrician" and Climate of Hunter
Oooh - here's another, not tantalizing but promising some kind of compelling grotesquerie. The story that Shane Macgowan tried to persuade the Pogues to do a 20 minute acid house song called "You Must Get Connected" or something like that. He was well into the E guzzling Shoom vibes of the late Eighties.
Must be loads more
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There was frenzied excitement at my school for about a week when we heard that after John Bonham's death, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were working with Chris Squire and Alan White, using the name XYZ. (Ex-Yes and Zeppelin, geddit?!)
I had always thought it was a playground legend, but apparently it was a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYZ_(English_band)
Robert Plant, bless him, walked away apparently because it had all gone a bit too proggy.
But it is intriguing, at least, to think what they might have sounded like if they had managed to record together.
Curiosity about these lost opportunities feels like the same impulse that drives mashups. As in my favourite musical discovery of the week: what if the Temptations had used Black Sabbath as their backing band?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR3uz8rq4ng
Miles/Hendrix is the one that springs immediately to mind. The thought of what 2 of my all time top 3 collaborating might have done together is mind blowing. But then again Miles' output in the wake of Jimi's death was incredible anyway...
those are good ones
another Bowie one is the soundtrack he could have done for The Man Who Fell to Earth
and then there was the group that Robert Wyatt was forming after Matching Mole that would have included Francis Monkman (as in Curved Air, Long Good Friday soundtrack, etc) and someone else i'm blanking on - that was cut short by the accident, which made it impossible for Wyatt to be in a touring band. They would have signed to Virgin most likely.
Still, in that scenario, Rock Bottom never happens so...
sticking with Virgin, there was Richard Branson's daft idea of glomming the ex-Pistol Rotten onto Devo - to the point of contriving their both being in Jamaica at the same time and trying to effect a meeting. Neither party would ever have gone for it, obviously, but it's still an intriguing scenario. If Rotten at that point had done anything half way rooted in hard rock like the Pistols rather than the PiL direction - and Devo were a shit-hot tight band underneath the angularities and the Spenglerian philosophy - then he could have been a big star.
Those are all great ideas. I have a nagging feeling, though, that all these collaborations are best left as what-ifs and what-might-have-beens.
How often are supergroups really any good? Combining great individual talents is all very well, but it seems like there is nothing that can substitute for the mysterious alchemy that comes from going to the same school or the same clubs together. Or bumping into someone at the station carrying Muddy Water and Chuck Berry albums. Or putting up a poster that says "Drummer Wanted: Preferably Female, For Rock n' Roll Band. We like the Buzzcocks". Or the guitar player taking a friend round to the singer's mum's house and playing a Marvelettes B-side.
For every Byrne and Eno, there are ten Bowie and Jaggers.
Phil Knight sez:
Check out the word "egregore" sometime.
Collaborations and supergroups usually don't work as expected because musical groups are primarily spiritual entities i.e. they are convenient outlets for higher spiritual powers (not always pleasant ones, mind), which are manifested if they resonate with the egregore that has been built up within the group. This is why bands made up of quite ordinary people often can produce incredible music, and other bands made up of musical maestros often do not.
The humans are not in charge here...
absolutely. another example of "seems like a good idea" is that June 1974 album that captured a supergroup of John Cale, Brian Eno, Nico and Kevin Ayers. My god it is tedious.
cool concept - it's a bit like the stuff your man Daniel O'Keeffe writes about in Stolen Lightning isn't? not even really an occult thing but almost like common sense - or at least, something we've all experienced in our lives, the peculiar energy that gathers with a particular gang of friends, or an office work situation, or any number of set-ups and contexts - a magazine that has a heyday. The rock band is just one example of it. i suppose the mystery is why it burns out, why it can't sustain.
you are probably aware of this Phil, but one thing i loved to discover is that Daniel O'Keefe's family joke of "festivus" was actually propagated into popular consciousness via his son's work on Seinfeld.
Actually I didn't know that! But glad to see you enjoyed "Stolen Lighting", that was a revelatory book for me.
I'm very much into taking these occult concepts seriously these days. I wouldn't say I "believe" in them, but I do accept them as working hypotheses.
Take the Rolling Stones as an example of a band with a particularly strong (almost noxious) egregore. I do think that it is a real thing, an entity, above and beyond Mick, Keef & Co. If you think about the Rolling Stones even for a few seconds, that vague frisson of darkness you get is the sense of their egregore, and it's much more than just the combined characters of the band members, most of whom are quite reasonable gents (Charlie!).
absolutely
you only have to listen to their bland solo records to realise that it is the group entity that summons the miasma of dark energy
i loved that book, it took me a long time to read, and i painstakingly read all the footnotes as well. was an influence on the glam book. started seeing 'magic' in all kinds of places and contexts. i like the way he makes it possible to see magic as a real, effect-causing force in the world without actually needing to believe it's supernatural / paranormal - just an effect of how suggestible we are, and how precarious consciousness is
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