Features Disc of the day
Laughing Clowns
Cruel, But Fair
(Hot, 2005)
Ed Kuepper's post-Saints outswinger takes an early wicket. MOJO4music's house Aussie doffs the "baggy green".
When Ed Kuepper decided to leave his legendary band The Saints in 1979, fans and critics alike might have been forgiven for expecting his next musical venture to be in a similar vein - anarchic garage rock, oozing with punk attitude and snarling riffs. What they got instead was a gloriously unique and inventive band called the Laughing Clowns.
The signs were certainly there on The Saints' 1978 album Prehistoric Sounds - a telling bunch of slower songs and arrangements, a greater use of (gasp!) acoustic guitars, as well as horns and piano. Unwilling to tread the same sonic paths, Kuepper was determined to forge a new sound based on an unlikely pair of musical inspirations: jazz tenorist Archie Shepp, and crooner Tony Bennett's late '50s album The Beat Of My Heart. "I wanted to put the emphasis on the drums and instruments other than guitar to make the musical points," Kuepper explains in his liner notes - and from that singular brief the Clowns were born.
Too often neglected, both during their career and since, Cruel, But Fair presents the Clowns' entire studio output on vinyl - 48 tracks across three CDs, in all their remastered glory. Their first single, Holy Joe, set the signature sound for much of the band's work over the next 6 years: Ed's echo-drenched vocals married to Jeff Wegener's energetic, jazz flavoured drumming, with healthy dollops of strident piano and wailing horn melodies thrown into the mix.
But Kuepper put few reins on his song-writing muse, channelling all the musical possibilities of the post-punk period he himself helped usher in. From Flypaper, which roars out of the speakers like one of Morricone's great lost spaghetti-western themes, all clattering drums and frenetic guitars, to the slow, sparse percussion and weary horns of Collapse Board, and the edgy but elegant rock of Eternally Yours (the closest the band ever got to a hit single), it's obvious just how keen Kuepper was to explore a larger musical palette. Crystal Clear is a galloping, ska-inspired number complete with blaring, honking saxes, while Ghost Of An Ideal Wife's hypnotic banjo & sax groove and Sometimes' skeletal funk are works few would have expected from the man who co-wrote (I'm) Stranded.
Even now, it's virtually impossible to categorize the incredible mix of rock, soul, punk, new wave and jazz elements that Laughing Clowns fused together - not always perfectly, but with a forcefulness and ambition that remains simply undeniable.
Ange Tsibogiannis
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 12/07/2009
Further Listening
The Saints – Prehistoric Sounds (Harvest/EMI, 1978)
Tony Bennett– The Beat Of My Heart (Columbia, 1957)
Ed Kuepper – Jean Lee And The Yellow Dog (Hot, 2008)
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Gotta love Laughing Clowns!!! How about an Ed Kuepper MOJO interview or something???
Posted by Bill at 12:57 PM GMT 22/10/2009 Report Abuse
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Gotta love Laughing Clowns!!! How about an Ed Kuepper MOJO interview or something???
Posted by Bill at 1:00 PM GMT 22/10/2009 Report Abuse
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