Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
Gang Of Four
Entertainment!
(EMI, 1979)
"Remember Lot's wife. Renounce all sin and vice."
I remember putting Entertainment! on my 13th birthday wish-list because I'd read a review, in either Rolling Stone or the NME, that compared Andy Gill's guitar style to that of Jimi Hendrix. Come to think of it, the review probably didn't say that, did it. It most likely said Gill's playing was as revolutionary as Hendrix or the most innovative since Hendrix, or something like that. Either way, I had not read the review closely enough. And I was foolishly expecting a Jimi Hendrix album. Shocked is an understatement. Andy Gill's guitar does not sound like Jimi Hendrix's guitar. In place of the expected expansive, flowing, psychedelic space-blues I was sat there on my birthday listening to something nervous, claustrophobic, austere; an off-the-peg, drip-dry guitar sound, folded tightly into a cheap, cardboard suitcase, to be stowed under the bed. Dave Allen's bass rumbled like an Inter-City train rattling cheap foundations; Hugo Burnham's muffled drums thudded like angry fists on cheap partition walls. With Jon King hoarsely shouting his vocals, the magical illusion was complete: I was in some grey-walled Leeds bed-sit, telly on in the corner of the room, living next door to the local anarcho-syndicalist commune. Happy birthday. Time to blow out the candles.
Ironically, this modern grim world of nervous agitation and shouting opened up exciting new paths of musical exploration - Wire, Magazine, The Fall - and led to art books on Dada, John Heartfield and The Situationists, Barthes' A Lover's Discourse and Kafka's Metamorphosis ("And I feel like a beetle on its back"): the perfect recipe for the insufferable trying-too-hard teenager I was to become. Hendrix had been something to hide inside. Hearing Entertainment! I felt like I'd woken up.
Listened to again, this morning, Entertainment!'s rants about the corrupt politicians ("The last thing they'll ever do / Act in your interest"), the tarnished promises of advertising ("ideal love a new purchase") and the dangers of information overload ("This heaven gives me migraine") still speak to the disgruntled 43-year-old I am today. Its anger at the iniquities of modern capitalism has not dated. How incredible. How sad. Two steps forward. Six steps back.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 18/08/2010
Further Listening
Gang Of Four – Solid Gold (EMI, 1981)
Wire – Chairs Missing (Harvest, 1978)
Magazine – Second Hand Daylight (Virgin, 1979)
Previous Disc of the day
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Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
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Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
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Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
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Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
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What a great piece!! I'm the same age,give or take a year,as the author,and remember similar feelings of excitement on hearing "Entertainment"for the first time.
Being a little younger,I drifted into other,lesser musical spheres-even metal at one point I'm sorry to say(!)-in a search for visceral guitar thrills.A couple of years later I grew out of all that crap and listened again,this time more open to the political dicourse enmeshed within the sound,and from that point on not one week of my life has passed without listening to Gill,Burnham & co.
GOF's music also led me to other significant musical epiphanies (saw Magazine's triumphant return at HMV Forum),and I watch with satisfaction and pride in their achievements as their back catalogue continues to delight and inspire a new generation (you only have to read some of the comments on their Youtube vids to see that).
Great piece anyway-cheers again.
Posted by Dave Jewitt at 7:50 AM GMT 31/08/2010 Report Abuse
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RE: Dave Jewitt
Thank you, Dave!
Posted by AM at 11:02 AM GMT 31/08/2010 Report Abuse
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