Showing posts with label The Clean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Clean. Show all posts

Friday 18 March 2016

Bass Bits Winds Up But...

God I could on forever. Don't get me started Peter Hook, Tina Weymouth, The Contortions, Gang of Four, The Fall, The Moodists, ESG, The Slits, Ian Rilen, The Pop Group, 70s reggae, PIL, liquid Liquid, Joseph K, Can, every band from the 60s, Michael Henderson, Bootsy fuckin Collins, every soul/funk band from USA in the 70s, Paul McCartney, Fire Engines, Minutemen, Jon Entwhistle, Died Pretty, Pete Wells, Gary Gary Beers, Mark Ferrie, James Freud, Steve Hanley, Andy Rourke, Bruce Lose/Will Shatter, Debbie Googe, Grant McLennan, Steve Kilbey, Kim Deal........somebody stop me.

I wrote this bit about bass players in July 2012. Now I wonder if they've all been covered. I've noticed some omissions though ie. Well I missed Carol Kaye but I guess she's included because I said every band from the 60s and hey she was on every second record made in that decade, the Meat Puppets and all of 80s New Zealand but did Kim Gordon, John Frenett (Moonshake/Laika), the dude in Les Rallizes Denudes, Paul Raven etc. get mentioned in the Bass Bits celebration?


 Honey and Heat is a mesmerising off kilter urban dub tune with see-sawing samples. The samples here are meticulously crafted and create an entirely unique peculiarity. 


Red River could be a Moonshake tune with it's squalling sax, tense noisy guitar shapes, claustrophobic minimal bass and tumbling out of control beats

* Words on Laika taken from me bit here.


Paul Raven plays the bass here with great vigour...a bit like a 60s/Noo Wave guitar style with that chopping of the strings thang. I like this song but I also think it's kinda funny....the seriousness of it all. No mistaking that 80s vibe though. Did Killing Joke make it to the stadiums? Probably only as a support act I'd say.



The sound of late 80s Australian indy psych pop bass. Beautifully melodic and swirling. There's even a break at the 3.08 mark, nice. What's not to like? Always thought it was the dude Mark Lock who was the bass player on all Died Pretty's recordings up to1988 but discogs tells me it's Steve Clarke who took over bass duties in 1989 from whence this tune came.



Classic Flying Nun bass from Robert Scott in 1981! Written by Peter Gutteridge (RIP), later of Snapper.



How could I forget this one? Not played by Kim Deal who'd moved onto guitar but by Joesephine Wiggs. Her name's rather apt here as she fully wigs out here.
                                         

GOOD(idea) TRIBUTE




David Barbe does an incredible impersonation of Kim Deal here. Sugar fully admitted this was their homage to The Pixies. Very bloody faithful. 

Wednesday 5 August 2015

Antipodean Urban Space







Three fucking great mental tripped out driving tunes. Psychedelic post-kraut/punk urban intensity that could have only come from one place and one time, New Zealand in the 80s.
*More on Scorched Earth Policy here.

Wednesday 11 April 2012

Suzanne Ciani, French Electronics & NZ Underground Rock.




Anyway what else have I been into well Suzanne Ciani's archival release on Finders Keepers Livixiation 1969-1985 is a little bewdy. Somewhere between formal undergrad avant garde, cosmic, new age, advertising and soundtrack music, this bird did it all. She did jobs for Atari, Coke and TV Stations as well as doing her own gear.

How 'bout this cover?!
Also diggin' Patrick Vian's LP Bruit Et Temps Analogues (thanks Mutant Sounds) from 1976. He was another French person doing cosmic electronics with a moog. Awesome! Up there with the best French astronautical musicians HeldonSpacecraft etc.


And then there is an album by some other Frenchmen, this time from 1980, Ilitch - 10 Suicides. Can't describe it. Out there electronics in a world of its own. Fuckin love it! Oneothrix Point Never Must be a fan. Mental!


Last but not least I finally got my hands on Time To Go - The Southern psycedelic (sic) Moment: 1981-86, the fabulous Flying Nun Comp compiled by Bruce Russell. Can't complain about that......well... there is one track though where I couldn't really see a psych connection. The track in question is Sit Down by Playthings, which is a punk/new wave tune in the vein of Blondie. It's not a bad track per se but does it belong here? The rest of these tracks are one way or another psych post-punk in its myriad of forms. Bruce  is one of the master compilers of our times and this collection is no exception. Up there with, perhaps even surpassing, the previously mentioned Le Jazz Non on Corpus Hermiticum and The Xpressway singles comp Making Losers Happy.



Sunday 29 January 2012

Living Legends A Guide Part 1 - The Clean










All you need!
Or most of it is on the first disc of this.


er.....almost forgot.....this was bloody good too.


The Clean. You bewdy!

What's not to like?!
One of the Great Bands.
Flying Nun one of the great labels 
The music Speaks for itself!


Beatnik
The Clean
Saw them last year. They were in fine form as far as old Geezers go.


Tally Ho!
The Clean
What a ripper!
Puts a smile on my face every time.


Neck of The Woods
The Great Unwashed
Who were pretty much an old line-up of the Clean who got
together after the first Clean split up! Got it?


Anything Could happen
The Clean
Unbeatable!