proghibition 79-99

I hadn’t been back to the flat since forever. Partly because I was grazing in Barnet over the weekend, but also because the place was in a mess from the post-gig hangover that lasted about half of last week. But starting a new week I resolved to get my act together.

Actually I tidied my desk at work too. There was a load of crap left over from the end of last term which was now irrelevant, and for that matter a load of crap from the last few years that was now irrelevant.

Under my desk there are a number of old books. Mostly old library stock that has been withdrawn from the system. We’re having a big clear out of obsolete material at the moment in advance of the library being closed down next year. I’m limiting myself on the number of books that I allow myself, because I’ve already put aside too many from previous stock clearances - hence the books under the desk. There was also other stuff down there: cans of Giraf beer beyond its use-by date, trousers, coloured paper, Californian magazines, and a small collection of 70s vinyl.

My colleague Judy gave me the trousers and records a few years ago. Can’t remember when. I’d already taken home some Iggy Pop and Nico discs, but yesterday I found a Yes gatefold amongst them. Fragile from 1972, the year I was born. So at the end of the day I put it in a bag and took it home.

I recognised a few of the song titles from the Yes triple live album, Yessongs. Okay, okay, stop sniggering, fat face! Triple live albums are funny, but the idea that Yes and prog rock are inherently amusing would probably suggest that you bought NME or Melody Maker in the 80s and 90s. There’s an unexamined consensus amongst music journalists from this period that anything prog is bad, because that’s what punk came along to destroy, didn’t it? And these ageing punks, who are now as fat and balding as the prog rockers they came along to replace, are just *so* fucking dynamic that naturally you’d prefer to follow their lead than that of a goofy hippy with a twin-necked guitar.

Problem is: most of the people who unthinkingly follow this consensus have never listened to any prog. They might have *heard* some. They might have heard enough to recognise it as the enemy and not punk derived and therefore devoid of interest. But what struck me when I was listening to Fragile was just how dynamic and spiky the music is. Okay, there’s a small suite by Rick Wakeman based around a piece by Brahms, and each of the musicians contributes a mini-epic to the mix. But they are literally mini-epics. What was surprising was how concise they were. In fact this was true of the whole album - everything was so dense and exactly constructed. There wasn’t really much room for expasive self-indulgence.

In the last few decades Krautrock, whatever that is, has seen something of a revival of interest. It became okay for journalists to namedrop Can, Faust and Neu! and get into that extended freakout groove. Fragile wasn’t a hundred miles removed from these bands - technically much of it resembles Faust, but with Hobbit-orientated lyrics. But hell, Faust’s lyrics can be pretty woolly too!

The audience that has arrived since the Great Prog Prohibition that lasted from about 1979-1999 may be free of such prejudices. They are free to reinterpret generic niceties as they like. I can’t imagine what the kids get out of electro or acid house, which I found repugnant when they originally arrived, but this lack of respect for history is exactly where musical progress is made. Before the 90s it would have been impossible to consider easy listening as cutting edge, but the last generation to scour charity shops for forgotten vinyl bought this stuff up, firstly ironically and then because they started the recognise the merit of a lot of the material and how it could be recombined and reinterpreted knowing the place for the first time.

For my next trick I shall justify the existence of the Catholic Church and Thatcherism.

in the village

I came back to live in N16 a couple of months back for the first time in ten years. I decided, very specifically, to move to Stamford Hill rather than Stoke Newington. It’s a slight but important difference. Stamford Hill is less self-conscious and it’s nice to be able to hide behind he ubiquitous chassidim in a stealth dwelling near the public library.

Stoke Newington is more villagey. It’s spent a lot of time and effort making itself villagey so we might as well admit it. I saw one of those apparently pointless posters over the weekend flaunting the values of London Villages: that English image of the butcher, baker and candlestick maker. That and Patrick McGoohan running away from a large semi-sentient balloon.

But yesterday evening it actually felt like I was in a village. Wandering towards Morrisons (”More reasons to shop at Morrizhons!”) I slowed my pace to avoid an encounter with a twat who used to run a shabby N16 venue, shouldered past the Big Issue seller and navigated towards the fish counter to contemplate dinner options. Looking up from a battered pollack, I was presented with the gurning countenance of Mr Hugh Metcalfe, the cabbageheaded boss of The Klinker franchises PLC. He displayed some pigs innard to me and explained, “look! I’ve bought myself some new bollocks! Ooh!” An encounter with Hugh is always a treat, and it seems to happen increasingly often, which isn’t all that strange since he lives around the corner from me.

Returning home to find scary mail, a letter from my ex’s mother and a threat from the TV license motherfuckers, I settled to the business of the evening. This mostly involved fiddling with the levels of an envelope filter and a fuzz box and yodelling tunelessly. By ten o clock I was fairly satisfied that I had something to present to the audience and I recieved a phone call from Richard F. For no particularly good reason I deluded myself into believing that he was repeating the words, “the Crotch! Want to go to The Crotch!” I really should grow up one day. What he was actually referring to was The Rochester Castle public house in Stoke Newington. Known locally as “The Roch”, or as Tim insists “The ‘Astle”, but that’s just so he can say “Wanna go up The ‘Astle?” He really should grow up one day.

On my way to The Roch, I almost bump into Justin who is on his way to work. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there!” I say, quite truthfully. I was wearing a new pair of very large, very black sunglasses. We talk doom for a while, as opposed to talking Doom, and then he gets on a bus.

In The Roch is all Stoke Newington society. That chap from Builder’s Crack is standing at the bar looking vague, and half of Morning Bride and The Dublo are at the table with Richard and I am offered a position in a morris dance troupe. But that’s an offer which would be *way* too villagey to accept. And there’s some talk about a local policeman who used to frequent a gay karaoke up the road.

We are in imminent danger of losing our metropolitan anonymity.

game, set and match

Yes. I am actually blogging. You are right. More on this in future posts.

 More important at the moment is tomorrow’s setlist. I’m playing a solo set tomorrow at Stage B in Stoke Newington Church Street. Come along, it’ll be fantastic. To ensure that I’ll be able to make that sort of idle boast, I really need to sort out what I’m going to be doing. Which is a little strange considering that I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the last few years floundering around on various stages around the country, and occasionally nearby countries, not having a clue what I’m going to do. And I like doing that and it’s fine and good but the very reason for doing a solo gig is to try to push things forward a stage or two.

 Last solo gig I did was in May. It was at the new Vortex Jazz Club in Dalston and it was great. I’m not saying that in terms of how enjoyable it must have been for the audience, although I think it wasn’t bad at that, but it felt fairly comfortable. My first solo gig, about three years ago was not a comfortable affair: my synth didn’t get on with the venue’s power supply and was turning itself on and off in rapid succession, the electric sitar sounded rough as fuck through the PA and I was drunk and nervous. That’s bad. One gets drunk in order to avoid feeling nervous. The gig in May was pretty angry. Mostly for very bad reasons, but that doesn’t matter, it gave me a certain amount of energy and vitriol and that was what the set needed.

What held the set together though, was a solid structure. There were large spans of improvisation in there but I had a fair idea of where I could go if things got boring or didn’t work.

And since that’s getting boring here’s the current version of the setlist:

• Ain’t Got Much Money You & Me But Baby We Got (Toiletries)
• When You Go To The Sea
• Damp Samosa
• Mister Soleil
• Minor Improv
• Du Duh
• St Michael
• Piece’o'Shit

Anyone who saw the last gig or is familiar with my last ten years of material, which is none of you, will say, “hey Zali, there’s a lot of *songs* in that set!” And there are. In the last few years I’ve been trying to bring out more of my song-based material. The Entropy Circus gigs I played last year included a couple of songs in them, a cover version of When The Levee Breaks and my perennial Piece’o'Shit, as did the last solo. Since you’re probably not all that familiar with my material I’ll go through the setlist in detail:

Ain’t Got Much Money You & Me But Baby We Got (Toiletries): Wrote this song in a kitchen in Farnham about ten years ago. My friend Kanchi’s flat had a cupboard full of freebie soaps, shampoos and the like. But that’s not what the song is about. What is the song about? Not a fucking clue! All I know is that it starts with: “Don’t let Eastenders drag you down/ ‘cos like Grant Mitchell you’re always frowning…”

When You Go To The Sea: This was written a few year later. It’s like a Tim Buckley song if Tim Buckley couldn’t sing for shit. Another guitarist recently described the riff as “pretty”. It is. I played this one at my last gig and preluded (?!) it with a kraut-folk improv in the phrygian mode, which I’ll probably do again. Anyone want to know what that means?

Damp Samosa: A new song! Kinda shoegazey singalong stuff. The main chorus of “I had a damp samosa” has been around for a while and was based on a real damp samosa incident on a train going somewhere in Kent.

Mister Soleil: About eight or nine years old, this song. I wrote most of it at Hackney Downs station during a miserable winter. The chords I used for this are kinda mutant jazzy barre chords that I was using a lot at the time. They’re almost identical to the chords for another song of similar vintage called Waiting For The Lights To Change, so I might add a chorus from that in somewhere.

Minor Improv: What it says. This will probably be modelled on this progression that sounds slightly Jewish that I’ve been playing for about fifteen years. Not a real Sephardic scale, they have all sorts of interesting twin semitone runs in them. But I guess I can put a few inflections like that into the piece.

Du Duh: This was the most conventional song on a very unconventional set of recordings I did in about 1996, called Monorail. It has a nice descending major scale drone, although it might actually be one of those modal things which are almost major but not quite, if you follow me…

St Michael: Major pentatonic. If you play about with major pentatonics for long enough you will find yrself playing Michael Row The Boat Ashore. Fact. That’s what this is. Might augment it with a Casio drone. When done right this sounds fucking celestial. A version of it will be appearing on the new album, boys and girls!

Piece’o'Shit: The old favourite from Paddington Hardstare. I’ve recorded three versions of this song in the past and it has had a few live outings. Features the line, “if you’re needing me like I’m needing you then I might as well start sniffing glue instead.” It’s was originally about moving flat and not about relationship angst at all.

Well, wasn’t that interesting?