Hotlegs ‎– 'You Didn't Like It Because You Didn't Think Of It' (Philips)

I think it was 10cc we started this whole thing with, way back in 2008, but Hotlegs is where 10cc started and I've always loved this collection, in whichever form it might be packaged. I'm not completely clear on the recording lineage, and if this is everything recorded under the Hotlegs name or these are alternate versions or whatnot. I know the proper album release had the amazing title Hotlegs Thinks School Stinks and, come to think of it, Hotlegs is an amazing band name, but so was Frabjoy and the Runcible Spoon and they never really made it out of the gates. You can totally hear the early genius of these guys here, and just because they can master pop-rock production and songwriting with heavy traces of irony doesn't make them a novelty act. I mean, sure, 'Neanderthal Man' is the classic example of the British one-hit wonder generated by a studio team, but 'Fly Away' actually touches me and 'How Many Times' was the followup single that should have even been a bigger hit. I'm not a diehard Godley/Creme fan (and let's not discount Stewart who was also equal partners here and in 10cc) but I know spatterings of their career and there's so much joy here, as in How Dare You, as in L. Some of the songs here are less memorable - not exactly throwaway, but more like genre romps with a weird twist ('The Loser' and 'Desperate Dan' for example) – and of course it's a long way from the experimentation that Godley and Creme specifically would get into later (I've never braved Consequences but maybe I should try it). I'm a sucker for power pop made by weird nerdy white guys (which I guess is all power pop) and Hotlegs has it in spades. Hotlegs, even more than 10cc, loved the thick acoustic guitar strum with soaring vocals overtop, and the three-song 'Suite F.A.' which closes this record makes great use of that technique. This is not about the English Football Association (sadly) but some epic quest story of someone going off somewhere and then returning. It's all done vaguely enough that you could read anything into it, so maybe we could imagine it to be about the football FA if we think it's about a young centre-half off to get his first cap for his country and then going back to play for his second division side after. Oh, I'll even defend 'Neanderthal Man', because you can hear how it was made by fucking around in a studio one night with a leftover drum beat; it's the 'Rock and Roll (part 2)' of its day but I don't feel icky hearing it because it wasn't made by padeophiles (as far as I know). Great, great stuff; proof one can indulge in irony without the resulting product being an empty shell of phoniness, without being a joke. 

Frank Sumatra and the Mob - 'Te Deum' (Small Wonder)

I forgot I had this! One of the side effects of releasing a record with no spine (a 12" single, in fact) is that I rarely remember to listen to it, as it gets skipped upon all casual eye-browses of the shelf. This is a delight, a one-off 12" by 'Frank Sumatra' which is an alias of John Pearce, aka Alig Fodder from the great Family Fodder who we reviewed just earlier up the alphabetical ladder. 'The Story so Far' is the more European pop side of Fodder's work, an arpeggiated, falsetto-sung bit of demented romance. Fodder's affect is in full force and he has some pipes on him! Backing vocals form an unknown female vocalist imply that 'The Mob' is just Family Fodder in a different configuration. By the end it stumbles into a messy cave, and collapses on itself, though not without some lovely twinkling bells. Track 2 is a goofy send-up of Joe Meek's 'Telstar', sounding like it's being performed on a synthesizer over the telephone while choppy guitar and woodblock accompany it. Perhaps the torch of interesting production techniques burns on. On the flip we get the one true 'hit' from this record (though I doubt anyone ever actually heard it).  'Tedium' could be right off a Family Fodder record - a destroyed pop song with bouncy bassline and beautiful riff-hook, with some extramusical forays into squelchy guitars and synthesizer madness. It never falls apart, nor does it even threaten to - it's a slice of pop magic and the way things oughta be. Pure experimentalism is reserved for 'The Blues', which is all studio fuckery and suggestion, sounding like that TUOB 7" a decade+ prior, and you don't get to compare things to TUOB very often.

The Fall - 'The Wonderful and Frightening World...' (PVC/Beggars Banquet)

This is as far as I go, or maybe to This Nation's Saving Grace - I always forget which one came out later and I'm too lazy to look it up. So my only Fall on vinyl is the first and last, at least within the era that I know. And 5-6 years later, only a bit has changed. Karl Burns is the sole survivor from the Witch Trials band and he's moved to bass (I think; the credits are CONFUSING!). Craig Scanlon is on guitar and it's generally his acidic slashing that makes this era great (arriving for Dragnet and defining a style of post-punk shredding that is timeless, like so much great art, because it's simultaneously of it's era and also completely transcendent, like This Heat or Godard or, I dunno, Animal Collective or something...). You're thrown for a loop by the opening moments of 'Lay of the Land', which begins with some austere intonation about the apocalypse or something - hey, the Fall invented the Current 93 sound too! But it's just a ruse, cause the band comes crashing in and it's the Fall as we know it, with yet another great song. Catchy, but the hooks are all in the instrumentation, and the vocals are just fenceposts to build around. The production on this record is a bit weird, making the band sound distant and lo-fi but with a bright rhythm section. Smith's voice (both his and his wife's) has some reverb glow, and, hey, I like it! It gets quite muddy on 'Copped It', especially with the digital synth sheen and a snarling Beefheartian turn, building to one of the more vocally abstract (and I daresay adventurous) songs in the early Fall catalogue. 'Craigness' rises and falls through varying levels of plateaus but ultimately gets nowhere; it's the 'frightening' part of the album title, for sure. The 'wonderful' follows, actually at the end of both sides, in both 'Disney Dream Debased' and the strange 'C.R.E.E.P.', where the harmonic clouds around the band seem strangely benevolent, and oddly in-sync with 1980s pop. The keyboards here lift the songs, for once, instead of oppressing them, and Brix's feminine voice cuts the bile somewhat. It's still a strange trip, but one that sees a way out of the endless circles of concrete and muck. We're in the darkest period of Thatcher's assault on Britain here, yet somehow the Fall are able to make sense of it, true artists that they are.

The Dictators - 'Go Girl Crazy!' (Epic)

"Smart" stupid music is genius, and this might be where it really started. Though I guess the Stooges could be argued for, yet they are more avant-garde leaning than most give 'em credit for - the Dictators can speak to the common man and celebrate rock music's pyrotechnics as much as they mock them. Go Girl Crazy was a record I wanted to hear for years, because when I was about 11 I bought Chuck Eddy's genius book Stairway to Hell, a chronicle of the best "heavy metal" records of all time. Much has been made of Eddy's idiosyncrasies, such as putting two Kix albums and Teena Marie in the top 11 - but this book stayed with me for years, and I'm still uncovering gems that I first read about in the early 90s. #18 was this album, which boasted a picture of this brilliant cover and looked sorta like a joke but possibly one that I wanted to get in on. I used to think of this as pre-punk, something bridging the Velvets and the Ramones maybe, but there's more fun involved than either would have. Melodies and harmonies and the tinge of romanticism are all OK because this is music from the suburbs of America, for sure - it's descended more from Bruce Springsteen, whose Born To Run I guess came out this same year (1975). 'Back to Africa' and 'Master Race Rock' are back-to-back cuts that toy with political incorrectness, but I don't know that the master race has anything to do with skin colour. The liner notes boast that the lyrics may prove hazardous to your health, but they have some great guitar solos so who cares? The Dictators could sure play, but they're not overly musical; they're funny but not overtly ha-ha - and there's an energetic spirit that's certainly not for everyone but I like it lots. '(I Live For) Cars and Girls' sums up the ethos about as perfectly as possible, but 'Teengenerate' is the real winner; it's a bit Sparks, a bit 90s pop-punk, and a lot of that recent revival of bands like Nobunny. 'California Sun' really opens up this pipeline, and Handsome Dick Manitoba's spoken monologue at the beginning of 'Two Tub Man' I think namedrops E. Bloom from Blue Öyster Cult, who was also produced by Sandy Pearlman. Maybe this should be a litmus test, a record to play for anyone if one wants to determine if they like rock music or not. Cause it's smart to be dumb, and it can be dumb to be smart (though I love my Eno records even more than this). I used to think I had to choose one of these camps but now I try to lumber between both. That's another reason I like music so much - there's a zillion personalities for us to choose from.

Camper Van Beethoven - 'Telephone Free Landslide Victory' (Independent Projects)

Telephone Free Landslide Victory is a great way to open up the Camper Van Beethoven section of this vinyl accumulation, particularly this original pressing on Independent Projects (number 824 out of 125), which is adorned absolutely beautiful screenprinted artwork. And this is the way the album should be heard -- not that 2004 CD reissue that they screwed up the sequencing on! The Camper Van Beethoven conundrum is pretty much laid out here both visually and musically. The screenprinting is aesthetically elegeant, but with a jarring dayglo orange ink juxtaposed against the muted earthen tones underneath. Likewise, Dave Lowery's bitingly droll songs are a bit confusing when juxtaposed with the instrumental ethnicky Morricone-kinda sounds that fill up more than half of this album. It integrates to me, in my brain, but I've been listening to this album for over 15 years. You gotta understand how appealing this was to me as a teenager - humour, pop hooks, and attitude with musical chops and open-mindedness. And most people never hear anything beyond 'Take the Skinheads Bowling' and 'Wasted', but that's fine, cause those are pretty killer jams. I of course went the wrong way 'round and heard the CVB version before the Black Flag original, so I was less impressed by Jonathan Segel's perfect rendering of Ginn's guitar solo than I should have been. It wasn't until years later after getting into psychedelic music, both dark and bright, that I realised how excellent early CVB is at rejoicing in psychedelic forms. Though this emerges more on the (superior, in my opinion) II & III, listening to 'Oh No!' is a good start. The instrumentals are bouncy and confident, with Chris Molla's guitar leads or Segel's keyboards often interacting in a way that is demonstratively brash. 'Mao Reminisces About His Days in Southern China' is maybe their most-loved instrumental tune, which is why it stayed constant in their setlists all the way to the present day, and why not? It's a great song, one that I tried to play violin along to back when I was learning violin. '9 of Disks' has searing, minor key voicings and a weird, spooky ambience that makes it another enduring classic. 'Skinhead Stomp' blends perfectly into 'Tina', the aburdist folkform reduction complete with goofball singing. It's a trace of Sun City Girls though I guess they probably weren't orbiting each other yet. The story is that these was a ragtag bunch of musical prankster college kids, inhabiting the same cultural space as Black Flag and whatnot, but quickly pushing against the limitations of that culture and extending their middle finger through musical iconoclasm. I don't think that's untrue, but I think there's more to iconoclasm than just having funny lyrics that reference kicker boots and the Circle Jerks. 'Payed Vacation - Greece' might be more of an F.U. than anything else, but were they aware of this at the time? When viewed as a whole career, one narrative in the Camper Van Beethoven story is the emerging confidence of D. Lowery as a brilliant expressive songwriter. On Telephone Free, he's still hiding behind a smirk the whole time. Though 'Take the Skinheads Bowling' was a college radio hit not just because it was funny and nonsensical, but because it is a brilliant pop song. I still get insanely happy when I hear it, and I've heard it a million times. Look, I love this stuff far more than I should (and I know far more about this band that most people would even care). It's true that I'd take Key Lime Pie's 'June' over 'Where the Hell is Bill?' 10 times out of 10, but that doesn't mean I don't have soft spot in my heart for this. And 'The Ambiguity Song' should get mentioned here since it didn't elsewhere -- I fell asleep to the (original) CD of this album one night in 1996 -- my CD player was screwed up and that song looped all night long, which probably explains a lot about my mental state today. I had a dream, it was about nothing!