Judging a record by its sleeve: Black Flag's MY WAR LP as an hommage to Richard Meltzer, an examination of Raymond Pettibon and a celebration of the scene, maaaaannnnnn....



In the early 70s, Richard Meltzer began his slow journey away from rock criticism by submitting reviews that only dealt with the record's packaging, filling column space not with the dreary prose that his editors had come to expect and actually demand, but instead fixating in his canny and dyspeptic way on the minutiae of what had become almost integral in the atmosphere of the "business" of rock music, i.e. something that's unquestionably important yet almost never gets talked about. Because if "it" wasn't important, the "it" being the album cover, than they'd certainly all look the same. Important to whom, you might be asking? That's a big question, but for the purposes of this argument, the ogre of "financial interests", most definitely. Now, it's easily evidenced that album covers don't look the same. But "feel" the same? Oh yeah, at least a significant portion, and I'm not talking about the sensation of holding them in your hands, natch. When album covers begin to feel the same, what's that say about the music inside? Now, the roomy tract you're currently reading isn't going to follow Meltzer's paradigm very closely, but I wanted to mention him now because we'll return to him later. For the time being though, let's talk about Raymond Pettibon, the artist responsible for the cover of MY WAR.

Raymond Pettibon

In my eyes, one of the most interesting angles in the whole underground music milieu is the Who, What, and Why of the scene participant's various non-musical interests. Pettibon’s contribution is frankly one of the most appropriate alliances (in terms of style and subject matter) between music and visual art formed in the "punk" movement, yet this connection can prove rather elusive to easy synopsis. He is essentially an artist of discomfort, and his art is suffused with negativity and a profound preoccupation with bleakness and despair that made its adoption by the counterculture of the Reagan-era almost inevitable (and it surely helped that Pettibon was Black Flag guitarist and SST owner Greg Ginn's brother). However, the large bulk of his art from this period features so much depth and bitter intelligence that I can't help but think it was lost on the majority of those who felt it was "theirs". Or to put it another way, I can't shake the suspicion that so many were stoked over the shock value while sidestepping the critique that often concerned their contemporaneous social environs. But maybe I'm judging to harshly. One of the unique aspects of the punk/indie scene's extra-musical influences is how diverse they were. This fact often takes people with even a fair knowledge of this era's music by surprise. The lack of overt documentation on the specifics of what was happening in film, writing, and visual art within this subculture can lead some individuals to conclude that John Hughes films and Bret Easton Ellis novels were primary exponents of the period's underground rumblings.

To be blunt: Au contraire. Legitimate non musical contemporaries were definitely making contributions to the cultural landscape. The written word was represented by such disparate entities as Kathy Acker, the cyberpunk sci-fi of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Lewis Shriner, the late works of William S. Burroughs, musician littérateurs like Nick Cave, Lydia Lunch, Billy Childish, Chris D. and an inked-up baldy whose birth name was Henry Garfield; film was infested by Cinema of Transgression figures like Nick Zedd, Beth B. and Richard Kern, along with other names like Dave Markey and John Moritsugu; and visual art saw the paintings (and performance works) of Joe Coleman, the woodcuts of Billy Childish, the scrawl of Savage Pencil, the cross-media gestalt of Gary Panter, and of course a venerable gaggle of commix artists venting spleen and acting snide or aloof, probably the most successful example being a guy you may have heard of named Matt Groening. Raymond Pettibon falls into this sticky constellation, his personal aesthetic radiating like hijacked James Thurber one panels that have all the humor sucked out of them only to be injected with trepidation, existential dread and flashes of misery. Of course, punks and other non-conformists of this era (read: bohemians) also grabbed from history, and it's rather startling just how intense this plundering was. Contrast this to the hippies, where the distrust of older generations meant that only very specific artifacts were allowed entry into their playground (some Beats, some Huxley, and some Hesse, for example) and you can see just how non-rigid the '80s subculture really was. Lit kicks were satiated from sources as various as those Beats, hardboiled detective fiction, pulp sci-fi like Phil K. Dick and Samuel R. Delaney, post-mod word-fuckers like Pynchon, weird smut like Pauline Reage and De Sade in appropriately tough translation, pimp pulp from Iceberg Slim, Hubert Selby's sustained scream from the New York streets, Bukowski's fly in the ointment aesthetic, French absinthe poets and their sexually transgressing country folk like Jean Genet and certainly Georges Bataille. The pilfering of visual art was just as widespread: Dada and Surrealism, the less celebrated works of Warhol and his Pop-Art brethren, Chris Burden's bonkers performance pieces (amongst other things, he was shot in the arm from five feet away and nailed to the back of a Volkswagen; now THAT'S an example of the utilization of shock value that I fully endorse), and the equally berserk activities of the Vienna Actionists. But looking at film provides the most enlightenment into '80s bohemia's rabid selection. The explosion of home video viewing and the proliferation of midnight movie showings really boosted the situation. A hypothetic book on the subject could be broken down into the following chapters and would in no way be exhaustive: the blunt strangeness of Tod Browning's FREAKS, the early surrealist revolts of Luis Bunuel, Nick Ray's REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, oddball Hollywood and independent sleepers like Samuel Fuller's THE NAKED KISS and Leonard Kastle's THE HONEYMOON KILLERS, the films of Jean-Luc Godard (particularly the more difficult work like WEEKEND and SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the Psychotronic phenomenon from Ed Wood to H. G. Lewis to Andy Milligan, the gut-punch horror films of George Romero, Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven, idiosyncratic midnight movies like Lynch's ERASERHEAD and Jodorowsky's EL TOPO, controversial works by established commercial directors such as Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER, the films of John Waters and Russ Meyer, early Cronenberg, Andy Warhol's directorial efforts and those he produced with Paul Morrissey, and the avant-garde work of Warhol's contemporaries, particularly Jack Smith’s FLAMING CREATURES and Stan Brakhage's sublime autopsy film THE ACT OF SEEING WITH ONE'S OWN EYES. In addition to the simple availability of all this stuff were the long gaps in the emergence of contemporary work that could speak to this alienated and self-marginalizing audience. Sure, in addition to those mentioned a bit earlier there was Derek Jarman and ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL. Yes, there was a spate of non-fiction films that documented the scene. Alex Cox’s REPO MAN obviously deserves mention along with other unusual “Hollywood” films like Dennis Hopper's loopy OUT OF THE BLUE and Tim Hunter's THE RIVER'S EDGE. We can throw in “message-porn” like CAFÉ FLESH and the druggy/arty sci-fi of LIQUID SKY. But before long it starts to be slim pickings, in part because the distribution networks were more grassroots in this era. What's this have to do with Ray Pettibon and his cover for "My War"? Well, nothing. And yet everything. NOTHING because the last three paragraphs were essentially just a riff (I love jazz), an indulgence (so does Pettibon), a way of fleshing out some of the cultural terrain of a period where everything wasn't available at the click of a mouse, and people were forced to bring dimension to their way of life through constant digging and the passing around of artifacts while the culture at large looked in the other direction. It was so much more than mail ordering records. And EVERYTHING because context is essential; Did you know Pettibon also made films?

VHS cover to Pettibon's CITIZEN TANIA

He's been in bands, too (he's in one now, in fact). And his art for many years was collected into little low-budget pamphlets that could be ordered direct from SST. These small books could be used in a variety of ways; carried in backpacks and stared at in cars while waiting for something (nothing) to happen or strategically placed in the living space to ultimately trigger a reaction. Upscale trendies aren't the only people with coffee tables, you know. If there is a certainty in this universe, it is that PUNKS LOVE COFFEE, and I'm just as positive that one of Pettibon's chapbooks would look flat-out amazing next to a piping mug of shitty instant brew. But really, my digressions do at least provide emphasis that this specific movement generally disdained art that had any real relationship to fine-art aesthetics or any high (or middle) brow acceptability. Take photography for example: The main thrust of it within this scene was divided between stern documentation (Glen E. Freidman, SST's Naomi Pedersen, Jenny Lens, Cynthia Connelly, and later shutterbugs like Michael Levine and Charles Peterson for example) and the eventually stultifying application of collage art (more Dada influence) as statement (we could maybe call this the Maximum Rock 'N' Roll aesthetic). Art photography seems rare in the annals of the era, the only names really springing to mind being Robert Mapplethorpe, Joel-Peter Witkin, maybe Larry Clark (later of KIDS directorial fame) and possibly Robert Frank if we're being extremely inclusive. This isn't to infer that documentary photography lacked an artistic dimension (no way) or that the occasional collage didn't achieve its effect. I'm just trying to ram home the point of just how anti-establishment this movement was (and still kinda is, because I tend to look at the period between the counterculture's re-ignition around 1977 and the present day as one long and warped continuum) in relation to its defining principles. If the public at large is generally thinking glamour shot sheen or Ansel Adams (glamour shot mountains) in relation to photography, then it's no surprise that the post-'77 scene so thoroughly embraced a basically vérité approach. To extend this idea: When an ink on paper piece by Pettibon commands $66,000 at auction, it's impossible to think this won't somehow change how his art is perceived. In this case, his work had certainly developed but suffered no commoditization (i.e. sell out); it is simply the case that museum culture reigned him in as one of their numerous outsiders. But dig what happens when this occurs: the joy that's inspired by the strange reactions and dismissive tut-tuting over a freaky album cover is replaced with the feeling that smartly dressed people with too much fucking money have co-opted another goddamned thing.

Sour grapes over losing exclusive bragging rights to the fandom of some record/film/book/etc is generally not very attractive, and I tend to take a more pragmatic approach and cheer when some little niche artist/writer/band that I love finds a wider audience. But sometimes it's hard to not feel the sting. Like when an old SST mail order catalog falls out from an LP sleeve onto the carpet, for instance. I pick it up to ogle the listing for once affordable Pettibon chapbooks, and that leads me to look across the room at the thick and glossy paperback of his awe-inspiring later work that set me back $80. Damn right I feel the sting. But that's okay, because when that baby sits on my coffee table it looks just beautiful.

One of the positive things that Pettibon's integration into the art-world has inspired is a more accurate view into what it is exactly that he does. If I had a buck for every time I clarified to someone between 1988 and 1995 (an arbitrary cut off point, sure) that Pettibon wasn't a cartoonist or comic (or commix) artist, I'd buy you lunch. No, not you, YOU. It'd be cheap eats, but still. Pettibon was sometimes mistakenly lumped in with such u-ground comic scribes as Charles Burns, Dan Clowes, Wayno, Kaz, Los Bros Hernandez, and Peter Bagge, but what this wild-assed group did was basically adapt their working methods into a piece that could help an album sleeve or CD cover stand out from the majority while basking in the good vibes (and personal checks from record labels) that mutual appreciation inspires. The use of Pettibon's work is essentially different. The impression is that he worked on his own and his pieces were later adapted (and rather notoriously debased with scissors) to gig flyers and album covers. On one hand he's identifiable as an artist in isolation, yet he designed the Black Flag bars, which lends him the aura of collaboration. The work of the comic artists always felt more capitalistic than that: Clowes was quite blasé about it in interviews and Burns and Bagge submitted work for some really rotten mainstream albums. In the '90s there was an explosion of artist collaborators like Frank Kozik and Coop who seem more in league with Pettibon, but here the difference is less one of function and more one of effect. Both Kozik and Coop were all about the reinterpretation and subversion of iconography, the former turning established and seemingly benign images like cartoon characters into drugged out sex kittens or creepy street urchins, and the later ramping-up old standbys like salivating sex-crazed wolves, making the object of their lust-drenched blood-shot eyes the buxom and scantily clad women descended from hot rod culture that radiated like a twisted manifestation of R. Crumb's gargantuan libido.

A nutshell example of Coop's style

This duo was one of the prime examples of the ‘90s’ sub-cultural fascination with being politically incorrect, or more accurately they filled a need by some to adopt a deliberate stance that prized a type of apolitical hedonism. In addition, Kozik and Coop were essentially about surfaces and are basically formalist. They both actually sort of defy the punk ethos that anybody can play. One look at their work shows that a high level of discipline and trad-art skill was employed, even when the deluge of silk-screened show posters, magazine covers and limited edition record sleeves began to take on an almost Warhol-like assembly line feel. There was actually a bit of grumbling about Pettibon during this era, even from Kozik himself, the main thrust being that his stark, often minimalist work possessed a lazy, sloppy aura that a more precision-tuned artist like Kozik found unappealing. I took this in stride then and now, but still feel that it's similar to the attitude that The Ramones weren't any good due to their music's lack of solos. But the ultimate proof in the pudding regarding the difference between Pettibon and Kozik/Coop/etc is one of impact. Again, the more formalist approach of the later group never really gets beyond the level of eye candy, which is cool enough, but there was just so much of it on CDs and posters and the covers/pages of YOUR FLESH that it seemed the scene eventually OD-ed on the stuff.

It was everywhere for a while, then it suddenly wasn't. In contrast, Pettibon was never really that prolific, and an even better point would be that his work is so wrapped up in his personality and ideology that he never had a single imitator. And Pettibon's art has a depth that really lingers. The effect of a piece viewed once can last years, and other examples can put a damper on my day (in the best way possible) even if they are already quite familiar. Pettibon may not be the cause célèbre he once was, and his audience may now include wealthy art investors who don't give two squirts about the aesthetic worth of the So Cal punk rock scene that helped thrust him into prominence, but his presence is certainly still vital.

So there we have it. And in an attempt to not sound like a panting sycophant, I'll refrain from giving too much credit to the SST crew for their adoption of Pettibon's work as a visual signifier. The blood relationship between Pettibon (pseudonym from the French, petit bon, and meaning "good little one": thanks Wikipedia) and Ginn makes downplaying rather easy, plus the rather offhand way that some of the SST crew approached Pettibon's art doesn't smack of a reverential mindset to the man's stuff. I'll stop short of describing the appropriation as trying to just shock and instead opine into what I think was really being attempted: the desire to stand out in a field that was beginning to look and feel the same. You can apply this idea to the band's hairstyles and clothing choices as well. Countercultural conformity was starting to run rampant, and Black Flag really defined themselves as not belonging to any camp, and if there is any artwork from that era that promulgates alienation and the ideals of being a loner, it's Pettibon's. But in contrast to how the Minutemen used his work, Black Flag's collaboration, while certainly subversive, still seems significantly less profound. To relate this back to Meltzer, the whole punk rock impulse, and the west coast division of it in particular, actually got him inspired again by the potential of basic, dirty rock 'n' roll as a vessel of defiance and distorted beauty.

Meltzer reading publicly a few months back via Kevin Sampsell's blog

The contrarian streak never left him, but he hosted a radio show for a while ("Hepcats from Hell"), penned a whole bunch of rock related junk for small press publications throughout the '80s, talked some sweetly foul mouthed shit about Bill Graham's Mom on stage as the emcee for the Sex Pistols' final gig at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom, fronted the blink-and-you-missed-it punk band Vom with the future Angry Samoans, and inspired D. Boon to proclaim from the stage: "This song goes out to Richard Meltzer, he was our hero!". Righteous and individualist tactics like submitting cover art-centric record reviews to publications whose modus operandi was nothing more than insuring their print pages secured record company advertising was just one thing that made him so heroic. And that heroism manifested itself in the way SST operated (at least early on), which in turn impacted my teenaged consciousness as I ominously eyeballed the covers of MY WAR, SLIP IT IN and LOOSE NUT in a sterile mall record store, where they frankly stood out like radioactive artifacts in an ocean of insubstantiality. I can only hope that some impressionable upstart might stumble upon this modest bout of theorizing and get gobsmacked by the mighty inksmanship of Raymond Pettibon, and in turn elect to spend his life asking questions instead of dully and dutifully accepting the answers. We can only pass the torch one person at a time, right?



Longhairs and hepcats (additional writings)





More thoughts from the keyboard of yrs truly here

Great moments in portraiture Part 1





A tribute to three departed masters: Solomon Burke, Marion Brown & Ari Up

While it’s certain that Solomon Burke is permanently ensconced in the annals of deep soul, it’s also true that his legacy has suffered a bit over the decades due to his lack of any truly chartbusting pop hits. An association with Atlantic Records certainly worked in his favor, as did the partisanship of acts like The Rolling Stones, but Burke somehow never managed to invade the Pop Top 20, and that fact means many casual listeners are familiar with the man by name rather than through his music. Of course, the curious could’ve picked up Rhino’s excellent 2CD overview of his Atlantic period titled HOME IN YOUR HEART and been well versed in the power and range inherent in his selected work. And since Burke was first and foremost a singles artist, the wide inclusiveness of HOME is useful to more than just newbies. It really deserves space on the shelves of soul fans of any perceptible magnitude, but it’s also a fairly intensive study: you can cue up the set, make out with yr squeeze, get it on nice and slow, have a little tiff that develops into a full blown argument, break up, make up and make out again before the 41 tracks have completed their course. Yes, I’m exaggerating, but am in no way criticizing. I always prefer collections to be exhaustive in their documentary zeal, but it’s also very hard to fault the more digestible oomph found in a couple of his prime LPs from early in his Atlantic tenure. The first is 1963’s IF YOU NEED ME, and it finds Burke carving out territory that’s at times quite similar to Sam Cooke’s gospel drenched innovations.

There is a powerful current of southern grit and sweat in Burke’s delivery, and his extension of Cooke’s malleable template is sometimes comparable to Otis Redding. But just as often he’s onto something different. Much of this is due to how his gutbucket belting and captivating restraint interacted with the Atlantic production team’s slicker, more finesse oriented approach. Factor in the desire of his label to dabble in experimentation against the safety-net of formula (in the hopes of both breaking new ground and also landing chart success) and the stylistic diversity of this record shouldn’t be at all surprising. That Burke feels natural in such a wide variety of circumstances is testament to his talent, IF YOU NEED ME never feeling unfocused, and for material that wasn’t largely conceived for inclusion on a long playing record, that’s quite an achievement. It’s true that the man is most natural when he’s solidly in his wheelhouse below the Mason-Dixon Line, particularly on the Wilson Pickett penned title track and the infectiously boisterous faux-dance ditty “Stupidity”, but it’s maybe most impressive how he’s able to successfully interpret styles that seem outside his comfort range, namely ‘50s style Platters R&B, Brook Benton-esque pop-soul, and even some flashes of Presley-ite hip-swagger. If this LP makes a statement for the scope of Burke’s talent, then the following year’s ROCK AND SOUL soundly expands upon it and also amplifies many of the singer’s strengths.

While Burke could make honey with a horn section just fine, he’s even better at interacting with strong backing vocalists while the band cooks up a tough mid-tempo groove. His work never really displays the sonic density that paved the way for funk, instead opting for spaciousness that casts a wide net over so many differing styles. ROCK AND SOUL adds an unlikely wrinkle to the equation with two cuts which display his interpretive skill with country & western material, namely “Just Out of Reach Of My Two Empty Arms” (recorded by Patsy Cline) and “He’ll Have To Go” (a smash hit for Jim Reeves). This gesture toward C&W is very likely directly related to Ray Charles’ crossover recordings for ABC, and Burke’s proclivity for the genre is readily apparent. ROCK AND SOUL also deepens his gospel sensibility without sacrificing anything in terms of diversity, and coupling these two records on yr personal box while spending a smart night at home with a warm and willing partner makes a whole lot of sense, romantic and otherwise. Uncork the bottle, cue up the tunes and slow dance, Casanova. Solomon Burke’s importance far exceeds the assured majesty of these two LPs (both available for download, by the way), so further investigation will be required for all but the skimpiest or stingiest of listeners. His most influential tune “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love” is absent from both records, for instance. Again, HOME IN YOUR HEART is about as necessary as a two disc single artist soul comp gets. But HOME lacks a slew of cuts from both of these albums, and absorbing to them over the last month makes it clear they shouldn’t be neglected. The crossroads of soul, R&B and the fertile garden of ‘60s pop unfolds beautifully on IF YOU NEED ME and ROCK AND SOUL, presenting something close to what it was like to hear this stuff at the time, sitting in a bedroom or a basement or a den as a needle traveled groove and time hurdled forward yet somehow stood exasperatingly still. Something offhand and everyday yet in retrospect voluminous and undying. Something infused with the enduring power of art.


I guess my two favorite Marion Brown records are AFTERNOON OF A GEORGIA FAUN (ECM 1970) and GEECHEE RECOLLECTIONS (Impulse! 1973), but I don’t think either of those gems are really the best place to start if you’re just getting acquainted with the discography of this avant-jazz master. In 1965 he appeared on both Archie Shepp’s FIRE MUSIC and John Coltrane’s ASCENSION, two indispensible documents of the New Thing in all its fervent glory, so if you don’t know those classics it’s best to take care of that bit of business first. From there, any of Brown’s records as a leader from ’65-‘68 qualify as a suitable entry into his considerable body of work, particularly the Impulse! date THREE FOR SHEPP and his pair of titles in the ESP-Disk saga MARION BROWN QUARTET and WHY NOT? Easily overlooked however, primarily because they’re harder to find, are a couple of electrifying sessions titled JUBA LEE and PORTO NOVO, the former a studio septet featuring a key collection of players, the later a high flying live trio summit meeting with two Dutch avant giants.

JUBA LEE finds Brown’s soaring, searching alto joined by future Miles tenor man Bennie Maupin, the huge trombone voice of Grachan Moncur III and the fascinating trumpeter/flugelhornist Alan Shorter. Throw in Dave Burrell’s sturdy piano, Reggie Johnson’s tough, supple bass and drummer Beaver Harris’s flowing approach to implied swing and you’ve got a roster that’s capable of burning and boiling with the very best of ‘em. And while they certainly attain moments in full-on torch the barn mode, JUBA LEE is far more than just furious blowing and racket, offering depth that’s thick with the undertones of jazz tradition. “512e12” begins with a short bit of disjointed fanfare before shifting into territory that combines the grand swoosh of Fire Music’s energetic rawness with a loose approach to compositional improv which recalls the wilder end of Ornette’s early Harmolodic advancements. The extended bout of solos that ensues, all fifteen and a half minutes worth, portrays a well developed interweaving of complimentary voices. The saxophones of Brown and Maupin adroitly blend together to skronk with an undercurrent of thorny bluesiness, and the sliding moans and agitated gusts of notes from Moncur’s trombone is well matched with Shorter’s idiosyncratic approach, his abstract fluidity feeling at times like a mixture of Don Cherry and early Bill Dixon. Burrell’s versatile piano blends irritated choppiness and clamor with an expert melodiousness and mingles shrewdly with the rhythm team. To me Harris is a bit like the free jazz answer to Billy Higgins or Roy Haynes in how his abstractions seem tied to a forward motion that feels descended from post-bop, and he works exceptionally well in the backfield with the Garrison-esque Johnson, who’s one of the more neglected New Thing players (along with FIRE MUSIC and Brown’s ESP debut, he’s on Dixon’s INTENTS AND PURPOSES, The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra’s COMMUNICATIONS, Shorter’s ORGASM, Valdo Williams’ fascinating obscurity NEW ADVANCED JAZZ and a bunch of vibist Bobby Hutcherson’s swell late-‘60s albums. The man clearly deserves some more recognition). As “512e12” progresses, its initial anarchic qualities coalesce into an exceptional pattern of back-and-forth trade-offs that manage to navigate to a fine conclusion. From there, JUBA-LEE’s additional three tracks display an admirable sonic range, with the title cut’s forceful and quite pretty melody perhaps influenced by Albert Ayler’s approach to emphatic hummability. Its playfulness is welcome, and is in sharp contrast to the creeping darkness of the album’s closer “Iditus”, a Shorter composition that gives Burrell the responsibility of ruminating on a simple haunting line for twelve minutes while the horns build an increasingly tense atmosphere and the rhythm team adds to the thickening pulse. It’d make a great soundtrack to somebody’s B&W Super-8 horror project: A full moon, a broken down engine, a rickety old barn, something ominous off in the distance. No words, but a helluva lot of worry. JUBA-LEE compares well with recordings of the same era from groups like The New York Art Quartet and The New York Contemporary Five, due to leader Brown’s desire to examine collective equality as a vehicle for individualist expression, allowing the members to effectively communicate with their solo voices. Too bad it’s only been fleetingly in print on CD over the years. I’ve never seen a copy, only owning purloined downloads, and it would be nice if somehow this (and the whole Fontana free-jazz catalog, for that matter) could be restored to legit availability. It would be a big step in showing the creative depth of Brown in his earliest years, where he’s sometimes painted as just a Coltrane/Shepp acolyte. An easier way of getting to the core of Brown’s power is to cop PORTO NOVO, which IS in print, and delight in its stripped-down, spacious magnificence.

A trio that features stalwart Euro-jazz figures Han Bennink on drums and Maarten Altena on bass playing live in ’67 in the city of Soest, it finds them working, at least in spirit, in the inexhaustible tradition of Sonny Rollins’ WAY OUT WEST. A more appropriate sonic comparison might be Coleman’s mid ‘60s trio with David Izenzon and Charles Moffett that produced both volumes of AT THE GOLDEN CIRCLE, though this muscular triangle doesn’t favor any particular strand of influence other than the tradition of jumping on the bandstand and blowing yr top. Those familiar and simpatico with Bennink’s unique style will not be disappointed, and chronologically this appears to be Altena’s recording debut (edging out Nedley Elstak’s ESP-Disk THE MACHINE by a few months), so it holds much import. The original LP featured five tracks that spotlight some of Brown’s most aggressive yet lyrical playing as the Dutchmen hold their own and lend valuable commentary and interaction. The currently available Black Lion CD/download deal adds two tracks from a 1970 duo recording on Freedom by Brown and trumpeter Leo Smith titled CREATIVE IMPROVISATION ENSEMBLE that finds the saxophonist successfully working in a roughly AACM-like context. This is conceptually much different than the trio stuff, but it’s not at all unwelcome. It’s what some folks call “added value”, but I’d never use such gauche terminology (By the way, the full 1970 recording with Smith was also part of a 2LP set on Freedom titled DUETS that held a separate session with electronic musician Elliot Schwartz. It’s out of print but not hard to locate on the net). Marion Brown’s status as an integral part of the ‘60s avant-jazz landscape has suffered somewhat over the years, and it seemed the longer many of his key recordings remained out of print the less likely they were to be reissued. But I find that complaining about an artist’s notoriety is something I do far too often in this space, and that Brown, while surely underrated, hasn’t endured anything approximate to the neglect suffered by legions of jazz players, many of whom hardly had the opportunity to record at all. Marion Brown has a sizeable discography and it’s around if you want to find it.

I first heard The Slits upon purchasing a cherry used copy of the amazing Rough Trade comp WANNA BUY A BRIDGE?, with their track “Man Next Door” providing a slinky, dubby, hissy mess of UK post-punk that stood out in the midst of some serious company. Shortly thereafter, I located the band’s 1979 album CUT and quickly understood that my thoughts concerning late-‘70s Brit post-punk were due for reappraisal. You see, up to that point, I was a solid Raincoats man. My admiration for the ‘coats is still high as a junky kite, but upon dishing CUT onto my platter it quickly became obvious I simply had to make room for The Slits. They were a personal revelation in numerous ways, first being how they so successfully integrated such a heavy Jamaican influence into their music. Up to that point, I was quite suspicious of non-island musicians playing island sounds, and while I’ve surely lightened up a bit with age, I’ll still say there was a high historical level of suspect skankin’ going on, particularly in Merry Old England. What helped The Slits succeed was a blunt attraction to the screwy weirdness of the best dub. Many of their punky peers were instead attempting to replicate the much trickier tradition of smooth and soulful Jamaican stuff, and while I’ll admit to developing an appreciation for certain examples of brittle Brit-ska, I’ll also add that precious little from this style is much more than passable. But The Slits were experimenters, and that’s how their music crossed an ocean and spanned a decade to help influence a slew of wound up mostly female musicians that sparked the explosion of Riot Grrl. Vocalist Ari Up, guitarist Viv Albertine, drummer Palmolive and bassist Tessa Pollitt were the lineup that led to the recording of CUT, though Palmolive bailed before the session to join those aforementioned Raincoats, where she made a huge contribution to their debut LP.

She was replaced by future Banshee Budgie, and it was at this point that Ari really became the prism through which The Slits’ creativity was refracted. As vocalist, this shouldn’t be a surprise, but it must be stressed that Ari Up’s flamboyant, confrontational, aggressively fun-loving personality, when combined with her immense talent, basically elevated her to the pantheonic level in punk’s twisted history, and her status as inspired gadfly continues to stick in the craw of assorted grumps and chumps to this very day. Initially, the naysayers derided The Slits as being a prankish lark instead of a “real” “band”, the nattering nabobs apparently missing how that argument was often leveled against punk as an entire genre. The more measured dismissals were likely due to a lack of any obvious musical precedent for the band. Plus, to this very moment many observers admire punk more in theory than in actual practice, so they naturally often unconsciously gravitate toward the conventional. The more hostile detractors of The Slits surely recognized them as the disrupters they were and felt threatened by their upset to the (essentially male) hegemony. The early, Palmolive-era Slits are prominently documented through their first two sessions for the John Peel program, and they can be found in numerous packages, though the best bang for the buck would be the remastered two-CD set CUT DELUXE EDITION from last year. Those tracks present a raw and ragged prototype for Riot Grrl’s righteous and vociferous defiance. In a blindfold test, folks only familiar with CUT’s deep production (via Dennis Bovell) and advanced aesthetic just might peg these 1977 air checks as originating from the early ‘90s Pacific Northwest via the Kill Rock Stars or K labels. The vast difference between the Peel and CUT recordings of “New Town” and “Instant Hit” really emphasizes post-punk’s rapid fire growth and innovation while lending proof to The Slits’ lasting worth. The DELUXE release includes, in addition to the original LP and the radio sessions, an embarrassment of bonus cuts that while largely different mixes and versions of album tracks still do a great job of avoiding the redundancy that expanded editions often engender. It bookends incredibly well with what I consider The Slits’ other essential document, Y3LP – THE OFFICIAL BOOTLEG, a deliberately low-budget/street-level slab that refuses to give up its status as fascinatingly confounding.

The low fidelity murk of “A Boring Life” and “Or What Is It?” could easily pass for the double A-sides of a limited and long gone late-‘90s 7” of prime non-retro garage-punk. From there everything feels fed through a Dadaist auto-splicer. The most prominent theme is a strung-out and twisted approach to rhythm. One extended passage wiggles around like a wonky tribal ritual enacted in an airport parking lot, and there’s some aggressive acoustic strum and holler that could’ve been taped in either Calvin Johnson’s modest backyard or Greil Marcus’s vast study. Cake-walks or Kurt Schwitters, you decide. It ends with a wonderful snippet of a very choice live performance where The Slits collided with The Subway Sect and The Prefects to throttle “Sister Ray” but good. Y3LP unravels like a fever dream remembrance of punk at its most uncompromising and non-commercial, and as such is a fine testament to the band, the era and the spirit and ingenuity of Ari Up. Like Solomon and Marion, it’s doubtful we’ll ever see her like again.

 

Viv Albertine, Palmolive, Tessa Pollitt, and Ari Up