Hello. I should be in Manchester rocking the shit out of people but I am not because all day (a day in which I have so far managed to eat a single apple) I have been puking and shitting like a machine. I normally commend the food from The Wireless Stores on Hockley but seeing it emerge again this morning has left me less than confident about future returns there.
I also have that weird senstitive thing where my arms and legs hurt when they get so much as brushed by something.

Anyway, in the week I reprinted all my poster designs for gigs onto ultra-posh matt heavyweight card and I am selling them all – have a looksy at www.honeyisfunny.com and see what I mean.

I thought rather than write a series of huge columns about recommended music, I’d just write a few pieces about unsung individuals – or more accurately, individuals who’s history leads to loads of unexpected listening pleasure if investigated. It’s nice when you get into something completely out of the blue and find there are another 20 albums like it and you have a new ‘well’ to dip into. So here goes with the first:

Brewer Phillips

Brewer played in the Houserockers, the now legendary band of Hound Dog Taylor. ‘Played’ is an understatement, Brewer propelled the Houserockers who provided the blueprint for the bassless band that is pretty much the garage rock norm these days. With Taylor knocking out cheeky lead slide on some of the most fucked up instruments you could imagine (check the photos that exist for this man’s guitar collection, seems like he wasn’t interested unless it has 16 pickups and a trem made out of a spanner), it was Brewers job to play everything else on his guitar. He apparently learned his craft from Memphis Minnie.

“I left Greenwood and moved to Memphis, and there I ran across the most beautiful woman, an angel, Memphis Minnie,” Phillips said in an interview. “She and Son (House) were in Memphis and I got to play with them. Then I met a guy named James Walker who made a little 78 (rpm record) with me and Roosevelt Sykes. That woulda been back in ’55 or ’56.”

I assume he played with his fingers to account for the simultaneous bass and melody runs you hear that’d put Hendrix to shame, all the pictures I’ve seen have him wearing fingerpicks anyway. His tone was squidgy as glue and he had a knack for playing the irresistible-but-not-cheesy that is unmatched. I get to DJ very infrequently and I can say without hesitation that it’s always a Houserockers track that gets someone to come up and ask “what is this?”, or better still, people properly dancing – sucked in by Brewers low-end groove.

The story of how the Houserockers formed is typical of the tales associated with these characters. Taylor was a larger than life eccentric. Bruce Iglaur saw him play with a Brewer-less pickup band:

“He would start songs for 15-20 seconds, stop and try to start another thing. Then he’d tell these incomprehensible jokes, crack up in the middle of the joke and bury his face in his hands. He’d light a Pell Mell, tell another weird joke, put the Pell Mell on the mike stand, start into another song that would fall apart instantly. But he was so funny looking- a tall, gawky guy, very thin, huge toothy grin. Everybody naturally loved him.”

Brewer went by Taylors house one day in 1959 to kick off at Taylor, who he suspected had stolen his guitar from a gig. He confirmed his suspicions but rather than bust Taylor in two he ended up playing guitar for him for 20 years. Go figure. He said of the time:

“We fought it for 10, 12, 15 hours a night for next to nothing. We’d play all night for $50. We were black-man rich.”

Igalur founded Chicago blues label Alligator purely to release the Houserockers’ material. The Houserockers were also pretty bad-ass characters as well, which always helps in the mythology-stakes. Taylor’s approach to leading a band was somewhat visionary for the time as Igalur recounts:

“Whatever they (the Houserockers) had a show, they didn’t rehearse. That was sort of a rule. They followed that rule very closely. They also followed the rule that you REALLY shouldn’t perform unless you had a reasonable amount of alcohol. He set an example for that. In that regard, he was sort of an exemplary bandleader.”

Tales of Taylor pulling a lady at a show, taking the car and leaving Brewer and drummer Ted Harvey hitching a ride home are hilarious. Or Taylor slapping a sound-asleep Harvey and imploring him to “wake up and argue!”

Get this (again from Iglaur):

“They also liked to tease each other about having sex with each other’s wives and girlfriends. I remember when Brewer said about one of Hound Dog’s girlfriends ‘yeah, I knew her when she was a whore on 43rd Street.’ In fact, it was a remark like that, directed at Hound Dog about his wife that led him to shoot Brewer in 1975, luckily not fatally”

Brewer won an award for a record he cut long after after Taylors death (of cancer in 1975). He had this to say about his album being declared Blues Album Of The Year:

“I don’t know why. It sounds like shit”.

He died of natural causes in August 1999, aged 69 or maybe 72, or 73. He wasn’t sure.

Go see

http://www.keno.org/hound_dog_taylor/hdhomepage.htm

http://www.furious.com/perfect/hounddogtaylor.html

http://www.bluespeak.com/feature/96/12/961259.html

“Why don’t a man love a man
And why don’t a woman love a woman?
Why don’t a man love a man
And why don’t a woman love a woman?
For when a man love a woman:
It trouble, trouble, trouble all the time.
For when a man love a woman:
It trouble, trouble, trouble all the time,
Trouble, trouble, trouble all the time.”

Ivor Cutler: 1923 – 2006

Ages ago I wrote a review about Magik Markers that got me in trouble with someone I mentioned in the review. It’s here if you want to read it. Anyway, James Smith (aka Stables and drummer for Spin Spin The Dogs) snuck his video camera into the show and now, courtesy of You Tube, you can experience the whole thing for yourself. It lives up to my memory.

So: CLICK HERE!

“Spinspin the dog? Being the pervayer of high culcher that I am I can onlistly say iv neaver seen anything so GOD FUCKING AWFULLY SHIT in my HOLELIFE! ..and iv seen the fucking Marzvolta! oh but ther just so weard and creative!”
“spin spin the dogs are WANK. the only reason i wasn’t there last night was cos of my exam but any other day and i would have slapped the singer quite happily”
“Why are people making such a big deal over that piece of shit band (Spinspin the fucking cunt dog)? They are fucking gay and thats that!!!!!!”
“Id forgotten about Spin Spin The Dogs. I fucking hate the drummers smug gitface of “we’re making music you couldnt possibly contemplate, understand orappreciate.”
“Maybe Im not quite advanced enough to understand it. To me it came across like an excuse for not having any SONGS!!!!”
“FUCK OFF.”
“Got there to see Spin Spin the dog(s) to see if they really were that bad… I wasn’t disappointed. They truly are the biggest pile of try to hard to be weird turd I’ve ever seen. How about learning to sing and/or actually writing some music. Why did I let curiosity get the better of me…..? Everyone deserves a chance I suppose. except them”
“FUCKING ARTY TWAT SMUG SHIT! YOU’RE NOT FUCKING FUNNY! ARRRRRRRRGHH! PLEASE SAVE YOUR BEEFHART IMPRESSIONS FOR YOUR LITTLE BROTHER. YOU MIGHT FEEL IMPERIOUS THEN BUT EVERYONE ELSE THINKS YOUR A TWAT. YOU TWAT.”
“I don’t even CARE about what music SSTDs play. I don’t care how groundbreaking or original they are. I just think they are RUDE“
“kill kill the twats”

Over time, SSTD have earned a coveted title: The Most Hated Band In Derby.
No mean feat considering they come from Nottingham. The folk at the other end of the A52 can’t deal with the Dogs at all. (See the thoughtful internet comments above that were so good at the time I had to find an excuse to include them: spelling and grammar author’s own).

The main criticisms I can decipher among the death threats are: they can’t play and they are some sort of art prank. The first point is not up for debate. SSTD can play. John might look as comfortable with a guitar as the Queen holding a 15-inch hard-on but he can play the arse off anyone. Someone should change his name to John ‘Fingers’ Wilson.
In fact, I just did.
He seems supernaturally linked to bassist Dean like some governing hand is controlling them both simultaneously. Drummer James provides the perfect foil in a way, in that his drumming means it’s never powerhouse but more like The Fall in that it’s always urgent and never brawny.
What makes people think they can’t play is that no amount of precision and sixth sense can counter singist Vincent’s desire to reek havoc wherever he goes like a child smearing poo on the bathroom walls.
Which brings us onto the art prank accusation: if it were an adult smearing poo anywhere it’d be an art statement. Everyone would look for the meaning:

“Perhaps the poo is a METARFUR for his inner feelings that he is unashamedly revealing?” “Maybe the poo is a SIMBOLLIC protest at life?” etc.

I could be wrong but I think with this band (like a child): a shit’s a shit. And if it’s funny to smear it then it’ll get smeared. They’re not an art happening because there’s no underlying pre-decided message. It doesn’t mean they’re vacuous, it means they’re of the moment and not contrived. Most importantly, they’re all willing to make an ass of themselves to express the moment – a long forgotten virtue if you ask me.
Too many people aren’t willing to compromise themselves for what they believe in because all they’re really doing it for is to establish and emphasise their own ‘cool’. You go see screaming hardcore bands and its bullshit, they stick to a plan, they mock-confront, they throw themselves into the crowd in a manner that is contrived and it just perpetuates this crappy act of theatre that people have seen for so long they think it’s real. Vincent’s willingness to make an ass of himself, the thing that so annoys people, just shows how desperately hard he wants to break that state. One of my fondest gig memories is Vincent stepping on a milk crate onstage in Newcastle and then hobbling around for the rest of the gig with it stuck solid on his foot as though it wasn’t a problem at all.
Tonight it takes him about 40 seconds to clamber into a small space between a shelf and the air conditioning unit. A female punter yells “You’re shit!”which is met with the retort “SEXY!” from Vincent. Later on the woman seems to think it’s her mission to get things sensible when everyone else just wants to go crazy. She keeps shouting, headmistress-style, “GET DOWN FROM THERE!” and “STOP BEING SILLY!” to Vincent, who has decided he likes the ledge/air conditioner position so much he’ll spend the gig there. “SEXY!” he replies.
They seem to delight in the chaos of it all, John seems especially animated, whacking his guitar into the cymbals and when he swaps with James they both seem to relish getting to attack an instrument that doesn’t belong to them.
Much as I am sure they would recoil at the word, SSTD really rock. They always have done. Not to be confused with some sort of macho swagger, which they definitely don’t have. It’s no sausage party. It’s like ‘Container Drivers’ by The Fall with every other note being one you don’t expect. The Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid minus the pelvic swing. It’s twitchy and insect-like. Spiny.
Having said that I was pretty leathered by this point so my memories are blurred. I don’t add that as a kind of Lester Bangs / Hunter S Thompson gonzo-journalist comment but more as a resigned admission that I can’t booze properly anymore and I am essentially a 2 pint screamer.

Which is pretty irresponsible seeing I am supposed to be telling you what the gig was like.

But that’s OK, I can do that – the gig was brilliant.

If this really was their last gig I’m going to miss them.

Opening up in the big room at Rock City is not an enviable task. You get about 10 mins to sound check, about 4 inches of room to play in as you squeeze yourself around the headliner and other support bands’ massive amps and every noise you make echoes straight back at you off the walls of the slowly filling room.
The chances of a band rising above this are slim. The chance of them playing one of the best gigs so far this year is next to impossible – which makes Stinking Lizaveta‘s efforts all the more superhuman, as they were amazing at 8 o clock on a Sunday evening.
I’ve seen these Philadelphians before in small rooms and they always put on a show and I always enjoy it but it’s surprising how much sense they make on a massive stage at a ‘proper’ rock gig. Surprising because they have an upright bassist, no vocals to speak of, a female drummer and a guitarist (brother of the bassist) who resembles something from Lord Of The Rings. Interesting enough to fill a small room but not the typical set up for an 18 year old in cut-off denim and a peach fuzz moustache sipping on a nervously-bought cider and waiting for the mosh parts. But people seemed to really get into it.
It’s hard not to though, when the band themselves are so committed. Guitarist Yanni is especially animated, balancing precariously on his amp, leaping around, screaming into his guitar pickups and at one point traversing the whopping Rock City ‘moat’ to strap his guitar onto an unsuspecting girl (after prying it from the hands of a gaggle of wannabe male guitossers) in the front row before returning to the stage to dish out wah-wah apocalypse on us while the girl stood there pawing the instrument. Lizaveta are super arranged, technical metal but by putting so much of themselves into the performance you forget about it, things seem natural, you don’t really try and follow the changes because you follow the people.
Clutch are a band I’ve heard on record plenty but never seen live. On record they have an unnatural heaviness that’s replicated tonight in volume but not in overall sound somehow. They are massively loud but the guitar especially sounds croaky and blubbering. Not to say Clutch don’t rock. They resemble a compressed, more aggressive ZZ Top with Dan Higgs from Lungfish on vocals – complete with bizarre shamanisms and facial hair. But whereas the mighty ‘Top have an elasticity to their rhythms that means I could listen to Frank Beard play a shuffle beat all day, Clutch rely a bit too much on a straight fonky rhythm that never allows them to break out and run. Couple it to the sometimes-overbearing New Orleans-y keyboard sound and it makes too much Clutch a bit hard to take. It’s lucky the sheer vocal presence of Neil Fallon is commanding enough to make it seem like they’re not repeating themselves even when maybe they are.
It was Stinking Lizaveta’s night though.
(Corrosion Of Conformity headlined but I tried to review two gigs in a night and didn’t see them. Here’s what my friend Annie thought: “Dark loud raw R-n-R, played old and new – heavy sounds from the deep” so there you have it!)

I don’t have MTV so I have only just seen this. It’s the best music video ever

Also, how shit are band names? Here are some genuine bands taken from the pages of Punk Planet:

Across Five Aprils
The Autumn Offering
The Autumn Project
Before Today
By The End Of Tonight
It Dies Today
Missing Autumn
Oh My God
Beneath The Falling Skies
Ruining Tomorrow
Sunday Tore Downs
A Thousand Falling Skies
Leaves Of Lothlorien
Recess Theory
The Juliana Theory
Subpoena The Past
Count The Stars

(Each has a link enabling you to waste literally hours at work flicking through them all for your amusement)

A is for ASTRA, my new car. I was trying to work out why a family estate car would have completely blacked-out windows then I found out the previous owner was an ‘adult entertainer’. And there was me thinking the smell of cum in the car was coming from my trousers. I am trying to avoid searching the internet for dogging videos with the previous owners name in the credits – but it’s only a matter of time before curiosity gets the better of me.
B is for CHARLIE BROOKER and his book Screen Burn, a compilation of all his TV review columns for the Guardian. I write reviews infrequently because I simply run out of ways of expressing my raging anger and/or abject misery. Brooker doesn’t suffer such a problem. He is a master of description; example: baldy bad guy Ross Kemp’s tendency to nod to emphasise key lines is described by Brooker as looking “like a testicle bobbing in the bathtub”.
B is also for BILGE PUMP. It must stink to be an American touring band and look at your itinery and see you have Bilge opening for you. I wouldn’t even bother showing up. I love this band.
C is for CITY COUNCIL who I have managed to last a year as an employee of without being fired which, frankly, is amazing.
C is also for CHONG, an amusing term for a bifter, a doobie, a jazz cigarette etc.
D is for DAMN YOU’S 100TH GIG. Our little gig-putting-on collective was 100 gigs old in November and we celebrated in style with a huge show at Nottingham Trent University with Melt Banana topping the bill. I even got interviewed in Nottingham Evening Post. Made my Mum happy anyway.
D is also for, like, DUDE, a word that totally saw increased usage in 2005.
E is for the EARTH which I found out is hollow with a population living on the inside of the planet, drawn to a magnetic centre somewhere in the crust and illuminated by the molten core which operates as a second sun, held centrally in the hollow core by the equidistant gravitational pull from all sides. It’s true. It explains Heaven, religion, sea monsters, the Bermuda Triangle, Nazi UFOs, compass problems at Magnetic North or South, Atlantis and the Northern Lights. Ask me about it sometime.
F is for FAHEY BLOWS HIS NOSE, the outstanding track from this year’s Live John Fahey CD The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick.
G is for GUITARS. It’s been a quiet year, I only bought the one guitar (a see-through Dan Armstrong like Greg Ginns) which I have subsequently sold because I couldn’t justify owning it. What’s happening to me? Am I getting sensible? I did find myself shopping for Stratocasters on Ebay and I borrowed a Gibson off a friend and though it sounded good. I am worried.
H is for THE HOLD STEADY. I am a chump for forgetting this from my albums of the year. A friend did me a CDR of their second album and what struck me as being a little too stadium rock and a little too cheesy and American to begin with quickly wormed its way to my heart and became the “CD most likely to be reached for”. I keep blathering on to Coogan about this and how much he’d like it and then we both found out that we once told the guitarist off like outraged parents for playing piano in our old house at five in the morning when he stayed with his old band. Oops.
I is for IAN SVENONIUS, who really likes this muuuu-sssssic.
J is for JAY: JAY HOWELL and NEGATRON, a wonderful book from the Sacramento-based artist. Includes the hits ‘Now, I Spank You’ and ‘Sheriff Horsey’s Got A Big One’. Available from Gringo.
To call Jay an American underground rock version of David Shrigley would be wrong. So I won’t. But if you look at his ‘This boner is sincere’ drawing in Punks Git Cut and don’t double over laughing with snot flying out of your face you have no sense of humour and no place in my life! And: JAY DEAN and OLLIE TOOGOOD at Dubrek Studios for their patience, humour and ideas in the recording studio which made what could have been a nightmare (recording an album) one of the most fun experiences of my life.
K is for KATHARINE ‘EVA’ BROWN
L is for LORDS SUPPORTING THE MAGIC BAND. A truly cosmic experience.
L is for LEO – both Ted and Chris. Ted for one of the most uplifting gigs of the year when he ruined his vocal chords and brought the house down at Sneinton School Hall and Chris for the better-late-than-never release of his first novel, White Pigeons and accompanying CD of the unreleased Lapse album which I think was my album of the year back in 2001.
M is for MEGADETH who simultaneously made me feel really young and really old at their Rock City show.
N is also for NOVEL, something I started writing and then got bored of. I need to motivate myself. The plot premise is a winner though. A supernatural story of suicide and scheming with an elasticated time frame.
N is also for NOTTINGHAM. 2005 was better than 2004 for me but in terms of how I feel about the city I live in; new depths have been excavated. I find I am increasingly busy and so the idea of over-analysis is not an option to me. Nottingham seems to have suddenly become packed out with people who over-analyse everything and I mean EVERYTHING. So the days of going out and having a good time are numbered. You might value the 3 hours on a Friday you’ve allocated to get hammered and forget about work etc and be with friends but you can bet someone will want to discuss the gig they saw in great detail or why Sub Pop isn’t a credible label anymore or why using an electric guitar tuning pedal is not ‘real’ or what the best Sonic Youth album is etc etc (all of those are genuine topics I’ve been party to heated discussions over). I blame art students and their complete lack of being able to grasp the difference between living conceptually and living to pay your rent. In 5 years they’ll have burnt out their creative urges by thinking about everything too much and I’ll be able to discuss my mortgage with them in Nationwide.
O is for OFFSPRING. Everyone is having them! Congratulations to Simon & Sarah, Chay & Jodie, Tom & Amy, Greg & Val.
P is for PROPERTY. I had a real pain-in-the-arse experience this year when I went to get a mortgage for the first time. Amazingly I managed to get one after much mathematics and bending rules only for my landlady to decide she didn’t want to sell after all. I was nearly a homeowner.
Q is for QUAGGA a recently extinct member of the horse family of Southern Africa. Q is also for QUADRIVIUM – a course consisting of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. Q is also for QOTSA – get it together Homme, how hard is it?
R is for JOHN REIS who was a guitar revolution to me this year when I saw Hot Snakes play a couple of times. The man is a downstroke riff machine. A god of the chug and the klaaang.
S is for DAVID SHRIGLEY. I am smitten by this man’s work, thanks to Lady Lucky Chua bringing me up to speed with what’s hip in the art world. Or at least what was hip 2 years ago. Shrigley frequently makes me piss my pants only to burst into tears one page later.
S is also for THE STOOGES who blew my mind at their Don’t Look Back performance of Funhouse. So much so that S is also for THE SNEINTON STOOGES, the Xmas Stooges tribute band I was involved in. I got to pull rock poses, wear a Nazi cap and shades, play through 2 amp stacks and use a wah wah and it was allowed because it wasn’t me it was Ron Asheton! Brilliant. It was one of the most fun things I have done, I’ll post some pictures when I get them as the costume Gaz (Iggy) had on was unbelievable.
T is for THIN LIZZY, a band I’ve always liked but never loved – until 2005. Watching Lizzy Live & Dangerous on video you really get the sense that this is a band that, at their peak, were indestructible. It’s amazing to think Brian Robertson was 18 when he joined Lizzy. I guess it explains a lot in a way. The Jailbreak album will always lift my spirits no matter what mood I am in.
U is for UNWOUND who should get their fucking shit together and sort it out.
V is for VALVE AMPS. 2005 was the year of the amp blow-up. Over and over and over again.
W is for the WHISTLING MOUNTAIN BEAVER’S REGGAE LOCKDOWN, a true life event that should really have come from Curb Your Enthusiasm. My friend The Whistling Mountain Beaver had been harbouring concerns that she was living 10 years in the past. This manifested itself in lots of chance meetings with Britpop B-listers. She also hates Reggae. She rang me early one Saturday morning to inform me she had woken up in a strange flat following a large night out. After much detective work she realised she was at the abode of Skin, former lead singer of Skunk Anansie. This is hilarious enough but on top of that she couldn’t actually get home because she was in Notting Hill and the carnival was on. She was literally TRAPPED IN THE PAST BY REGGAE.
X is for XMAS – not bad for once, very relaxing, got to hang out with Ross, Kai and Kevin lots. Also my Mum got me the Harry Smith Anthology, my girlfriend got me a Don Van Vliet exhibition book and my Dad got me a camera – RESULT!
Y is for NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE and specifically Don’t Cry No Tears which is such a brilliant Sunday morning song whatever the weather. Like Lizzy, Neil Young has been something of a revelation this year – a rediscovery from my existing record collection. I recommend Zuma for the recently broken-hearted. Uncle Neil’ll sort you out.
Z is for ZZZZZZZZZ which is something I got about 6 hours of in 2005. Hallucination through sleep deprivation is an interesting experience. I thought I was being attacked by very small people. It’s almost been something of a competition this year to see who is most tired:
“How are you?”
“I’m just really tired”
etc. My New Year’s Resolution is to go to bed earlier. And stop wanking.
Actually, they’re kind of connected.

A little late but Jan 4th was the 20th anniversary of the death of Phil Lynott, a man worth remembering if ever there was one. Ever read John Lydon’s book “No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs”? Lydon felt hard done by because he ticked one of those boxes, imagine being black and Irish 30 years ago. Lydon threw his rattle out the pram, Lynott partied in the face of it. Cheers Phil!
Here is an unofficial page worth a peek.

I can’t confirm and apologise if wrong but it seems guitarist Derek Bailey died on Christmas Day. My good friend Luke posted the news and a couple of sites seem to know too so unless a bad mistake has happened it looks like the original skronker has gone.
I heard Bailey before I heard Beefheart even courtesy of a friend from my school days called Stuart. He made me a tape of Evan Parker on one side and Bailey’s 80s record “Drop Me Off At 96th” on the other. He wrote on it “This K7 is a bit of a fucker. Bear with it!”. I still have it and I moved through being totally freaked out by it, to not being able to relate to it, to finding it hilarious then baffling then super powerful (with the hilarity remaining).
Bailey mastered technique to make most guitar players shit through their eyes and then decided it was simply not rewarding enough and developed a language on the semi acoustic jazz guitar that seems impenetrable at first but slowly reveals itself as being a plunging-the-depths personal language that actually sounds like incidental music to a Tom n Jerry cartoon. Like Fahey he didn’t wait for someone to put his records out and founded the Incus label pressing records that collectors today would kill for. His sides with drummer Hann Bennick are insane and my personal highlight.
I never saw him play. He was supposed to tour with Fahey under the banner “Guitar Excursions Into The Unknown” but pulled out. I think it was a measure of my tastes that I was shitting it over Bailey playing and had to ask who Fahey was. When he pulled out I wasn’t interested and ended up missing two of my favourite players perform in one foul swoop.
Anyway, expect to read a million better and more gushing (and more sober) tributes but I thought I’d add mine.
As a footnote: Stuart, who got me into Bailey (and Beefheart too!) ended up playing with the man himself recently under the name THF Drenching. A long way from playing drums on Sex Pistols covers with me! XXX