Last Of The Legendary Bigfoot Hunters

Luke Haines and Peter Buck played Gorilla on Saturday night, part of a tour to promote the third album in their 'psychiatry trilogy', Going  Down To The River... To Blow My Mind. Peter Buck is (obviously) formerly a member of R.E.M., a band who rose to the biggest stages in the world via a series of much loved Southern USA indie rock albums, writing songs that defined a part of the 80s and 90s for many of us. Buck seems to be happiest when playing his guitar- the size of the stage and crowd don't really matter, just show him to the stage door and pass him his Rickenbacker. Gorilla is a small Manchester venue and it wasn't full on Saturday night- and yes, it is pretty incredible to be standing just a few feet away from Peter Buck playing guitar. 

Haines has a history in The Autuers, The Servants and Black Box Recorder as well as being the author of an account of the 90s, Bad Vibes- Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall, that is an essential counterpoint to some of the more nostalgic versions of mid- 90s guitar pop. Haines is an outsider, the outsider's outsider maybe, a critic, a theorist, a fan of pop culture but also someone happy to slay sacred cows and launch tirades against conformity. His songs are niche and not a million miles away from the cultural landscape of Half Man Half Biscuit but with fewer jokes- they open tonight with The Pink Floyd Research Group and canter through songs from the three albums Luke and Peter have made together, songs about nervous breakdowns (56 Nervous Breakdowns), nuclear war (Nuclear War), revolutions from the last few hundred years of history (45 Revolutions) and the British army on  hallucinogenic drugs (The British Army On LSD), Haines in Panama hat and and glasses with yellow lenses poking sticks in British society and culture, pointing fingers at the establishment, and raising a few laughs as well. To his right Scott McCaughey (an auxiliary member of R.E.M. from 1994 to the end, and in a slew of bands including The Minus 5) plays bass, there's a synth/ percussion player and Patty Hearst lookalike Linda Pitmon plays drums, hard and fast. 

Last Of the Legendary Bigfoot Hunters

Buck picks and strums, rarely playing much that sounds that much like his classic R.E.M. sound- Haines and Buck are mining a seam of post- punk, Lou Reed in the 70s, some late 60s psyche and leftfield guitar rock. Between songs Haines entertains and appears to be having a good time, tuning up and then ploughing back into the songs. They finish with The Commies Are Coming and then this one...

Rock 'n' Roll Ambulance

... and return for an encore, the psychedelic space rock of Exit Space (The Kids Are Super Bummed Out). It's a good gig, everyone's happy, and it finishes promptly at 10.30 as Gorilla is turning into a club at 11.00, a Manchester Pride after party. My brother and I go to the front bar and have a drink and about 15 minutes later the former guitarist of R.E.M. comes through the bar, on his out onto Whitworth Street and while I wouldn't say he was massively overjoyed at being asked for a photo he did indulge us... 

Me and Peter Buck!

Uptown

It takes a special kind of genius to cover a song and completely reinterpret it and produce a version that is the equal of the original. In 1998 Luke Haines' post- Auteurs group Black Box Recorder achieved this with their cover of Althea and Donna's 1978 classic Uptown Top Ranking. Haines along with former Mary Chain and Expressway man John Moore and singer Sarah Nixey approached Uptown Top Ranking on their album England Made Me, the usual Haines mix of sardonic songs, shocking/ funny lines/ song titles and a take on modern life inspired by the 1970s. Songs on the album included Girl Singing In The Wreckage and Kidnapping An Heiress, typically Luke Haines song titles. Uptown Top Ranking was one of those one off hits of the 70s, a massive playground song as well as being genuine roots reggae from two Jamaican teenagers and a legendary producer (Joe Gibbs). Slipping a cover of it onto an album called England Made Me is as Luke Haines as it gets.

Haines and Moore created a mechanical, strictly non- reggae backing track, stripped of feeling and off beat rhythms, led by a horn blast and an occasional piano melody line. Over this they got Sarah Nixey to recite the words. According to Luke she didn't know the song and they wrote the words out in Jamaican patois, phonetically. To add to the performance Nixey had a hangover. The vocals are so detached and devoid of life, so completely glassy eyed that they almost become meaningless, the absolute opposite the total celebration of youth and being young in the original. But Sarah's deadpan delivery of the lines works, lines such as 'see me in me heels an' ting', 'see me in me 'alter back', 'love is all I bring in me khaki suit an' ting' and 'gimme little bass make me wine up me waist' transformed by a haughty English accent looking down her nose at you as she sings them. 

Uptown Top Ranking

The original version with Joe Gibbs at the controls had Althea and Donna, seventeen and eighteen years old, ad- libbing Trinity's Three Piece Suit over a 1967 Alton Ellis song, I'm Still In Love. Although Gibbs saw it as a bit of a joke, there's no doubting the authenticity Althea and Donna bring to their vocals and performance. 'Nah pop no style, we strictly roots'.

Uptown Top Ranking

Softer

Leicester's eightpiece experimental outfit Echolocation return with their latest recordings, a seven track album called Softer. There's nothing softer about their approach though- their songs have a tendency to start slowly and build, layering cello and trumpet on top of the guitars, bass and the swinging drums. Over all of this vocalist Pete tells tales, utters controlled rants and vents spleen (Kasabian getting in the neck this time).



There's some complex and dense arrangements going on here, but the production is skillful, allowing everyone space and time to unfold fully. They've got some internet press with this release and a review from no less than Mr Luke Haines, who tweeted 'Nae bad. Good singer n lyrics.Loose indie drumbeat/jamming. Construct crit. Echolocation crap name. Name is everything. But its good'. Praise indeed from an Autuer and Black Box Recorder. Buy it at Bandcamp for only five of your pounds (or for ten pounds a limited edition cd with a hand made furry cover).

Post Everything

I've just finished reading the second volume of (former Auteur, former Black Box Recorder man) Luke Haines' memoirs. At the start of Post Everything Haines claims that since his first book Bad Vibes, set in the mid 90s against the backdrop of Britpop, he's calmed down a bit, mellowed out, and is not going round creating feuds with all and sundry. The 239 pages of Post Everything then detail mainly what he hates about the early 2000s- the music industry, his record companies, his record company bosses, one of his record company's boss's dog, Primal Scream (Must not end up like Bobby Gillespie he notes), The Verve, Richard Ashcroft, the mythologisation of The Clash, the mythologisation of the MC5, his own bands and the albums they make, band reunions, the New York Dolls reunion, the relationship between his bandmates (John Moore and Sarah Nixey), New Labour, Noel Gallagher and Alan McGee hobnobbing with New Labour, Glen Hoddle, Camden, Paul Morley, The Osbornes, digital recording, gigs, tours, Bono ('Two words... Massive twat'), several men called Graham at the National Theatre, Banksy ('the 21st century's worst man'), The Cellist.... the list goes on.


Things Luke Haines likes/tolerates- the National Pop Strike (his idea). New York Dolls (before they reformed). Mott The Hoople. Laudanum. His musical about Nicholas van Hoogstraten.


Things Luke Haines loves- his wife, who he woos when she is already courting the editor of a major music magazine, which ensures zero positive press from that magazine thereafter.


It's a festering, scabrous, entertaining read, shot through with brains and outsider wit, is utterly misanthropic, and very funny. 

Going Off My Rocker At The Art School Bop

Select Shun Two

Another track from a series of free cds that came with Select magazine ten-plus years ago. This is Black Box Recorder, a band formed by former Auteur Luke Haines, John Moore (previously in The Jesus and Mary Chain and John Moore's Expressway) and singer Sarah Nixey. They made some interesting records, a bit like a sarcastic and caustic St Etienne. This song, The Facts Of Life, is remixed by The Chocolate Layers, a psuedonym for Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey (both from Pulp, obviously). For the record this cd was Revolutions 01, and also featured Stereophonics (urgh), Queens Of the Stone Age's Feel Good Hit Of The Summer (yes!), Alpinestars (Manc electronica), The Go-Betweens (I really should feature something by them), Tailgunner featuring Noel Gallagher (nein danke), The Automator and Kool Keith (turn of the millenium hiphop), The Delgados (never really checked them out but believe they're very good), Brothers In Sound, My Vitriol, King Adora (ha, remember them), Underworld (Pearl's Girl live) and Grandaddy. Mixed bag then really.

04 The Facts Of Life.wma#1#1

Luke Haines 'Bad Reputation'

One of the best music related books last year was Luke Haines' Bad Vibes- Britpop And My Part In It's Downfall. The tale of the trip abroad with various Britpop bands ending with Luke firing a flare at a fountain being danced around by members of Oasis and The Verve is brilliant, as is his jumping off a high wall breaking both his ankles to specifically get out of a tour, as is him only refering to the detested cellist as The Cellist (who brings depth, gravity and media attention to the records but knows nothing of Lou Reed), as is his physical inability to type the word of the Britpop band who cannot be named (Kula something).

Luke Haines has a deep and wide back catalogue, from The Auteurs to Blackbox Recorder to several solo records. This is one from a solo album, and features a typically barbed dissection of Gary Glitter and The Glitter Band.

'Gary Glitter
He's a bad, bad man
Ruining the reputation of
The Glitter Band'

bad reputation.mp3