Futures & Pasts | MRR #410
From Maximum Rocknroll #410 (July 2017): much-needed reissues of the Performing Ferret Band & Look Blue Go Purple, plus two new cassettes from the Australian underground via the Stroppies & Blank Statements. There’s also an interview that I did with early ‘80s No Wave/post-punk heroines Y Pants in #410, so if you’re looking to pick up an MRR back issue, you could do a lot worse than that one.
The history of the PERFORMING FERRET BAND should sound pretty familiar to anyone with even a cursory interest in scrappy, flipped-out late ‘70s/early ‘80s DIY in the UK: art-minded school friends acquire a reel-to-reel tape recorder and try their hand at making music inspired by the dryly absurd sensibilities of Monty Python and aided by “a broken tambourine, a mandolin case for a drum, a kazoo, and a pair of plastic sandals.” Some more friends ultimately come into the fold, the band morphs into something more closely resembling a standard post-punk combo (now with guitar, bass, and legitimate drums), and in 1978, they record a cassette that finds its way to John Peel’s radio program (naturally). The first three songs from that EP became a 7” single on the Dead Hippy label in 1980, which has just been reissued by Germany’s Insolito Records with the addition of a fourth track called “Convenience” that had been previously unreleased until Hyped to Death’s PERFORMING FERRETS CD anthology in 2008. There’s that infamous quote from Mark E. Smith that “if it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s the FALL,” and if you were to add some shaky organ and amateurish melodica to that equation, it might as well be the PERFORMING FERRET BAND. Flatly-delivered vocals, seemingly non-sequitur lyrics, clattering drums, trebly guitar lines usually consisting of two or three notes at most, the textbook Messthetics band, really. The group’s impossibly rare LP from 1981 is apparently also getting the reissue treatment soon (courtesy of Spain’s Beat Generation label), so all of you FALL/HOMOSEXUALS/SWELL MAPS freaks out there will have twice the cause for celebration - you need both records, trust me! (Insolito, insolitorecords.bandcamp.com)
Everyone I know who heard those TERRY records from last year was completely taken by them (rightfully so), and if you also count yourself among the TERRY true believers, the new self-titled cassette from fellow Melburnians the STROPPIES should have you similarly smitten. There’s an obvious reverence in these seven songs for many of the same foundational texts studied closely by the current cohort of Australian underground popsmiths that includes the likes of CHOOK RACE, DICK DIVER, and TWERPS - not surprisingly, the STROPPIES have some personnel overlap with the latter two. The unassuming dual vocal melodies and freewheeling keyboard in “Go Ahead” are descended straight from the bright-eyed jangle of Flying Nun’s “big three” (the CLEAN, the BATS, and the CHILLS), while the comparatively moody “Celebration Day” pays tribute to the shambolic MODERN LOVERS-isms of the GO-BETWEENS’ early singles, and “No Joke” recalls the sort of US indie rock/slacker-pop championed in the early-to-mid ‘90s by fanzine writers and college radio DJs with multiple BUTTERGLORY and PAVEMENT records in their collections. DIY pop perfection, because Australia really does it better.
Half of the STROPPIES are also in BLANK STATEMENTS, who have their own new tape on Melbourne’s Hobbies Galore label as well. Signs Are Rampant largely dispenses with the chiming melodicism of the STROPPIES’ more overt Kiwi influences, instead putting minimalist, super-rhythmic bass lines and wobbly, droning organ at the forefront of their skeletal songs. At their most raucous, BLANK STATEMENTS sound like a lost femme-punk band in the KLEENEX tradition, like on “Accelerate,” which consists of little more than a minute of choppy snare hits, synth squealing in the background, and a delirious, repetitive group chant of “accelerate and break!”. But overall, Signs Are Rampant leans much closer to the homespun, paper-thin aesthetic of the bands that occupied the fringes of the pre-C86 Rough Trade/Cherry Red post-punk milieu - the MARINE GIRLS especially, but with traces of DOLLY MIXTURE and YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS hiding just beneath the surface, and more than a few nods given to the K Records-backed primitive-pop of fellow Aussies the CANNANES. Both cassettes are limited to 100 copies each, and I’d jump on them if you get the chance. (Hobbies Galore, hobbiesgalore.bandcamp.com)
Speaking of Flying Nun and the whole Dunedin sound, the brilliant all-female quintet LOOK BLUE GO PURPLE have often been lost in the shadow of some of their more well-known (and largely all-male) early-to-mid ‘80s contemporaries, although in my world, they’ve always been just as important as, say, the CLEAN, if not even more so. The three 12” EPs that they released between 1985 and 1988 have been incredibly hard to track down at non-collector scum prices for some time now, so Still Bewitched, Flying Nun’s new LOOK BLUE GO PURPLE double LP anthology, is honestly a dream come true (and this particular dream even includes seven previously unreleased live songs!). As you’d probably expect from any band that was a part of Flying Nun’s more pop-oriented faction, there’s plenty of frenetic guitar jangle in the mix, but LOOK BLUE GO PURPLE’s haunting multi-part harmonies, propulsive drumming, and flashes of darkly psychedelic organ paid one of the most sincere tributes to the VELVET UNDERGROUND in the 1980s, putting them on a similar wavelength as the FEELIES over in New Jersey at roughly the same time. The overlapping vocal melodies and knotted, shadowy post-punk undercurrent running through songs like “Hiawatha” and “Safety in Crosswords” also make it easy to understand why the band were often hailed as New Zealand’s version of the RAINCOATS (especially during the latter’s Odyshape/Moving era), while LBGP were never quite as spiky and ecstatically raw as their English counterparts - see the plaintive minor chords and ethereal flute centered in “As Does the Sun” or “Days of Old,” which aren’t very far removed from the atmospheric drones of late ‘60s acid folk. We’re barely halfway through 2017 and I’m already going to go ahead and call this one as the reissue of the year. (Flying Nun, flyingnun.co.nz)
