Heard this and suddenly thought maybe the title lodged in Marc Bolan's brain
After all, Tyrannosaurus Rex were a Underground band - beloved and supported by Peel, who also loved and supported Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. His playing of the record on Top Gear probably had something to do with Trout Mask Replica actually making the UK albums chart - it got to #21, would you believe! (The next album Lick My Decals Off, Baby did even better - #20)
There's even a sort of once-removed connection - Beefheart was an old schoolfriend of Frank Zappa's and recorded for Zappa's label and was part of that whole LA freak scene. For quite a while the Mothers of Invention included Flo & Eddie - aka Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman - the ex-Turtles who went down a sort of rock-parodic path not unlike Zappa's own mock-it-all tendencies. And it's Flo & Eddie of course who did those creamy near-hysteria backing vocals on "Hot Love", "Get It On" and many other T.Rex hits.
Completely unconnected, but there's also the ridiculously groovy second-division Krautrock Guru Guru.
Guru Guru reminded me a thought I had been recently entertaining: were the white boys mutating funk to their own ends better than their funk inspirations? To be partial, Can, the Gang of Four and the Happy Mondays (obviously) were significantly more interesting than Kool and the Gang, Cameo and Earth, Wind and Fire. Of course, this excludes white American bands appropriating funk (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Extreme etc.). And it obviously excludes Jamiroquai. Perhaps funk is at its best as an element rather than a philosophy.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/jan/05/popandrock John Harris making the case for the prosecution against funk.
I feel I should say, it was my mum whom we feared had cancer, but it seems it's an infection. She's still really ill, but it's hopefully not that cunt of a word. Thanks for your compassion.
Glad to hear it's good news about your mother (and hope she recovers from the other thing soon).
DeleteCan / Gang of Four / Happy Mondays versus Kool and Gang / Cameo / Earth Wind and Fire - not sure if that is a truly commensurate matching there!
DeleteWell, Earth Wind and Fire are a great group, but the other two are a bit second-div, if fine as far as they go.
If you had the matching as Can / Gang of Four / Happy Mondays versus James Brown / Chic / Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, I don't know if it would be as clearcut.
I mean, if you asked me to choose between Gang of Four and Chic Organisation, I wouldn't know what to say, I'd rather not choose - but if forced probably would go with Chic especially as that covers Sister Sledge and various other things they produced / wrote. Whereas with Gang of Four it's just that first album plus a couple of tunes on the second.
I'd rather listen to Can than JB most days - and you might say that's because they have all these other things going on and stuff they bring into the equation, but there's no denying James Brown is this massive force in music.
Funk was once the ultimate music to me, all I wanted to do is learn to play slap bass (well, slight exaggeration, and I never took any practical steps, like buying a bass guitar). But then it faded for a long while... at one point probably did have the feeling of it being overrated or at least by that point (1990s) old fashioned. Groups like Red Hot Chilli Peppers, or Jamiroquai helped to make it feel like that.
But then I only have to put on a track by The Meters to go back to that Funk is Everything mindset.
Or something by the Blockheads for that matter.
I notice you don't follow through on the Mondays/Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis comparison. Sparing my feelings, or just realising that the contention leaves Jam and Lewis farting at a force 9 gale?
DeleteAren't Chic disco? I grasp that the boundary between funk and disco is pourous, but yer standard white male American rocker would have far more readily cited George Clinton than Nile Rodgers as an alleged influence (note that Rodgers' most famous production credits include Bowie, Duran Duran, Madonna, Grace Jones, Lady Gaga and Daft Punk; hardly the Red Hot Chili Peppers).
Tago Mago is clearly one of the five greatest albums ever made. I've heard Live at the Apollo, and it's a great 4-starrer, but James Brown has always been welded to showbusiness (like Sinatra), and it's hard to read depth into professionalism.
You're a public school boy, right? The PSTs have always declared their love of phatness and funk and murder rap. In my comp, during the 6th form, I can't recall anyone mentioning funk. Soul, pop, dance, rock, punk, metal, hip-hop, even classical, but not funk. Was that just my school?
Chic are discofunk, I would say - funk is totally the core of their sound, which is more stripped down and minimal than most disco. Interplay of guitar and bass, with little flourishes of strings and piano but used very sparingly. they were a proper band, whereas quite a lot of disco was concocted in the studio. But Chic gave their funk a slinky sheen that fit the disco moment.
DeleteCertainly Parliament-Funkadelic would stand in just as well, for Importance, although I think their hit-rate is smaller. There's usually one great song on each album, the single, and one good one, and the rest is nfocused drivel.
Jam & Lewis are one of the great era defining sounds in R&B. I wouldn't say Happy Mondays's achievement is commensurate. But really they are competing in different sports.
Can always give the nod to James Brown as one of the main things that sent them on their particular path. JB, Velvets and then later on a bit of African music.
I'm not sure about your public schoolboy theory - there weren't any funk fans at my one as I recall. And then you have to take on the jazz-funk scene, which was really much more funk than jazz, and was this working class South of England scene, with huge All Dayers at places like Caister.
But there is something to your stereotype. Flashback to a very posh deejay at some event Stubbs was also deejaying circa 1983, who earnestly informed me that Cameo played the hardest street funk around. This was before their breakthrough with Larry Blackmon's codpiece and 'Word Up', when the albums were imports.
And there was the group Funkapolitan, who were a bunch of very posh, Etonian types - I think one of them was actually a Right Honorable or some such title, his dad an actual Lord. They were actually a pretty decent band but they got a lot of flak from NME and The Face for not having street cred.
More than funk, though, I associate public school boys and roots reggae. Memories of Black Uhuru posters on certain student room walls.
Haha very true. "Trustafarian" was coined for a reason. I avoided Bob Marley for many many years because the people I knew who loved him the most were all insufferable about the Caribbean holidays they had been taken on by their parents.
DeleteThat turned out to be a mistake, and I accept now that he is actually fantastic. An important life lesson in not assuming you won't like something because you don't like the people who like it. See also, in my case, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, the Temptations, Fleetwood Mac.
That would be a good idea for a post / thread / article - bands that are actually good but have the most annoying fans.
DeleteI'm writing this in a bar, just after South Africa beat perfidious England. I've put The Fall and the glorious Mondays on the jukebox, and I can only assume that you meant the Happy Mondays were not comparable to those Prince cast-offs because they were a million times better. Eighties Black American music suffered from the Reaganite sandpapering of any interesting facets. What stops Prince from being a more capable Lionel Richie? Nothing at all.
DeleteThe Mondays, for all their sins, weren't Thatcherite.
Oh, I forgot to say: Prince is overrated!
ReplyDeleteI think somehow he's both overrated and underrated. It depends on who's saying it.
DeleteSo like the people who say 'there's all these great albums he did in the 1990s and 2000s', obviously they are mad. But then if you took the 20 best tunes he did between "Wanna Be Your Lover" and "Glam Slam", how could it possibly be overrated? Dirty Mind is just one of the most perfect albums ever made. I think the problem with Prince is just made too much music. And he didn't stop.
Oh God, I just remembered when I had to work the bar at our college ball, 12 till 4 whilst a Prince tribute act played. Such a miserable experience, I developed an allergy to Prince. I still think Purple Rain is personally mocking me sarcastically. What did I do to that shortarse?
DeleteThe problem I have with Prince is that he's all Venus and no Mars, all sex and no violence. It's why I never understood the attempts to put him in a canon with James Brown, Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix, all of whom had their artistic, and often real life, nasty sides.
DeleteGreat spot on the Bolan / Beefheart connection! Surely the assonance is too close to be a coincidence? And as you say the Peel connection makes it quite plausible that Bolan heard Trout Mask Replica. Add him to the list of surprising (Joe Strummer) and less surprising (PJ Harvey) musicians who Beefheart inspired.
ReplyDeleteIt has, however, now given me a terrible earworm: "Ella Guru, is it you?"
Another guru: the late lamented MC Guru of Gang Starr and Jazzmataz fame. And of course the characteristically cantankerous repudiation by Van Morrison: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=vc3brBVgSzY&list=OLAK5uy_kJHD0s6yp_QIKI3w1IYwHbjMNBfv14Jjw
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