The Wolfgang Press Have Something To Show You

Outside there is a beautiful lake draped in fog, flocks of birds wheeling overhead. Inside the singer makes drunken bird impressions. Outside a white horse runs free, but inside the band ride it backwards, slapping its ass. Mick's got a headache because someone is pounding his skull in slow motion; he's dizzy because someone is spinning his chair. Why won't they stop? The water drips over the light socket; something's gonna blow! The alcohol is poured over the singer's head; something's gotta give!

Ever been drunk on tequila? The Wolfgang Press have, and decided to make "Cut The Tree" to show you what it's like.



In this video the band have apparently confused two states: Kansas and Texas. But oh well, they're English. For no reason the guitarist will run around a barn. For no reason there is a toilet in the field. For no reason the singer holds a pig. For no reason... aw, heck, it's The Wolfgang Press. For no reason it will all work beautifully.



From 1983 to 1991 these oddballs explored a dark internalised funk that revelled in texture and drone. The Burden Of Mules, The Legendary Wolfgang Press And Other Tall Stories, Standing Up Straight, Bird Wood Cage and even Queer have much to offer the adventurous listener.

Who gave that man a hammer? Big mistake!



Really they should have stopped long before it came to the following, but thankfully they only released one crap album. Mark Cox doesn't want to mime and Andrew Gray would rather take off his clothes. These girls are in big trouble; they just don't know it yet.



One could argue that TWP mellowed only to get a subversive message into America. Maybe it worked, but there's still no good reason to listen to the music on Funky Little Demons more than once. Still, the thought that someone might see this video and go on to hear tracks like "Prostitute" is cause for some small celebration.



Watch these before they are taken down.

-- Second Chameleon

"Lawnchairs" by Our Daughters Wedding

Electronic music can be divided into two epochs: before and after Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI. MIDI provided a way for drums machines, sequencers, and arpegiattors to all speak to one another, synchronizing each to a machine time code. We're used to it today, so much so that we expect each and every instrument to be in lock step with every other, and if it's not, well, a little digital editing takes care of that.

But before MIDI, there was always a struggle between the human players and the machines, a tension that, at its best, could yield a dynamic interplay between muscles and electrical circuits, the one obeying its own inflexible logic while the other did its best to get in step. It's this interplay that I like best about the Post Punk and New Romantic bands that incorporated synthesizers and drum machines into an otherwise traditional rock format. Such instruments offered not simply a veneer of the modern, the swell of a Moog, or the distinctive crack of Roland 303 snare. They introduced a kind of subliminal struggle, the drama of the human in an increasingly mechanical world.

It's an interplay that is fully evident in this, the first and rarely heard version of Our Daughters Wedding's hit single, "Lawnchairs." Formed in New York in 1977, ODW were a trio consisting of Layne Rico (synthesizers), Keith Silva (vocals and keyboards), and Scott Simon (bass synth and saxophone). The group took their name from a cardboard section divider they found in a display box of greeting cards. Their first release was a three-track 7" ep on their own Design label in the summer of 1980. But it was their second release, in November of the same year, that gave them a place in Synthpop history. "Lawnchairs" became the first independent single to break the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, and, when it was re-recorded and re-released on the EMI label, went on to sell over a million copies worldwide. ODW toured with other bands of the day including U2, Duran Duran, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and The Psychedelic Furs, making them one of the few American acts that could hold their own with the Anglo imports that dominated the airwaves at the time.

This version of "Lawnchairs" is much rawer, and more primitive sounding than the one most are familiar with, but it is also much more striking, with the drums laying down a remorseless metronomic beat, locked in time with the bass synth and melody parts--all played by hand. Over this steady but still human pulse, Silva sings of a world overrun by the most mundane of leisure goods, a world that is as much a figment of his own imagination as a tangible thing in its own right. Like Men Without Hats or even the early Human League, the effect teeters precariously on the absurd, but the beat never relinquishes its hold, giving the song an undeniable if still strange charm. "Lawnchairs / They're everywhere / My mind describes them to me." What could be more romantic?

-- Crash The Driver

Our Daughters Wedding - "Lawnchairs"

01 Lawnchairs
02 Airline

US 7" Design [ODW913LR (Side A) / ODW912KS (Side B)] 1980

"Shells" by Placebo

Veil of years
Veil of tears
Cut it down
Cut it down

By popular request we bring you the second album of a group so obscure discogs does not even have their correct info. Nowhere else are you likely to find the second album by the original Placebo, so Crash The Driver found a vinyl copy and I've restored it as much as possible.

Where England's Trance was exciting and made one hope for more, Shells is definitely safer and less interesting. Much of the fault for this must be laid at the steps of the dull production, which obscures rather than highlights the intricate guitar work and interlocking riffs. For example, "Jezebel Steel" is very much like a track on the debut, but comes across weaker. What a great misfortune!


Michelle Wild doesn't have the most expressive voice, but it has a tone that could have been quite lovely if treated better. And it's mixed so as to make most of the vocals impossible to hear.

Still, the band does make some attempt to spread their wings. "The Visionary" has some nice chord changes and odd pitch-shifted male vocals.

Despite any limitations, we provide this rarity for your listening pleasure! We are sure you'll find something here to enjoy.

Here's the CD cover, quite an improvement on the odd LP sleeve:



-- Second Chameleon

Shells
01 Big Apple (4:09)
02 Samurai Team (5:24)
03 Jezebel Steel (4:22)
04 The Visionary (4:51)
05 In Shisha (5:59)
06 Horizons (5:35)
07 The Base (4:39)
08 Blue Babies (4:08)
UK LP Aura Records [AUL 725] 1983
UK CD See for Miles [SEECD 489] 1998

Michelle Wild: voice
Gary Wild: guitar, synthesizer
Phil Armstrong: synthesizer, guitar, piano
Jimmy Giro: bass
Steve Wheatley: drums
Willie Duggan: electric mandolin

Recorded at Oasis and Linx Studios
Engineered by Jon Craig
Produced by Gary Wild

I'm In Love With A German Film Star by The Passions

Post Punk had a mad crush on all things German. German art. German novels. German music. John Lydon regularly name checked Can. Ultravox! nicked their exclamation mark from Neu! And OMD's Paul Humphreys was so besotted with Kraftwerk that he slept with one of their albums under his pillow. With its gleaming new cities, its multi-lane roadways and high-speed rail links, and its cool, technical proficiency, Germany seemed to embody the spirit of modernity, even as it was haunted by the ghost of its tragic past. This strange fascination with the Teutonic provided The Passions with their sole hit, a sensuous tale of cinematic longing called, "I'm In Love With A German Film Star."

The band was formed in the Latimer Road area of London in 1977. Like many bands, they went through some line up changes, before settling on the core duo of Barbara Gogan (guitar & vocals) and Clive Temperley (guitar), backed by David Agar on bass and Richard Williams on drums. Despite a high-profile support slot on The Cure's Seventeen Seconds tour, The Passions first lp, Michael & Miranda failed to disturb the charts. Chris Parry summarily dismissed them from the Fiction label, but Fiction's parent company, Polydor, had more faith, and booked them into the studio with in-house producer Pete Wilson. Best known for his work with Comsat Angels, Wilson took Temperley's echoplex guitar and triple-tracked it in stereo, spreading its expansive swell of sound across six channels of the studio's mixing desk. William's kick drum, meanwhile, was used to trigger a vocoder, giving the track a ghostly, dub-like boom in the bottom end. Against this wide-screen backdrop, Gogan's voice yearned for some minor celebrity once glimpsed at a bar, sitting in a corner, trying to look too posed for the cameras and the girls. "It really moved me, it really moved me," Gogan sings in her cool, dispassionate manner. But who exactly was this mystery man who moved her so? Klaus Kinski? Rutger Hauer?

Well, none of these. And not even a film star, actually, but a roadie for The Clash who rather looked like he might be a German film star. Even so, the song was an immediate sensation. The NME made it single of the week and it was second only to Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight" for total airplays on British Radio. Unfortunately, Polydor had pressed too few copies, and the single stalled at number 25 on the charts. By the time the record company had rectified the mistake, demand for the single had peaked. To make matters worse, Pete Wilson, whose inventive production had added a distinctly European glamour to "I'm In Love," was unavailable for the album that followed. The production duties were left to the capable if unspectacular talents of Nigel Gray, resulting in a capable if unspectacular album, Thirty Thousand Feet Over China.

Gathered here are the three singles from The Passions' moment in the sun, 1980-81: "The Swimmer" b/w "War Song," "I'm In Love With A German Film Star" b/w "(Don't Talk To Me) I'm Shy," and "Skin Deep" b/w "I Radiate." As a bonus, we are including "Some Fun," the b-side to the 1981 re-release of "The Swimmer."

-- Crash The Driver

"The Swimmer"

01 The Swimmer
02 War Song
UK 7" Polydor [POSP 184] 1980

"I'm In Love With A German Film Star"

03 I'm In Love With A German Film Star
04 (Don't Talk To Me) I'm Shy
UK 7" Polydor [POSP 222] 1981

"Skin Deep"

05 Skin Deep
06 I Radiate
UK 7" Polydor [POSP 256] 1981

"The Swimmer" Re-Release

07 Some Fun
UK 7" Polydor [POSP 325] 1981

Heart Of Darkness by Positive Noise

Brave New Scotland. That was the name given to the host of bands that emerged in the wake of the punk explosion of the late seventies, bands such as The Skids, Altered Images, The Fire Engines, or perhaps most famously, those on the roster of the Post Card label, Aztec Camera, Orange Juice, and Joseph K. In fact, it was from an Orange Juice album that Simon Reynolds lifted the title of his influential history of Post Punk, Rip It Up and Start Again. The Scottish bands, perhaps more than any others, seemed most sensible to the potential of punk, and most willing to abuse it, to turn it inside out and, well, start again.

Positive Noise are the forgotten sons of this legendary host of Scottish groups looking to reimagine pop music in the early eighties. Led by Ross Middleton (vocals/guitar) with brothers Fraser Middleton (bass) and Graham Middleton (keyboards) and Les Gaff (drums), they came out of the same fertile Glasgow music scene that gave the world Post Card Records. But where Orange Juice wedded jangly, Byrds-inspired pop with grooves borrowed from Chic, Positive Noise seemed closer in spirit to some of the Manchester bands on the Factory Records label, with stentorian vocals declaimed over splintered guitars and thunderous drums. This was heavy music, which had it been more dubby might have sounded rather like Joy Division, or if more funky, like A Certain Ratio. But, in truth, Positive Noise were more squarely in the pop mold than either of their Mancunian counterparts, with strong bass lines and memorable choruses. Ross Middleton chants rather than sings, intoning his words with a manic passion, and the album as a whole seems to heave itself from song to song as if it were Sisyphus pushing a great rock up the side of a mountain. It just never gives up. Keith Levene of PIL guests on the opening track, and Gary Barnacle, the celebrated horn player who played with just about every act of note in the eighties, adds some terrific brass touches to two tracks.

Ross Middleton left Positive Noise following the release of Heart Of Darkness, joining up with Gary Barnacle and scoring some dance hits as Leisure Process. Positive Noise soldiered on, with Russell Blackstock taking on the vocal duties for the radio-friendly follow up, Change Of Heart, a respectable entry in the white boy funk canon, but one that one pales in comparison to the sheer vitality of Heart of Darkness. No more blood and soil!

--Crash The Driver

Positive Noise - Heart Of Darkness

01 Darkness Visible
02 Hypnosis
03 No More Blood And Soil
04 . . . And Yet Again
05 Down There
06 Treachery!
07 Warlords
08 Love Is A Many-Splintered Thing
09 Refugees
10 Ghosts

France LP Statik [Stat LP1] 1981