1980 was the Moscow Olympics. In honour of this, Spizzenergi changed their name to Athletico Spizz 80.
I saw them at The Marquee at a lunchtime gig that was being filmed to promote this LP, I suppose. I would have been about 14. They were great. I still have one of the badges thrown out to the crowd.
In a funny sort of way, Jim Solar, the band's guitarist, taught me how to play a barre chord on guitar. I copied his fingering off a little instamatic photograph my sister had taken of him.
This was the band's major label make-it-big album, on A&M. It didn't really happen for them. Why the world didn't want a load of jerky, angular, stoppy-starty tunes set in Spizz's own imaginary future-world, I will never fathom.
Fast forward to 1989 or thereabouts and I'm walking into a rehearsal room in Hackney, in the middle of the afternoon, with my mate Paul to have a band practice, and there's a bloke putting up a big poster on the wall outside with a broom and a bucket of paste. It was for a Spizz comeback gig.
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Athletico Spizz 80 - Do A Runner
1980 was the Moscow Olympics. In honour of this, Spizzenergi changed their name to Athletico Spizz 80.
I saw them at The Marquee at a lunchtime gig that was being filmed to promote this LP, I suppose. I would have been about 14. They were great. I still have one of the badges thrown out to the crowd.
In a funny sort of way, Jim Solar, the band's guitarist, taught me how to play a barre chord on guitar. I copied his fingering off a little instamatic photograph my sister had taken of him.
This was the band's major label make-it-big album, on A&M. It didn't really happen for them. Why the world didn't want a load of jerky, angular, stoppy-starty tunes set in Spizz's own imaginary future-world, I will never fathom.
Fast forward to 1989 or thereabouts and I'm walking into a rehearsal room in Hackney, in the middle of the afternoon, with my mate Paul to have a band practice, and there's a bloke putting up a big poster on the wall outside with a broom and a bucket of paste. It was for a Spizz comeback gig.
"Ooh Spizz!" I say. "Yes, that's me," says the bloke. I say something like "Big fan" or whatever and go into the building. I look around and Spizz climbs into a little spaceship and flies away.
In any sensible world, a fair measure of a person would be whether they like Neil Young or not. Unfortunately, it's like we did opposites day when the wind changed direction and we got stuck in the current shitshow. Turns out T***p is a massive Neil Young fan. How am I supposed to assimilate this information? You'd think it would be like a Labrador listening to Beethoven (I nicked that simile off Stuart Lee.)
At least Neil Young thinks T***p's a cunt.
This album has Young returning to his country-folk stylings. It's supposed to be one of his favourites of his own records.
As a teenager, when ELO were having their hits, I fucking loathed them. Seemed to me that Beatles-referencing pomp-pop was only liked by people who liked pop, rather than music.
I've no idea when the change came, nor how I ended up owning more than one of their albums, but my volte-face is complete, I unreservedly retract my younger self's opinion and really think their music is wonderful, and not in some kind of ironic, guilty pleasure kind of way either.
I love this album's bang, crash, squeak, squawk, whistle, ding-dong, bomp-eccentricity.
It got a bit slagged when it came out, but the NME liked it. and I know this because the person who owned it before me took the trouble to cut out the review and pasted it to the dust sleeve.
Al Di Meola is the flashy guitarist's flashy guitarist and there's plenty of flashy guitar on this album. In fact, there's little else, with the other musicians all there to enhance the flashiness, leaving no-one in any doubt whose arse is planted on the big porn chair on the cover.
I picked this up in Big Star Records when it was in Rundle Street, soon after we moved to Adelaide in 2008. It cost me $8.
My aunt still remebers me dragging her to the musty basement when I was about 12 or 13 on holiday with her. It's good that some of the staff invested in opening their own stores when it closed.
I bought this album in 2018, I think, on the basis of seeing the video of I Woke Up In A Fucked-Up America and I was a bit underwhelmed with it, so it's sat there, unplayed, since.
Holley has drawn comparisons to Gil Scott-Heron and Sun Ra, but has neither the perfectly-honed lyrics and rich voice of the former nor the musical chops of the latter, although I can kind of see where they're coming from. That's not to say his work is without value. It's pretty unusual and unlike anything else I've heard.
As I understand it each song is an improvisation around a theme. My problem with this is, good though each original concept may be, it's a bit hit and miss how much this develops, either musically or lyrically.
I think it'll probably go back on the shelf for another few years, to be honest. It's not for me.
Back when I was 16, I was obsessed with blues. I'd just left school and was living in the family home on a council estate in Romford. Heroin had become quite popular at the time, and I was on the top deck of a 294 bus, chatting to one of the local heroin-enthusiasts, who had been in the year above me in school. He was kind enough to give me a blim of Red Leb (a popular type of hash at the time) to try for the first time.
I spent a Saturday afternoon, alone in the house, face down on my bed, absolutely munted, with side A of this album playing over and over again on my Fidelity record player, with the arm up, and having a wonderful time. Happy days.
I got to see Muddy Waters at the Capital Jazz Festival in 1981 and he was fantastic.
I reckon the next time I got stoned was at a football match and I spent the first half of the match sitting down on the crowded terraces like a twat.
There's a lot to love about this album: I love how the title is a nod to Ornette Coleman, I love how they go all angular-drum-&-bass-&-squelchy 303 at times, I love how they nick Sonny Rollins' saxophone melody from Alfie's Theme for the riff of Liberation Frequency, I love the flawless production and use of samples.
It's no surprise that it was too much for a typically conservative punk/hardcore scene when it came out, so went down like the proverbial fart in a spacesuit. But it was a grower, not a show-er, as they say.
I was in the cinema a couple of years ago, watching Triangle of Sadness, and the puking scene used New Noise as its soundtrack. I fucking loved that.
It's 1988 and James Brown is mightily pissed off about everyone sampling his work (and, more to the point, him not making any money from it). He's had a bit of a comeback with Living In America and decides to hitch his horse to the Full Force wagon, which is careering down the hill of hits at breakneck speed.
It's really a Full Force album, featuring JB (and Maceo Parker), with Brown pissing and moaning about not getting what he deserves, and going on about how great he is, like the man in the pub you've tried not to make eye contact with for the past 45 minutes. It rather clever-onically uses loads of JB samples.
I clearly recall how fucking MASSIVE Static, I'm Real and - to a lesser extent -Keep Keepin' sounded in clubs at the time, until the wheels were stolen from Full Force's wagon by...everyone (including Stock, Aitken & Waterman), leaving it on four little piles of bricks by the side of the funky highway.
This is the UK edition (on Scotti Bros.), which has a small photo of
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James Brown with Full Force - I'm Real
It's 1988 and James Brown is mightily pissed off about everyone sampling his work (and, more to the point, him not making any money from it). He's had a bit of a comeback with Living In America and decides to hitch his horse to the Full Force wagon, which is careering down the hill of hits at breakneck speed.
It's really a Full Force album, featuring JB (and Maceo Parker), with Brown pissing and moaning about not getting what he deserves, and going on about how great he is, like the man in the pub you've tried not to make eye contact with for the past 45 minutes. It rather clever-onically uses loads of JB samples.
I clearly recall how fucking MASSIVE Static, I'm Real and - to a lesser extent -Keep Keepin' sounded in clubs at the time, until the wheels were stolen from Full Force's wagon by...everyone (including Stock, Aitken & Waterman), leaving it on four little piles of bricks by the side of the funky highway.
This is the UK edition (on Scotti Bros.), which has a small photo of Full Force (with JB front and centre) on the back, which measures an inch by an inch-and-a-half.
This was Bofill's debut album, after GRP had taken her under their wing, and features all the GRP regulars plus a nine-piece horn section, a fourteen-piece string section, and nine-piece choir. I'm definitely not suggesting cocaine was involved, but there was a lot around in 1978.
The result is a sort of Nuyorican-soul album that exudes competence and lets Ange show off her clear-as-a-bell vocal chops nicely.
I picked this up for a dollar in a Vinnies in (possibly Newtown) Sydney a few years ago.
I picked this up today for a tenner and it has a hilarious penned inscription someone has written inside the gatefold about this being like a rebirth lol.
Tinselwig
in reply to John Spithead • •John Spithead likes this.