Thirty Bangin' Years On...

Today is the 7th of December, and thirty years ago the Queen Street Riots happened.

I've blogged on this before, of course, and so I won't bore anyone with yet another gallop through my personal memoirs; although the Audioculture article above has been sgnificantly added to and fleshed out, wih anecdotes from such local luminaries as Russell Brown, Dylan Horrocks, Chris Bourke and Bryan Crump, and if nothing else thining back on it now has encouraged me to reconnect with a few of those friends via Facebook, who heard it all go down over the wireless.

So, what's left for me to add? Why, the music of course. Now, the music on the day was a live concert by the likes of Dave Dobbyn & DD Smash, The Herbs and The Mockers - classic Eighties Kiwi pop there, but quite accessible. My earlier post recalls the songs in my head at the time (less interesting., more individual and erratic), but the third 'soundtrack' to the event is worth another nod, as it's a rarity these days - Headbanga - a locally-made compilation of New Wave of British Heavy Metal (plus colonial additions) from a year previously. It got played a lot over that weekend by me and my friends, and a rendition of its rather fruity cover was faithfully reproduced on the inside of one of my school ringbinders in white-out and biro, such was its impact. Last time I blogged this I thought I'd seek out iTunes to build my own version, but one dead iPod later (pls of course at the time AC/DC weren't actually ON iTunes) that seemed a fruitless exercise. So what's left?

Why, my first YouTube playlist, with the album in full. You're most welcome. Let your own personal riot begin!

Photo copyright Bryan Staff

They Did Rock Me.

Queen: Greatest Hits (1982)

Here it is, the first album I ever bought.

Well, the first musical album I ever bought. That wasn't based on a TV series about two "good old boys". Sod it, this is the first album I ever bought, and it's the first one that mattered.

I am eleven, and thanks to an imaginative intermediate school teacher’s class session I have bought with my own pocket money my first step into a music collection - this album, on vinyl. The song of the lesson is Bohemian Rhapsody. Of course it is. It would be everybody's favourite song on the album if Queen’s Greatest Hits wasn't already an album's worth of nearly as great to equally as great Queen anthems. Another One Bites the Dust, Fat Bottomed Girls, Somebody to Love, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Flash, Bicycle Race, Killer Queen... and Under Pressure, the newly-minted single that would kickstart Queen and collaborator David Bowie into the Eighties, each on their own trajectory.

It was an album I owned, and others quickly followed – Thriller, Off the Wall (my first cassette) and… others. They were all vital and absolutely not embarrassing, no sir. Yes, of course they are, and very few remain from those early, formative days, not even the inevitable Various Artists compilations, which will surely fill a future post. QGH was the important one because it represented two sides of a commitment to one group; greatest hits or not, I was planting my flag in the sand and saying “I like Queen, and six weeks of lawnmowing will attest to my desire to have their new record above lollies, comics, action figures or other childish pursuits.” It was not, I hasten to add, a lifelong love, and in fact probably lasted a couple of years before other artists and groups muscled their way in, but I never got rid of it – at least, not intentionally. 

This is a sound introductory album, eschewing chronological order to instead present a solid transition between new songs, to old standards, to new songs again - only Queen II misses out in having a representative on my initial vinyl release, and Hot Space's saving grace, the aforementioned Under Pressure rounds out the setlist. The album was an especial discovery to me: I'd never paid much attention to bass guitars before John Deacon's depth-plumbing intro to Another One Bites the Dust, and this is the earliest instance where I can clearly recall devouring an album's liner notes, poring over the reduced album cover reproductions (News of the World was especially gripping, for obvious reasons), and picking up 'knowledge' along the way.  As it goes with first purchases, the album was played and played and played until I had an approximation of every lyric (a sibling’s sneering at my interpretation “gunpowder gelatine” in Killer Queen has since been debunked – thanks, internet!), and for years afterwards my brain would be able to reproduce the entire album in order for its own amusement, meaning I never needed to dip any further into the group’s discography – and, in point of fact, still haven’t to this day. 

Truly an album that will last through time, and though the band’s future would necessarily dictate a follow-up (I’ve been curious but never dipped in, despite liking Works’, Magic’s and Innuendo’s singles) , to me later, longer editions, revisitations and remixes dilute the earlier version's impact - to say less of the ill-advised Volume III. 

Jet Junior has now discovered this album through an old cassette of his mum's, my original vinyl having long since been nicked to furnish my brother's record collection (booo!), and he loves it. Where once he stomped around the lounge miming along to Freddie's legendary Live Aid performance, now he acquaints himself with this decrepit technology, queuing up replays of Flash, Crazy Little Thing and, of course, Under Pressure. Touchingly, if not a little worryingly, he plays the tape with its plastic case meticulously placed front-on atop our old cassette player, mirrored at the other end by ‘his’ other prized cassette, a selection of James Bond themes in which his only interest is really Live and Let Die. Truly a chip off the old block.

On a Stroppy Little Island of Mixed-up People

Today marks the 7th anniversary of the release of The Good, the Bad & The Queen, the album product of the formally-unnamed, collaboration between Damon Albarn, Paul Simonon, Simon Tong and Tony Allen. It remains a pretty much loved album in my small, Daddish collection.
Appropriately for a winter release, GBQ (as I shall abbreviate it henceforth) doesn’t get a lot of playtime in sunnier months, but yesterday was a very soggy day for summer, and it seemed to fit. In fact, my earliest memory after buying this was listening to it on the car stereo during a drive home, stuck in traffic with what looked like half of Wellington’s annual rainfall hammering down around me. GBQ is a rain-lashed album, with imagery of dark, thunderous clouds and an impending deluge – a post-millennial throwback to the rising oceans of Simonon’s famous former act’s London Calling. There’s London on the album, too, of course – throughout the album, in fact. This is Damon Albarn in his late solo phase cast as a fretful sleeper anchored in England’s sinking and drinking capital, singing songs about global warming, the Iraq invasion and the spiritual gloom of his homeland. It’s not all storm clouds, but the Apocalypse can’t be far away: bunting hangs awaiting the return of soldiers posted abroad, ambulance sirens chorus in the distance, a whale is stranded up the Thames, and the ravens of the Tower take flight. GBQ shares its producer Danger Mouse with Gorillaz’ equally doomsday Demon Days, but the result here is less global, more local. This is an album which flirts as much with other works as it does with English ritual and lore – there are echoes of Dirty Old Town in the lyrics, late in the play Simonsn’s bass threatens to deliver an updated version of Guns of Brixton (something the bassist reportedly did accidentally during a live performance), and comparisons and contrasts are inevitable with the Village Green Preservation Society sound of peak era Blur. Yet the arch, playful Parklife this is not, but it’s as perfect a counterpart to Blur’s London album as its follow-up, the fraught and boorish The Great Escape wasn’t.

I love History Song, Three Changes, Kingdom of Doom (attendant fade out bass riff of London Calling included) and the appropriately-named Herculean with Allen’s drumbeat hissing and skipping up the front of the stage; Three Changes mixes the rhythm section even more – both Allen and Simonon being the real engine of the group (it’s been said Allen’s work is underused here,  but his strikes and counter beats along with Simonon's reggae-influenced bass dramatically turn the compositions on several occasions.) Green Fields casts a wistful eye back on a lost landscape (“before the war and the tidal wave… how the world has changed”) before the flourish of piano keys leads you into the rising, cathartic title track, culminating in a sort of shambolic tumbledown free-for-all. At just over 40 minutes it’s not a long album, and there are B-Sides to be had, but as it is GBQ is compact enough to while away a rainy day with four cool and talented gentlemen.