John Frusciante – Shadows Collide With People

John Frusciante has returned to the Red Hot Chili Peppers some time ago. Even though Covid stopped them in their tracks, their album Unlimited Love, that is unreleased as of yet, is anticipated by millions around the world.

I never cared for the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the times without John, not much before him with Hillel Slovak or the many short-time hires, not between his two stints in the band. But when it was announced in 2009 that he had left the band again a few years prior, I had high hopes for Josh and hoped for him to manage the impossible task of replacing John. I really think Josh did well and gave it a very good try to balance replacing John and finding his own voice in the band. Yet it always felt like a cover band to me, even though 3 quarters of the band including the singer were still around. So, I stopped following the band as a fan. There was something really off with this band, I felt.

Also, uninspired piano ballads written by the non-piano playing bass player did not help at all. It sounded as if somebody forced them to work on gunpoint. But still I missed this band all these years.

Shadows Collide With People can be considered a sister album to RHCPs pop record By The Way, as it was written at the same time, recorded before and released after the lengthy world tour for By The Way. I saw them live in Duisburg in 2003 in a really rocky show, marred by technical difficulties that was still magical to me. It was the gig right before the one at Slane Castle in Ireland that is documented in a fantastic concert DVD. I must have watched it 500 times.

As for Johns parts, both By The Way and Shadows were drawn from the same pool of ideas: The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Krautrock and 50ies Doo Wop. Besides these musical similarities there are structural and conceptual similarities between the records as well. They both represent the “Pop” element in their respective catalogues and share a mostly sunny, relaxed feeling.

Even though Shadows is John Frusciantes most complete, well-rounded record and my favourite, the years shortly after are especially noteworthy: After Shadows, John was so on fire that he released 7 records in a span of 6 months in 2004 and 2005. These records were all vastly different from each other and covered a lot of ground between improvised instrumental jams, acoustic 8-track chamber music and sparsely arranged rock. While they were all of very high quality, there was only one that rivaled Shadows Collide With People in my appreciation: 2005s Curtains which also included one of my favourite songs ever: Time Tonight.

John was for years my greatest musical idol and his music spoke to me on a really emotional level and thus meant the world to me. He has now been off my radar for a number of years, as I delved into more extreme music and as he started weirding a lot of his fans out with his experimental minimal music.

But for a good few years, John was a major influence on my own music as well my judgment of other music. If it didn’t carry as much emotional weight as his, it was not worth my time. That was also the point in time where I started resenting political songs or rather all topical songs. They were all messages and no heart to me. I did not want to brush my teeth in the morning to the sound of people yelling at me about the state of the world any more. I had listened to that for straight 15 years at that point and was in dire need of a detox from that constant call to arms. Also, not many artists are capable of writing beautiful songs about depressing matters. TV Smith, as I have tried to elaborate, is.

Let’s get to the songs, shall we?

The record opens with a 90-second unlisted instrumental (entitled Shadows Collide With People) that is very pretty and a nice introduction to the record itself and the first song: Carvel.

Carvel was always a favourite of mine. It speaks to me on an emotional level and features a lot of production techniques that directly influenced my own music. The backing vocals that became their own art form since Johns first return to the Chili Peppers and in his solo work. These ghostly keyboards that enrich the songs and that I only now recognize as Moogs, Hammonds / Farfisas and Mellotrons. The beautiful and soulful vocals that have improved SO MUCH since his singing on RHCPs Californication and his previous solo record To Record Only Water For Ten Days. On Shadows he now was capable of using his voice with so much confidence and in so many different styles that it sounds like 6 different great singers at times. The lovely singing voice, the falsettos, the guttural screams, call and response parts, they are all already present in that first song.

Carvel moves through 5 or 6 different parts that are only loosely connected but as a song it works so well. The call and response part in the bridge functions as a great breakdown to build up again after and end the song on a musical and emotional high. It is just great and I never learned what is about.

Omission is a collaboration and duet between John and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of the Mars Volta. It grew on me over the years with its fine details in the melodies, vocal harmonies and instrumentation. It is euphoric and uplifting.

Regret features only 2 vocal lines and is very repetitive. But it still works as a song as it builds up to a big finale and also features synthesized vocal effects that change the textures of the many repetitions. I read in an interview that the song was only a joke as John regrets nothing about his troubled past and near death. But the song sounds so sincere and is not funny at all.

One of my favourite songs on the record is Ricky. It is very well structured around some simple turnaround chord sequences. As usual, Johns lyrics do not follow a conventional logic, but they convey so much emotion that I love his words for themselves, not for their meaning. This song breathes an air of desperation and sadness that is countered by doo wop-style “uh-la-la” backing vocals. There is almost always some lush synthesizer ambiance or melody in the song that prevents it from being a dry singer/songwriter song.

“Second Walk” and “This Cold” are short, energetic songs that make the record so much better. They are great songs on their own but they also work as palate cleansers for the more worked out and more emotional songs on the record. They taught me that a great record is not only comprised of big, maybe even epic songs, but also needs little songs that counter balance them. Some more inspired guitar melodies in the solos would have put these songs even higher in my valuation.

Their combination of energy, short duration and getting to the point inspired me so much that I wrote at least 6 songs in that vein myself. And these are the ones of my shitty songs that I still like.

As for “Wednesday’s Song” and “Song To Sing When I’m Lonely”, they always struck me as very mellow pop songs. I read online that people love these songs a lot. They represent the sunny side of the record and as songs never gave me very much. But similarities to some of the mellowest songs on the Chili Peppers By The Way (like Midnight or Minor Thing) are obvious. These songs, as well as Carvel, In Relief and a few more could have easily been Chili Peppers songs.

Speaking of “In Relief”, it is a song that John played in his solo shows since at least since 2001. Here, it opens with a pretty 70-second synth suite before the the song itself starts. It also uses many of the recurring musical themes on Shadows, from the mix of synthetic and acoustic instruments, to diverse vocal styles, Beach Boys harmonies, lush keyboards and no Verse-Chorus-Verse structure.

In the final third of Shadows Collide With People there are some great songs that I think get often overlooked. For one, there is Water that features soft falsettos and a great outro solo and there is also Chances with its Beatles harmonies and beautiful lush strings, possibly from the Mellotron again. And finally, one of my personal favourites, The Slaughter. The song repeats central musical themes of SCWP and is as such a fitting closer for the record and it is an all around great song. Its programmed drums showcase how much RHCPs Chad Smith improved the record with his drumming on all other songs. It seems to help a lot to have Chad Smith play on your solo record. Everybody should have a Chad.

The Japanese Limited Edition of the record features a bonus song in Of Before. It is a very beautiful ballad and should have been on the regular record, but not necessarily at the end of it.

Johns lyrics defy critical analysis. He often uses words for their phonetics and not for their meaning. And this is the reason for abstract non-sense lyrics like “Every person alive is everyone who’s died” in Every Person and also “So cry for time when slow is fast at the same time” in The Slaughter. These words make no sense at all but they work as a vehicle for emotions that you can pick up as a listener. Johns sings them as if they mean the world to him and maybe they do.

John has also quite a thing for the occult, hearing voices by ghosts that he thinks guide him on important decisions. This rubs my skeptic mind the wrong way but I don’t dwell on it. He is truly an eccentric that most likely could not tell you who the current US president is. I, for one, am just happy he is healthy.

The songs on Shadows do not always follow traditional song structures and a good chunk of the songs feature lengthy instrumental parts on synthesizers that are very unusual. When people listened to my songs that were very much inspired by John, they often could not follow the decisions I made that seemed completely normal to me. But to be fair, my songs were also crap.

These electronic sprinkles are on the whole record and give different textures to all the songs. At the time John offered demos of some and acoustic versions of all songs on Shadows… for free on his website. He had recorded them in mono in his living room. For some strange reason listened to these acoustic versions of the songs first, and after that I had a bit of trouble getting used to the production choices on the record. But I grew to love them.

I also noticed something very strange about the solos on the record. The songs feature some rather uninspired solo parts and guitar melodies. For a guitar player that can express so much raw emotion with rather simple blues licks it is very strange to release melody parts like those in This cold or Carvel.

Some of them are of such a throwaway quality you think they are only scratch parts or placeholders for the real parts to come later. Maybe that can be attributed to John being his own producer on Shadows but I think he could have easily knocked out much better parts on the spot, if it had caught his eye. Or maybe in the context of the songs, the matter was not important to him.

This record also features some experimental sound collages. Most of them are part of a song but 3 are their own track. You can easily identify by their non-sense numerical titles. I always found it funny to think that any Chili Peppers fan has a chance of finding or streaming this record, checking it out, clicking on one of these weird sound experiments by chance and then… never give John a chance again.

It’s fine that he did them but I don’t feel that attached to any of them. The one that starts Carvel at the beginning of the record is, in my eyes, the best of them and there is also another one that has nice sounds that remind me of whale singing. Thinking of it, I think Shadows is the first, at least partly, electronic record that I listened to, years before Depeche Mode, The Cure, Michael Rother and the likes. Most of these artist I stumbled upon purely because of John.

The production of Shadows Collide With People was his first as a solo artist in a professional studio. But that does not mean there is any magic studio glitter on it. It was Johns most professional recording to date, but professional only in comparison to the no-fi recordings he released before, some of them only for fresh drug money. From his beginnings with amateurish, untuned and at times unlistenable 4-track bedroom recordings and then moving on to a lo-fi aesthetic on his third record To Record Only Water For Ten Days, I think Shadows is a big step up.

Still I think that Shadows classifies as a kind of well-produced amateur recording. The sound engineer and mixer in me cannot help noticing that the record has a quite muddy, rough sound to it and at times instruments come in at very strange volumes.

But the record shines at showing the listener exactly what the artist had in mind. It is uncompromising in that way, mixed on an analogue mixing desk, so that the mix down itself was treated like a live performance. Nobody was in a position to tell John to turn that Mellotron down and that is fine.

I also know that Josh Klinghoffer was a collaborator on this record but I don’t know what his contributions were exactly. He was even more involved in a few of John records in the following years.

In closing I think that John is the artist with the most glaring difference between the commercial status of his main band and him as a solo artist. There must be hundreds of millions of Red Hot Chili Peppers fans in the world but only a fraction of them have ever heard his solo work. Possibly there are still millions who have, but even when Warner put out his records, as they did with Shadows and also his 2004/05 output, it was very much under the radar. So I think it is great that there is so much to discover for everybody who likes the Chili Peppers and his playing.

I think in the last years of his absence as a live guitar player, John has risen a lot in status and is now universally revered as a brilliant, beautiful and soulful guitar player and soloist. If comments below YouTube videos are any indicator of that, it is even more strange that so many people ignore his solo work.

If you can find them, the acoustic versions of the Shadows record and, even more so, Johns 2005 live performance at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival is essential listening for the John Frusciante enthusiast. My other favourite of his records is 2005s Curtains, as mentioned.

Here’s hoping that Unlimited Love delivers. The record has gigantic expectations of so many people to fulfill and so great of a catalogue to compare against, that it seems almost impossible. But I, for my part, look forward to hearing again from one of my favourites in their best incarnation.

The Distillers – Sing Sing Death House

I will start writing shorter articles. The first 2 on this Blog have been 8 respectively 9 pages long. This is too much. So my first shorter one should better not be another one that I have a ton to tell about. Also, a rather short record would be fitting.

So I choose Sing Sing Death House by the Distillers. The Band only released 3 records, this one being the middle one. Besides songwriter Brody Dalle, the lineup of the band changed after every record.

They are one of the very few Punk Rock bands that I love as much today as I did when I listened to Punk almost exclusively. The reason for that has to come down to the quality of the band as my own perspective on punk has changed drastically. At one time Punk Rock was so dear to me that I would fight my family to listen to it under christmas trees. But as I learned more about music in the last 10 years I started to be really annoyed by something I noticed in punk music. What I miss is an earnest try to make great music, not great for punk standards, but great compared to everything else. It is not simplicity that buggs me. Much of my favorite music is quite simple. Punk seems to be an excuse for not trying so hard when I think it should be a weapon to defeat crap music with quality. I see very little of that. That is why in the legions of punk bands it is very hard to find a good one.

Let the music begin.

The record opens at once with Sick of it all, starting fast and displaying a, in my eyes, great balance between aggression and musicality. The sound is rough and slick at the same time.The melodies however are not up to par with some other songs on Sing Sing. The song features violent lyrics about high school shootings, bulimia and unification through Punk Rock. It also uses a way of repeating the opening chord changes at least once more than you would expect. This is prevalent on quite a few songs on the record. I think this serves as a introduction to the music and even though most songs are really short they take a little more time to blossom. Also without those repeats the running time of 28:38 minutes would be even shorter.

After that I am a Revenant is a first true highlight of the record. The guitar melody is fantastic, Brody’s vocal melody ranges from very low under her breath to soaring but still very musical highs, featuring octave jumps without much effort. The song features two parts that could be choruses: The “Do you remember the rage?” part and the “We are the Revenants” part, both would warrant their own song. After a breakdown the songs comes to a great end. When played live, the band added a slower variant or reprise of the “Revenants” part that would have made this version even better.

Seneca Falls references two iconic feminists in Elisabeth Cady and Susan B. Anthony, only abstracting their work and leaving the listeners to learn about them themselves. The song was one of my favorites for years but now it doesn’t strike a connection with me anymore. I think resolving an issue in a cry for freedom doesn’t do so much for me any more. But I still like the musicality and the melodies.

The young crazed Peeling follows and is one of 2 clearly MTV orientated singles on the record. In the case of The Distillers this does not mean they are bad songs. It’s just that they feature a more Bad Religion vibe and the standard radio format. I always loved how in the 3^rd chorus when Brody extends the last note of the verse, her missing chorus vocal does not get replaced. In true punk fashion, you only hear background vocals. The ocatave jump Brody pulls off at 02:48 serves the same function as transpositions in other songs would. Here, the music stays the same but is elevated through the vocals. The song seems to be autobiographical and tells about Brody’s troubled youth and features a verse about her then-husband Tim Armstrong. After their separation it was never played live again. I also think that most people learned about The Distillers through their music video for this song. I did.

The following two songs are short, very aggressive hardcore with grunted vocals. Yet still there a little melodies here and there that make them worth it. The title track and Bullet and Bullseye reference Tim Armstrong again and I have never heard them played live.

City of Angels is the most radio-friendly song on here but it is a true highlight. The composition, the vocals and the lyrics are just great. They are very wordy and especially the second verse is incredibly well worded and would work in a poem on its own. Also the song benefits enormously from the vocal harmonies in the final chorus. It is here that the Brett Gurewitz production becomes very apparent as the sound is quite clean but with a little, very musical pinch of dirt.

Young Girl first appeared as a very rough bonus track on The Distillers‘ debut record and was the song of it that I listened to the most. It is much more fleshed out on this record. Musically the bass intro, the comparably slow tempo and the revisioned verses work very well. The troubling lyrics are about rape. It is an upbeat song with appalling content and I always liked it very much besides its horror.

Hate me is the shortest and most abrasive song on this record. Its Oh-Oh-chorus is possibly the only uninspired song part on this whole record. On the other hand, I always loved Desperate. It combines the anger of hardcore with great melodies. The lyrics hint not very subtly to heroin. The desperation really comes across and the songs speaks to me.

After Desperate the final hardcore song of the record is I understand. After the beginning introduces the chord progression, a good third of the song is played on bass only with occasional guitar stabs. The structure is also unconventional. It goes: All the verses, chorus, instrumental reprise, ending. The studio effect on the prolonged “Yeah” at the start always sounded incredibly cheesy to me. It seems they went for a Slayer / Angel of Death effect but failed. Hard.

The final song of Sing Sing Death House is Lordy Lordy. I always felt the song had a country feel. Which would be matched by its lyrics that could come straight out of a Johnny Cash murder ballad. I loved it since the day I heard it first. Musically the little tail at the very end is a great ending for both the song and the record.

So what new did I learned about Sing Sing…?

First of all, after reading the lyrics again I gained enormous respect for Brody Dalle as a lyricist. I knew before that her stuff conveyed more than your typical punk rock cliché lyrics. But how good are some of these lyrics! They are less topical compared to TV Smith, but they give so much weight to the songs, support the music greatly and defy critical analysis. These words are wasted on punk music. The usual punk rock themes of anger, angst and disaffection are featured here as well but still, Distillers songs can convey much more and justify a closer look into them.

The production is also one of my favorites in the punk genre. It is aggressive but still very expressive which supports the many melodies throughout the record. The songs can be abrasive at times but the sound never is. But there seems to be little effort to clean up the sound beyond that. The record begins with very noticeable hiss that remains throughout. In some parts of a few songs you can even hear hiss from the vocal mic rise up before the singing starts. These moments could have been easily fixed but weren’t. Fine by me.

As most songs on Sing Sing Death House feature just one single chord structure or harmony, variation comes from playing the parts either muted or open with few tempo changes. While writing this article I learned almost the whole record on guitar. I never did before and the music feels very simple for the guitar player I am now. I fear I could have destroyed a little of the music’s appeal by getting to know it too well. Through playing the songs myself I learned that the musicality of this record comes mostly through its vocals and some few guitar or bass lines. Brody’s voice, as raspy and aggro it is most of the time, displays lots of musical qualities and she clearly is a very good singer. That is, if you are willing to see through her abrasive delivery. When she pulls off octave jumps like in Revenant, it elevates the music to another level. She’s a fantastic fronter for a band as well.

I also realized only now that half of this record is a hardcore record. Not the New York macho hardcore, but the DC Discharge-y hardcore. I don’t care too much about genre classifications but my taste has been solely on the melodic side of punk rock. I never listened to hardcore, yet judging by this record I am missing out on a style of music I seem to like.

As for more music of Brody Dalle, her 2014 solo record Diploid Love was quite good, but her other band Spinnerette didn’t do much for me. I would always pick The Distillers.

Listen to Sing Sing Death House here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ahsq6x8-bk&t=466s

TV Smith – Useless – The Very Best Of TV Smith

Introduction:

Welcome to the probably only Best Of record I will ever write about here. Most people don’t know TV Smith so this is his history in very short form: TV, or Tim, is the founder of the (in my eyes) best British punk rock band of all time: THE ADVERTS. Founded in 1976, they were the first of the bunch to ever score a Top-5 hit, recorded a full length major label record (Crossing the Red Sea with The Adverts), played on Top of the Pops once and broke up only 15 months later after a second, much less celebrated LP. They were like a comet: Shining bright for a short time, then gone forever, the quintessential punk rock career.

After that TV formed a string of good but increasingly unsuccessful bands and ended up without a record contract. He resorted to going on tour, playing the material from all his bands while constantly introducing new material. He has been on solo acoustic tour ever since. His knack for melodies helped in this and when he started to play all of his songs from different bands on a single acoustic guitar, it became obvious that his songs never relied on distortion, volume or production in the first place. But still, I think he deserves the most respect as a lyricist for his witty and observational style an fighting heart. Even his very first songs were incredibly well worded and when written down, give the feeling of poetry rather than songs.

In the 90s he befriended German stadium punk rock giants Die Toten Hosen and helped them on their English songs on numerous occasions. In 1998 his album Generation Y was released on their imprint label JKP. From that came the idea to record a career spanning record that compiled his arguably best songs from his many out-of-print records. And, even better, the Hosen volunteered to be his backing band. This is how USELESS came to be.

In the 15 years since then he continued to tour non stop, travelling alone, mostly by public transportation and released 7 more records. You could say this is show business at its lowest but TV takes it like a champ. To me, he is an inspiration and punk rocks finest songwriter.

By the way, story time!

Before I come to the music on the record I want to quickly tell the story about how TV Smith came into my life in the first place.

In 2001 little 15-year-old Me was on a school trip to rather uneventful Ruhrpott city Essen. There I sorted through the cheapo bin of a record store. I found about 15 copies of TVs then still most recent record Generation Y. I seem to remember the price was 2 Deutschmarks, but I could be wrong. I recognized the JKP branding on the back. Knowing it was the in-house record label of my then favourite band DIE TOTEN HOSEN, I was willing to give it a chance.

(Considering how destroyed my own copy is right now after over 15 years, I should have bought 5 more. I also once gave another copy to my then girlfriend, only to never hear about it again… Must have been a real winner!)

At first Generation Y did not do wonders for me. It was not very punk, had cheasy keyboards and clearly programmed drums on it and lacked any sort of punch. But as I didn’t own much music back then, I chose to spend some time with it. Over time I recognized some very good songs with smart lyrics and some real heart in them. So I listened to it more and more and when my birthday came, my mother presented me with Useless – The very Best Of TV Smith. She had noticed my love for Tims Gen Y record and went to a record store (a strange place where people used to buy music on plastic things. I know… crazy.) There she not only learned that TV had released that record a few months prior but that the HOSEN were his backing band for it. Full circle. It is still one of the best presents I ever got.

Let’s get to the music.

The record starts of with one of the Adverts‘ singles: One Chord Wonders. The long, sustained power chord still tingles my spine. It’s a 2 minute song that tells you everything you need to know about punk: It has attitude, triumphs instrumental incompetence and concludes to stay punk, even though New Wave is the new thing.

The following two songs are in my Top 3 of all TV Smith songs. The first, Only One Flavour, was at the time a new song written for this record. It is about mono culture in a life where everybody is the same but feels so, so special. It describes his life as a motorway but his wheels as square. His sole critique of world is that everybody speeds down the monorail. The vibe is upbeat and defiant and there’s no sign of resignation at all.

I remember once seeing the final seconds of the music video for the song on a German music channel called Viva and thinking: Is that Tote Hosen singer Campino in an Elvis wig? Before it was over and I never saw the video again for years. It was him, but no wig. Just his poor choice of hairdo.

The next song Expensive Being Poor is my favourite example of a smart punk rock song with correct observations and a valid critique about something. He is right, it is expensive to be poor indeed, everything does cost more.

The song is full of great lines about about the ramifications of a life less fortunate. It starts off with a notion of standstill that doesn’t matter much when you don’t have a car. In the chorus he gets sarcastic and defiant, calling for someone to throw some crumbs for him to eat right off the floor, then concluding: I look good, when I get desperate. Another correct observation.

The second verse is my favourite. It is about a slightly defective black and white television that he tries to repair, but destroys completely in the process. In the next chorus he references the incident again, asking how can you live with something like that when the cinema costs 6 pounds. To me, the way Tim ties these two separate thoughts together is just brilliant.

The following bridge and breakdown first celebrate his life falling to pieces, then him starting anew, gaining momentum and sailing on into a new life. And because it’s a TV Smith song, the boat absolutely has to be leaking. This part bugs me a little, as it captures some romantic thoughts about starting a new life, possibly in the wilderness, but negates the economic realities. For the guy who noticed correctly that those high cinema admissions hurt even more after you wrecked your TV, sailing away in a boat cannot be the answer. That is punk rock escapism.

But I still love the song.

My String Will Snap is about the moment of reaction to being pushed too hard for too long. In the first verse it seems to be about work or personal relations, either way, everything is never enough. The second is more second about politics. You are being told life would be getting easier… soon. Tim explores the same topic in the fine Gen Y song This year, next year.

Gary Gilmore’s Eyes was Tims only real hit. It deals with the very probable situation of having eye transplantation and then learning that some executed murderer had donated his organs and your are now seeing the world through his eyes. A truly punk rock scenario. It’s also a song that keeps getting faster over time. The original by the Adverts was incredibly slow paced, Tims first collaboration with the Hosen in 1991 was a little faster and then the recording on Useless is very quick on its feet. But when played live, the song is over in a heartbeat. It is such a great song that deservedly made it into punk rocks songbook. You cannot help noticing how well worded even these early songs are. But referencing a recently executed murderer in a song in the year 1977 might have also helped in establishing its status.

The next one, Bored Teenagers was originally the B-side of the Advert’s Gary Gilmore’s Eyes single. Here they appear, once again, back to back. It’s one of punk rocks quintessential songs and Tim seems to have trouble to fit the words into the syllables, mumbling his way through much of the song. You cannot sing along to it.

The song gets his point across in a heartbeat. This toxic mixture of youth, boredom and talking smart while really knowing nothing spoke volumes to me when I was a bored teenager in 2001. It still does now.

TV follows that old song about youth with his then most recent one: Generation Y. It deals with the post-Gen X’ers and, as we know now, the pre-Generation Smartphone. The song would classify as a ballad and sets some real depressing, lost tone. This one feels like a swansong to enthusiasm but the thing you notice is this: Tim does not just accuse that generation of their apathy but identifies with it.

At this point, the tempo of the record decreases noticeably. From now on, every fast song will be followed by a ballad.

Following that is Immortal Rich. Tim wrote it after reading that statistically, you live longer the richer you are. He concluded wrongly, but funnily, that one could become so rich he lives forever.

He contrasts that notion, once again, with a less fortunate life and also draws a connection to religion. His observations tell you that religions try to tell you that rich people can get immortality, at least in the afterlife by the help of donations and the scammy practices of television churches.

While the poor lose their faith, stuck in a tough life they cannot get out of, the rich have her own drive-in Jesus that lets them roll right through heaven’s gate. I find that notion so funny.

The next song is Gather Your Things And Go. That one I misunderstood for years. I read it as TVs advice to start anew but I was wrong. It is what young, unemployed people in England are repeatedly told: You are expected to move to find work, try harder, are being offered expensive loans but no help. “Get on your bike” is the not so friendly invitation to do everything you can to get to do somebody else’s work.

The song then tells the tale of someone moving out to find work, failing at it, being unable to heat even a single room, then getting evicted while being told to leave at every step of the way.

Ready For Axe To Drop is a fine upbeat song about about ambition and the strains of living for a career. The title appears after each verse as a warning to get out to save your head. Except for the last time, when the axe drops to chop off your head.

I start to recognize Tims repeated scepticism towards the work sphere. His songs are full of observations about the not so happy life it provides. I get the feeling if you asked Tim for advice he would discourage you from trying so hard, as it is not worth the hassle. I see strong connections to Billy Bragg‘s To Have And To Have Not, only that Bragg goes further and even provides everybody with the Marxist analysis right there in the song.

We now come to a little obsession of Tim’s: accidents with nuclear vehicles. The first, The Day We Caught Big Fish, tells a tale of a sailor on a small fish trawler that pulls its net in and catches a nuclear submarine, to devastating effect.

The song is more about the life on the ship and camaraderie than the accident itself and was never favourite of mine. I know from Tim’s tour diaries and him personally that this song is quite often used by teachers who ask their classes to analyze its meaning. So you know.

Runaway Train Driver is one of Tims fastest songs. Played live it gets even faster. The song is about the driver of a nuclear waste train that crashes and runs, fully aware of what just happened. The verses tell about the boring small-town life and loneliness in crowds that said driver had hoped to flee to find freedom and excitement on the rails, never slowing down. Again, to devastating effect.

The last verse shows the power rush the driver feels while speeding his deadly cargo down the rails and it doesn’t seem to be an accident after all.

After that Lion And The Lamb slows it down again. It seems to be about human duality and the hope for better days. Tim addresses the listener as a raw, unprocessed diamond that is waiting for it’s big moment after the cut. That’s fine if directed at someone in particular. If he talks about everyone, I have to be cynical about it: Not everybody gets his moment.

Lord’s Prayer tackles religion once again. It is from the perspective of a toughened up Jesus updating his original Lord`s Prayer. The new guy is a lot more cynical and proclaims not only that life is a crime of passion but he is also no longer the other cheek kind of dude. This one is now willing to fight back.

The song probably wins the most of them all from the significantly higher production value of this recording. The original version, released in 1990 by TV Smith’s Cheap suffered a lot from its weak sound and also didn’t have the charm of the old Adverts recordings. You can find it on Youtube.

We now get to the albums closing song: Useless. It has always been one of my favourites and I want to try to explain why. It is the old combination of glum observations and defiant attitude in a TV Smith song that warms my heart every time.

The song starts of with the the notion that although conservatives claim that hard work and discipline would cause success, still the businesses close down. All the work does not guarantee success, it figures. Their respective owners and their employees worked very hard but seemingly it does not help much.

It goes on with all the fun you miss while trying so hard and the emptiness that follows when you fail, which you most likely will. That part of a hard-working life is not often talked about. What did you miss while you were busy with your career? It paints a really glum picture of the way work is organized in this life. And even though you might be a success right now, you might not be tomorrow. So the rewards for all the hard work are very frail.

There is some real tangible empathy. This song is not so much about the observations and their critique but much more about the losers. The song emotes some real warmth towards those who tried hard but failed and does not share or reproduce these “values” of usability.

The song speaks to me in a way very few songs do. It did when I was 15 and completely unwilling to ever “do something” with my life as it does now at 30.

I have been called useless numerous times in my life and at this time, having lost my favourite person and my job very recently and being on the verge of doing something very risky, I still beg to differ: I am not useless, even though you don’t find a use for me right now. I might even feel useless, but I am not.

I have to think of something Jon Steward said about Bruce Springsteen: If you listen to Bruce, you are not a loser. You are a character in an epic tale… about losers.

I suppose this applies to the music of TV Smith as well.

My useless closing thoughts on Useless:

Tims long time fans from the 70s and other old timers had quite a problem with the more modern, high-octane sound of Useless. It’s essentially the sound of the Hosen in their stadium rock era, a little broadened by Tim’s acoustic guitar. I personally never had any problems with that. I never grew attached to the thin, low-fi sound of the original Adverts recordings, nor the compromising, lack-of-funding inspired sound Tims various bands in the 80s got and even less to the programmed lo-fi of Generation Y. The songs however were fantastic in every era and I very much grew attached to them. But listening to them sometimes was a little hard. To me, Useless is the best a TV Smith record ever sounded.

I also think the record follows a fitting concept for an artist with this long of a career that has released his songs in multiple bands. It is no compilation of old recordings but an update to them and and as such an afterthought. These recordings don’t replace the originals but interpret them. If one likes the originals better, they are still there to listen to. And if someone didn’t know about TV Smith or the Adverts before and finds anything on Useless that appeals to him, there is A LOT more to discover in Tims catalogue.

As with every Best of, the fans keep bitching about songs that were let off but shouldn’t have been. This here is my moment to do so. I will list them in no particular order and, of course, omit the songs that were written only later: No Time to be 21, Eurodisneyland Tomorrow, March of the Giants and my all time favourite TV Smith song The Future used to be better (best enjoyed in the version with Punk Lurex OK from Finland).

Now why does TV’s music matter so much to me?

What’s so special about Tim is this: He is as much of an idol to me as one punk can be to another punk. But he doesn’t live in another sphere as, say, James Hetfield of Metallica. He is approachable, you can always write him an email or on his message board an he will reply. His “fan club” are members of his forum and for a few years they gathered once a year with only about 30 persons, each of them as nice as you could imagine.

At least until maybe a few years ago, I could be sure he remembered me when I wrote him or talked to him. I rarely did, but it was great to know I could. This was a two-sided conversation, whereas with bands or musicians, it is almost always solely one-sided. You love them, they don’t even know you exist.

One time I wanted to buy one of his older records at a fan club meeting, but he didn’t have any with him. I gave him my money anyway and a week later, I had the English edition of that record in my mail, signed and with a little note of thanks. I am sceptical of fandom and very rarely starstruck, but this mattered to me. I believe he brought it to the mail office himself and if it wasn’t him, it was Gaye Advert, which would be nice as well.

In closing, I highly recommend to give TV Smith a listen. This record is an ideal entry point to do so, The Adverts first LP Crossing… would be another. There is a chance that you find someone very special.

TV Smith’s Useless is currently out of print and quite hard to find. But you can listen to it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zntWUxsG0HU

If you want to learn more about TV Smith or The Adverts, you also have to watch this documentary as long as it is available:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWZqYCsT2uk

Machine Head – The Blackening

 

Welcome to The Blackening, Machine Head’s 6th record, and 2nd after the return from their partly dreaded, partly beloved NuMetal phase. The year is 2007 and MH envisioned the record as their Magnum Opus and the Master of Puppets of that era. The Band came from their run in support of their previous record Through the Ashes of Imperiums but that release was plagued by multiple troubles: Having lost their record deal, lead guitar player and having stopped functioning as a band for months, it could have been the end for the band. But the record still turned out to be really strong. After that The Blackening saw MH back in fine form and with sky-high ambitions. Most times when a band reaches for the stars they end up in the deep shit. This time it turned out to be different.

The record opens in true Thrash Metal tradition with a 100 second long crescending intro that slowly escalates to a breaking point and then: THAT riff. Clenching the Fists of Dissent starts for real with an inspired, harmonic-drenched riff at breakneck speed that gets my heart pumping faster every time. The attitude is pissed off, barely controlled anger and Robb Flynns throaty vocals rattle your bones. This is a very good start. Dynamics like that are what almost every Thrash record strives for in their opener and the execution here is just done perfectly.

Lyrically, it is a rather simple call to arms in opposition to the 2^nd war against Iraq.* But it goes beyond that, the goal is revolution and everybody should sing some kind of song for this revolution. Flynn imagines a situation where right now is the magical moment to fight the evil political powers, ignoring the fact that this war wasn’t any different from countless wars that these powers have committed before and after it. This all doesn’t matter much, because what is said pales next to HOW it is said. I as a German got it long before I ever read the lyrics. For sure I could not decipher them in the song. So for the longest time I didn’t know what the guy’s problem was. But I didn’t have to because this song worked just fine on an emotional level.

The song comes to a slower chorus that works fine as a composition, and multiple inspired solos MH cannot possibly imagine a song without. They are alright, but there are solos on The Blackening that I care much more about. I will get to them a little later. There is also a very melodic breakdown in the song that is based on the intro and alternates with the many fast parts in the song.

The climax of Clenching… consist of multiple different parts and starts with a breakdown that Robb uses for some much needed introspection: Gone are the calls for revolution, this now is the person behind them that tries to makes sense of the world around him. When he says that he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t want to lead, doesn’t have the answers et cetera he contradicts himself considering all the conviction he put forth the whole song up to that point. But it is quite touching and speaks volumes about Robb Flynn as a songwriter, as he is able to convey the rift between his bulletproof on-stage persona and the real person.

He even considers himself to be unworthy to criticise at all as he is “fucking far from perfect” with a “mind wrecked from the abuse” he had to endure as a child. This guy is no longer the megaphone of upheaval but, indeed, powerless against these things he would love to stop but will never be able to. In observing that, he is absolutely right.

What follows is a crescendo that ends in the heaviest, most crushing behemoth of a riff the whole record has to offer. It is so slow and sludgy that you hold your breath for a moment every time before the next hard hit follows. To me it stands proudly in the tradition of, say, Black Sabbath and I think the Iommi of today would pretty much kill for it. Vocally, Flynns at first hysteric, then guttural vocals convey so much anger. To me, he screams no longer in conviction but in despondence. I might be wrong. He alternates screams of the song title intertwined with key words from the lyrics in it. That way the whole part works as a coda in a musical as well as in a lyrical way. It is an almost perfect ending to such an epic song.

The modulations the band incorporates into the final riff sound totally inspired to me. They are inventive, give the part an even slower feel and keep it from ever getting monotonous. These harmonics, slides, bendings and mutes complement the riff so well that to my ears, it could go on forever.

But sadly, it doesn’t. Much too soon, even for the ending of a 10 minute track, the song gets a lame fade-out. Even worse, when it comes, there are still interesting things happening! It’s infuriating. And lastly, when Machine Head play the song in concert, they have an ending for it that is massive and powerful in its own right. That one would have suited this epic song much better.

The record goes on with Beautiful Mourning, at 5 minutes running time one of the more concise songs on the record. It is very well constructed, fast, melodic and features some well done vocal harmonies. A good song that I overlook regularly as it is sandwiched between my two favourite songs on The Blackening.

Aesthetics of Hate is, of course, about not the murder of Dimebag Darrel, but the disgusting epilogue the ultra-conservative Iconoclast published shortly after Dimes death. In it, the author calls Dime an “ignorant, barbaric, untalented possessor of a guitar“, slandering him in any possible way and concluding that Dimebag somehow brought his untimely demise it upon himself by playing such filthy music to his even filthier fans. Tough and stupid stuff.

Machine Head respond with sheer anger and hostile, in retrospection possibly a little juvenile, attacks on the author. This aggression is delivered in a fantastic composition that showcases Machine Head ability to pack lots of ideas into one rather compact song. The song starts with a clean guitar motif and pounding drums that are at the same time disparate and aligned. A crescendo of harmonizing guitar slides leads to the main song that is, in my view, of Machine Heads finest.

Aesthetics… also features my favourite instrumental part on The Blackening. Starting at 1:47 up until 3:23, it is classical music on electric guitars. There’s a video on YouTube of a guy that plays both guitar parts without any accompaniment. That is my favourite way to enjoy the intricacies of that part: The interplay of the guitars, their harmonies, their push and pull, constant alternation of lead and rhythm guitar and their interchanging support for musical context up until the perfectly constructed end of that composition-in-a-composition. It’s just great. It is a beautiful and, due to the high tempo, easily missed part. And, if it was played on violins my grandma would fucking love it.

After missing the opportunity for a great possible ending Aesthetics…frays and its last minute consists of not much more than delayed guitars, feedback and formless drums that could have been cut without remorse. The ending works in album context but when listening to the song on its own I tend to skip it at that point. It feels more like a sound collage than a part. But still I love the song. Very much.

The next two songs are typical album songs. They swing from the melodic, more commercial modern metal (Now I lay thee down) to the aggressive, fast-paced Slanderous that lists all the names that Flynn got called in his life and calls for strength and solidarity in opposition to those who harm you. There’s nothing wrong with both songs and especially Slanderous is a good song that is well worth your time with its great riffs, clever dynamics and good melodies. It also treats you to a few seconds of a dual-harmonic Queen-esque, Brian May inspired solo that is total bliss.

What follows next is Halo, another 9 minute song that I like very much. It features good hostile, if rather simple lyrics against Christianity and again, Flynn imagines a big war, this time against Religion when it is clear that such a thing does not exist. What does exist however is the real threat that the 3 abrahamic religions pose to every non-believer. They are very much at war with the world.

The song features great verses and respective riffs and an ultra-melodic chorus that some linked to other modern metal bands like Bullet for my Valentine. I do not get the reference as I don’t listen to them but I feel like this part is the closest that MH get to a radio single on The Blackening. The song actually was a single and got a music video that omitted almost all the solos and cut it down to half of its length.

These many instrumental parts and solos on Halo are alright, but to me they feel a little uninspired and less memorable than others like in Clenching… I would deem them non-essential and often find myself skipping them until the breakdown, the slower final chorus and the ending which are all very good again.

Then Wolves is a complex beast that alternates between fast and very fast but never seems to reach maximum intensity. Another song that I overlooked for months but getting to like more and more. It goes without saying that its second half features guitar work galore. In other parts it feels line a nod to old school 80’s Thrash. I might revisit this song for more later.

So we approach the end of The Blackening. A Farewell to Arms starts subdued, droning and takes almost three minutes to take off for real. Then follows another 10 minute song that revisits the theme of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Its verses remind of Now I lay Thee down while its choruses follow the lines of Halo’s chorus and rival it in melody. In the second half of the song Machine Head gain speed but, to me, still lack in intensity and heaviness. The song has a noticeably lighter feel to it than the rest of the record. It is far from a stinker but I don’t care much for it as a song.

So The Blackening ends. That is, if you did not get the Limited Edition that is still easily and cheaply available. That version ends with a cover of Metallica’s Battery that Machine Head recorded for a tribute compilation to Master of Puppets by British magazine Kerrang in 2006. I would recommend that edition, as MH do the original justice but you will notice the lower production value of that recording. The addition of Battery might break the cohesiveness of the record but it is a much better song than the regular album closer. And furthermore, if you want to get philosophical, it is only fitting that MH close “their” Master of Puppets with a song off of the real thing.

In summary:

Is The Blackening worthy of being called in the same breath as …Puppets, Reign in Blood or Rust in Pieces?

I am inclined to say yes. It belongs in this select group of classics as it rivals them in scope, ambition, inspiration, execution and almost universal approval (that those records themselves did not always get until after a number of years), even though it was released a good 20 years after them.

The record demolished the competition in 2007, won multiple prestigious prizes, and was also named record of the decade by Metal Hammer. Machine Head risked a lot but did not fail, they delivered. In the 9 year since its release I think the record has only gained in status and is now viewed by many as a modern classic. Still every MH album gets measured against it and to my knowledge no record by anybody has equalled it since then. I really think it represents a true water mark in metal culture.

Whether some young dude in, say, 2025 will listen to all of the mentioned records respecting The Blackening as much as every metal head respects the classics from the 80’s, who knows? I don’t.

 

 

*

Just in case you want to know what I think about the Iraq war: At 17, when the thing happened, I was one of millions leftist, bush-hating punk rockers and outspoken against the war. I am not so sure anymore. Though I consider myself part of the Marxist left, on the topic of the Operation Iraqi Freedom I follow my favourite author Christopher Hitchens’ arguments that made me look at it differently.

The Saddam regime was an unbearable fundamentalist terror state that viewed the whole country and all of their inhabitants as their private property. Saddam was a godlike figure that, much like the Christian heaven, did not allow much more than constant praising and obedience. It was the definition of a modern totalitarian dictatorship and I have no problem seeing that political power gone. But it should have been done more competently.