I don't think I need to do much introducing for this song; seminal pop-punk track, a piece of music that launched the Derry band's career in late 1970s UK and Ireland; and the culmination of an influence that began with the 1976 release of the Ramones' self-titled debut and the formation of the Sex Pistols.
It's also well-known as legendary BBC DJ John Peel's favourite song, hence the graffiti piece above (spotted on a Belfast flyover, from this blogger via Wikipedia). If, by some bizarre chance, it's not well known enough for you, here's a few links:
Watch out for the s/t album on the blog sometime soon, as well as perhaps something from the Listening In: The Undertones Radio Sessions 1978-1982 which I picked up second-hand recently.
As part of the series of very best Irish albums I started back on Paddy's Day. 'Teenage Kicks' isn't an album, but if it was it would have to be #1. Sorry, Loveless.
Happy Paddy's Day, again. I wasn't able to up this as well as Loveless yesterday, but I thought I might as well do #3(b), in the The Top 40 Irish Albums as decided by the Irish Times, today. It's one I'd have a hard time deciding between it, Loveless, and The Undertones. The Radiators, formerly the Radiators from Space, dropped the added part of their name a) because they were here to stay (they weren't - they broke up after this album) or b) because it made them sound silly. Either way, the Radiators are generally considered the first Irish punk band. 1977's TV Tube Heart was a smart, sassy if a little rough punk album of the Buzzkockian kind. 1978/9's Ghostown was, in retrospect and in more finely judged criticism, a masterpiece. Tony Clayton-Lea from the Irish Times describes it thus:
"Underappreciated, a lost classic, a missed opportunity and a shocking example of how a truly great collection of songs can become entangled in music industry trends - Ghostown is all of these things and more. Following their 1977 debut, TV Tube Heart, the Radiators From Space shortened their name, moved to London and started to write and rehearse the material that would become Ghostown.
Like most second albums, it reflected a perhaps more truthful approach to their environment, which is why the guitar-driven, anthemic attacks of TV Tube Heart were replaced with intentionally literate and highly melodic songs such as 'Looting in the Town', 'Million Dollar Hero' and 'Song of the Faithful Departed'.
The juxtaposition of James Joyce and Sean O'Casey with The Beatles and Marc Bolan went completely over the heads of the UK critics and audiences, who perhaps to the punk-manor born, scornfully rejected the change of creative direction. Added to this was a year-long delay in getting the album released, which acted as another nail in the band's coffin.
What happened next? Ghostown stiffed, leaving main songwriter Philip Chevron to his own devices. He subsequently joined The Pogues. The band recently reformed."
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Ghostown came twelve years before My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, and yet is in many ways every bit as creative. It is more of a post-punk than a punk album on account of its range of styles and sounds, though of course the lines and categories are more blurred then than at other times.The record has a strong pop sensibility to it as well, which belies its weightiness as some kind of literary and cultural statement. Ghostown is in fact many things, and all of them good.
It is an album which is, as befits the punk tradition, not overlong - 10 songs - but also broad and varied. It has its own sound, and yet incorporates a whole set of different influences; and it expresses itself not just in the tenacity, fierce- and gentleness of its music, but also in its lyrics. Like punk was meant to be, Ghostown was in no small way pop as art.
'Million Dollar Hero' starts things off with shimmering, new wave guitar and an undulating vocal line and echoing harmonies, and a seriously judicious saxophone:
"I'm a million-dollar hero
in a five-and-ten-cent store
....But if anyone asks you if I've passed along this way
it was just my outer image - just my outer image"
'Let's Talk About The Weather', despite its easygoing melody, is unconnected to R.E.M's Green ; and even despite its psychological, tortured lyrics:
"We knew the charges but never the crime
The charges haunt us like a nursery rhyme
win some, lose some
There must be some mistake
this emptiness is more than I can take"
'Johnny Jukebox' is the closest song to the original punk of The Radiators from Space, but revels in their own snarling version of doo-wop all the same:
"I'm Johnny Jukebox
survivor of the ghostown
dance for me"
And so on, the album crafts pop tunes with a variety of punk and pre-punk sounds, a rock and roll revival with high-minded sensibility. That clear 70s guitar sound slicing through every song, occasional swathes of piano or saxophone, gang vocals combine to create a wonderfully atmospheric sense of instrumentation without losing the verve of fast punk rock. More than anything else, Ghostown is a musically and lyrically smart punk record. Chevron proclaims in 'They're Looting in the Town', the song most like the eclectic beauty of the mid-period Clash records, that "the revolution in the air / is somewhat the worse for wear".
'Kitty Ricketts' brings in Tom Waits-like carnival rhythms, and references the 1969 James Plunkett novel Strumpet City , about the slums of Dublin in the early 20th century (it was made into a high quality TV drama by RTE the year after Ghostown was released) :
"She is handsome, she is pretty
She is the girl from Strumpet City
Oh please, can you tell me who is she?
Kitty Ricketts
You’re not there
But I can touch your hair
Kitty Ricketts
One, Two, Three
You’re a ghost, but I don’t care.
She’s a carnal joy
For nighttown boys
Whose five o'clock shadow begins at midnight"
But the peak of the album is the epic, balladic 'Song for the Faithful Departed' (sometimes just called 'Faithful Departed'). The lyrics by Philip Chevron reference the literary and religious history of Ireland, in a macabre and acerbic portrait of Irish society (anyone familiar with the work of Yeats might be able to pick out a few lines):
"This graveyard hides a million secrets
And the trees know more than they will tell
But the ghosts of the saints and scholars will haunt you
In heaven and in hell
.... Look across your shoulder and the school bell rings
Another day of made to measure history
I don't mind if your heroes all have wings
But your terrible beauty is torn"
Not just lyrically, but musically the song is outstanding. It in fact mentions the whiskey in the jar at the end, and Chevron's intonation has a touch of that other Phil - Linnott - but I would defy anyone not to rank the quality of this song above anything by Thin Lizzy. It's epic, and punk, a kind of quirky Irish Marquee Moon.
Here's the song being performed on Irish TV in 1980. There's some interesting points to be made: I'm not sure what show this is from, the video is posted by the band but it doesn't say - it's probably identifiable by the tacky stage set and the two second cut at the beginning of the wacko in the audience going "Oww" and shaking them in with his shoulders; someone in the comments brings up the interesting observation that the intro to the song sounds a bit like the opening bars to the Irish national anthem, Amhrán na bhFiann (watch the RTE version); and the close-ups show Phil Chevron doing an excellent Johnny Rotten impression. But most of all, it's awesome musically, for the 70s at least. Heck, for any time:
This 7" solo single from Phil Chevron featured a song written by Brendan Behan (an excellent underground writer and playwright: see this Steady Diet of Books post) for his play 'The Hostage', and as a b-side, a solo version of 'Faithful Departed'. Mostly acoustic, with a string accompaniment, quite folky and playing up the Dub accent a bit more than on Ghostown (Kitty Ricketts' "Dubblin" and "citty loights" aside). I found this on power pop criminals and re-upped it to mediafire.
Interesting note: I saw a Dropkick Murphys 7" single printed on green vinyl, and I was thinking of buying it for the novelty - and irony - value and for a St. Patrick's Day post on this blog. I think thankfully, I didn't, and here's something much much better. And, mostly, more Irish!
I actually quite like Blackout, and the Dropkicks' version of 'Fields of Athenry' - not that I'm all that much a fan of the original- but seriously, green vinyl? Way to be Oirish, I guess...
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A few weeks ago our paper of record, The Irish Times, published in its entertainment section a list of the Top 40 Irish Albums of All Time. This was #1.
The full list should be available here, but I'll give you the top ten anyway. It's all explained in the article, but the list was made from the collected votes of just four of the Irish Times's music critics, and hence some albums are tied:
1. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
2. U2 - Achtung Baby
3(a). A House - I Am The Greatest
3(b). The Radiators - Ghostown
5. Van Morrison - Astral Weeks
6. Microdisney - The Clock Comes Down The Stairs
7. Rollerskate Skinny - The Horsedrawn Wishes
8. The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy & The Lash
9. The Undertones - The Undertones
10. Whipping Boy - Heartworm
Watch out for #3(b) on this site sometime soon, an absolutely excellent album and a definite pleasure to see something so relatively obscure so high up on the list; go here (on Clocked-In Punched-Out) to read a bit about #7 and see a video - kind of a shoegaze-y band as well. And we're all punks here - right? - so I shouldn't need to say anything about #9. 'Teenage Kicks' right through the night - the best I've every had?
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My Bloody Valentine's Loveless is a landmark album, a veritable totem of noisy, beautiful post-punk and of that esoteric genre, 'shoegaze'. Most of what I have to say now has been said already in this earlier post, but it would be remiss of me not to attempt another description.
The first time I heard Loveless, not much more than a couple of years ago, still counts as one of my true musical revelations. The name My Bloody Valentine was somewhat familiar to me, as the title of some sort-of-cult early 90's Irish alternative band, associated with post-punk and heavy but standoffish rock. That kind of description (hazy in my memory now, as previous, incorrect assumptions tend to be) had to be thrown out upon the first listen.
Far from being really difficult, Loveless was from the start an entirely absorbing album. The wash of guitar noise was a fascinating and textured canvas for music that captivated and enchanted: melodies and rhythms that swirled about my head, ethereal vocals that plugged into my subconscious, and 'songs' that still made me tap my foot. Few things ever sounded so good.
It surprised me at first that some people preferred its predecessor, Isn't Anything (#24, incidentally), which has a more traditional song structure and at least at times a more straightforward sound. The previous post mentioned above was for My Bloody Valentine's Ep You Made Me Realise, and I guess I've come to see the attractions of most of their work, but Loveless is still the go-to album for My Bloody Valentine, and the touchstone work - albeit one that requires some reach - for shoegaze in general.
As for its Irishness, that might be for people other than me to decide. Certainly its core members are Irish - although Kevin Shields I think spent as much time growing up in New York as he did in Ireland - and their actual base in England only reflects the time-honoured tradition of Irish artists leaving their native land for better things, and having their works reclaimed for patriotic values. With regards to the list - and if one wanted to get political - Stiff Little Fingers (Inflammable Material, #19) are as British as, if not more than, My Bloody Valentine. Musically, I imbue the album mentally with an Irish air; the album closer, 'Soon', sounds reminiscent of traditional Irish music (céilís and whatnot) although in fact, it is inspired by the dance house music of the start of the 1990s. Bottom line is, it's Irish if you want it to be.
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless (1991)
For anyone who wants to do some reading over the spring/Easter break, here's a Florida music student's very interesting dissertation on the album and the culture surrounding it:
Kevin Shields is probably a maniac, but it's well worth watching these interview pieces between him and the no-less-of-an-idiosyncratic Ian Svenonius: VBS TV, Soft Focus UK (thanks to mr x. indeed for bringing these to my attention).
The wisdom of dead Germans
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First as tragedy, then as farce? There's nothing to be found in Victorian
ideologies.
Are there self-identified "farces" I should view that meet the criter...
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Hey! I entered a tee shirt for submission at Threadless.
If you like it, please take a moment and click the above image to go vote.
VOTE HARD!
If it wins...
Murder By Death/O'Death Split 7"
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"Murder By Death are releasing the first of 7 records in a 7" series where
they trade covering songs with other bands they know. The second 7" will
featu...
