Once upon a time (76-79) in New Yok City there was Lydia Lunch. With her co-conspirators she stripped music down to its bare essentials: a beat, thrashed guitar, and a wailing vocal. The complete recordings add up to around eighteen minutes of music but the shock waves arried on for much longer.

They made Punk sound over-orchestrated and overblown. The way her voice cracks on the word “mediocrity” is still one of the finest moments in Rock music. If you take more than 82 seconds to make your point, you are just wasting everyone’s time.

Less Of Me by Teenage Jesus & The Jerks

Two big reasons to mention The Scaramanga Six: a new single and I finally saw them live!

I went to The Wheatsheaf in Oxford on Friday where they were the support act so it was a bit of a curtailed set but plenty long enough to make a judgement. That judgement is this is a great live band. What the live performance added to their intense music was a sense of humour and playfulness. From the opening intro of “We have come from up North to teach you the chord of E” (which they proceeded to do) to the last moments of I Wear My Heart On My Sleeve they entertained and energised.

Towards the end a select group of people, who I recognised as being there to see the other bands, were dancing - although dancing to the Scaramangas is not that easy since they mix crescendos with silences but a valiant attempt was made and underlying rhythms were picked up on before the head twirling could begin again. It was a compliment to a band that can move you in many ways.

The latest single is Walk Through Houses. The title track reminds me of the early iLiKETRAINS singles with its prevailing sense of paranoia but with all the panache and variation that The Scaramanga Six always provide. I Can See A Murder is a near-hysterical story of a killer with Tex-Mex guitar and vocal harmonies that could have come from Phantom Of The Opera.

Walking Through Houses (clip) by The Scaramanga Six

Sometimes as I listen back to the last thirty plus years of music I bemoan the fact that many bands today lack ambition and keep to a very narrow agenda and don’t explore what wonders can be done with harmonies, thunderous guitars, and changes in rhythm. No-one can ever accuse The Scaramanga Six of lacking ambition and exciting you with every musical trick in the book.

The Scaramanga Six

It was a simple beginning, in Paris 1969 a French Jazz drummer has a vision of the ecological disasters about to befall the Earth. His response: to form a Avant-Garde/Prog Rock band. The story he planned to tell over the next nine albums (three trilogies) is of a polluted and degenerate Earth who come into conflict with the planet Kobaïa who have achieved harmony with nature and technology. The singing was to be in the Kobaïan language and Christian Vander invented this making it an Eastern European sounding tongue with lots of Umlauts and hard consonants suitable for this form of Rock music.

The basic Magma sound was multilayered. First was the Jazz-influenced drumming of Christian Vander - the only candidate for world’s best drummer for those who had heard Magma. His long term collaborationist was Jannick Top who played a Fusion bass style that hadn’t been used in Rock before as far as I was aware. The quasi-Operatic singing was provided from the choral influence of the composer Carl Orff (whose music is now used in just about every advert for anything) amongst others.

For those of you too young to remember the massive over-ambitiousness of Prog then prepare yourself - it’s Jazz, Classical, Rock, Linguistic, Utopian, Ecological and Spiritual. In an age where a band can make a long-term career by adding a few Bowie vocalisms to a bit of Smith’s style guitar, be prepared to have your mind expanded. I saw them back in the early 70’s at Oxford Polytechnic in a Hall dominated by the smell of Cannabis and musty greatcoats. Amidst the smoke and strobes and whiplashed long hair, I remember the Christian Vander drum solo. It still stands as the only good drum solo I have ever heard. Physical, technical, and of such Primeval intensity that Vander’s loud groans and guttural utterings became a vocal track.

With such an extensive musical reach, it is impossible to select any one track to demonstrate the Magma effect. But on the vinyl album Üdü Wüdü I just converted to mp3 is Tröller Tanz (Ghost Dance) that shows something of their uniqueness.

Tröller Tanz by Magma

So here we are at last; the time has gone so fast and so have my dreams. I’ve been listening to the music of Van der Graaf Generator for over 30 years, and they’ve been making it, in some shape or form, for over 40. To classify them lazily (and somewhat contemptuously) as ‘Prog’ doesn’t do justice to the breadth and depth of their work. Thursday’s performance at Manchester’s RNCM (as the first date of this years European jaunt) sees a return to an intimate venue with a decent sound, and with a new album (‘Trisector’) to promote, much is anticipated.

Unfortunately there is a big hole at the centre of everything with the absence of Dave Jackson (he couldn’t make the “leap of faith” that being in VDGG demands, according to a Hammill newsletter), which means that the renditions of old favorites such as ‘Scorched Earth’, ‘Lemmings’, ‘Black Room’ (a rare outing) and ‘Man-Erg’ don’t scale the peaks of old, and I found myself mentally adding the sax parts in compensation. Nonetheless, ‘Still Life’ remains (to my mind, at least) a masterpiece, and a typically manic encore of ‘Nutter Alert’ sends the majority home happy.

However, I made my way home somewhat uneasily, no longer sure of what I expected, or what I got from the evening. Hammill and co. are much more than a soulless ‘greatest hits’ retread, but the difficulties of selecting a representative two hours from their complete recorded works result in a show that falls uncomfortably between nostalgia and an attempt to show that their contemporary output is equally valid. VDGG live remain endearingly ramshackle (Hammill still gives no indication that he has in any way mastered the guitar, although as he quips whilst re-tuning “it took a hell of a beating”) and there is a warm interaction between band and audience. When (if) they come round again, I think I’ll stay at home in a darkened room listening to ‘Pawn Hearts’. On vinyl…

Review by Big Dave

I was never particularly into any Punk bands - exceptions being Alternative TV and Patrik Fitzgerald. The reason I bought the Dangerous Girls single was because they were friends of a friend of a friend. I think I saw them play in Birmingham and this single was a memento of the gig.

One nice thing about going through my vinyl is when I come across something I can barely remember. The b-side I Don’t Want To Eat (With The Family) is typically Punk fodder with the Cockernee ‘fink’ instead of ‘think’ (not part of a Birmingham accent, I believe). The eponymous A-side does sound quite good to my ears. It spends the first three and a half minutes in a slow rhythm but then breaks out into a bit of an enjoyable thrash. I think I have neglected this song unfairly for twenty-eight years.

One nice touch was to see that this was recorded at the same Old Smithy Studos in Kempsey, Worcestershire as Nomad67’s Art Of Individuality album in 2006. Engineered by Muff Murfin who also produced that amazing album so many years later.

Dangerous Girls by Dangerous Girls

This is the third EP on Line Out Records from London’s The Reverse. Each one has been beautifully packaged and, with limited runs of 500 copies, are prime candidates for future collectors’ items. The same sort of care with the sleeves has been taken with the music - it is lush in sound but contains a very sharp blade that cuts straight to the emotional heart.

Each EP has developed the character of The Reverse. It’s right that this should be a series of EPs rather than an album because such concentration could not be held over 40 minutes. I dislike making comparisons but I would have to make a connection to House Of Love They evoke same sort of surge I still feel when hearing Shine On or Christine - but the difference is that, for me, House Of Love only wrote a few great songs while The Reverse have already created more highlights in their short career.

My Lifelong Psychological Experiment firmly establishes The Reverse in the English tradition of the personal and melodic. Undoubtedly it is Pop but with the sort of intelligence and knowingness that The Kinks once applied to their music. Other Boys and Emily are simple songs but performed with such artistry and a sense of dynamics (bounce provided by drummer and bassist) that they are a joy to listen to.

In the end what makes it more than just a singer/songwriter exposing his soul is the battle he has with the guitarist to be heard (I knew there was a reason I mentioned House Of Love). If you love guitar then you will love this band. The song that makes this EP for me is To The Bridge and it is like Robbie Krieger has visited just to add some classic Doors guitar to the recipe. It’s a potent combination to have both music and lyrics like this working together.

The Reverse

It is very difficult to get any information about Dub Sex on the Internet. I think I first saw them in London at the Fulham Greyhound. It was a typical Alternative venue with painted black walls and a four foot stage defining a mosh pit. Staring up at Mark Hoyle (guitar/vocals) I could see the sweat dripping off him. His voice was an impassioned shout to pay attention to the world. Anger, despair and endless questioning were big with me at the time (and probably still are). I may have missed out on seeing Joy Division (no buses or trains back from Birmingham that night of what turned out to the final gig) but I had seen the only band that approached them in terms of sheer intensity and original punk ethic.

By the time I moved to Manchester, Dub Sex had become Dumb - adding a second drummer to increase the rhythmic attack. Or maybe my memory is playing tricks - did Cathy, the bassist, cycle to India before Dumb were formed? Hard to say, other than this was the band that defined everything that I wanted from the city. Finally I had found the place I still regard as home, and here was a band that explored any demons that I still held. Having never successfully rid myself of (originally adolescent) angst, I found it expressed perfectly.

But I guess I did grow up a bit. I finally found some friends I could feel comfortable with. I could belong somewhere at last. The effect of Dub Sex and Dumb would never leave me. Even now I can listen to Kicking The Corpse Around and feel my foot reaching for the accelerator to take the car up to maximum speed when the words cut in of “I tasted decay in the seconds it takes to make a mess on the motorway.”

Are they the forgotten Manchester band? Not for me.

Kicking The Corpse Around by Dub Sex

Dub Sex / Dumb on MySpace