MAY PLAYLIST

Current spins in Monkey Mansions include...

1.  The Combinations – “Voodoo” (1962)

Songs about voodoo – like songs about monkeys and chickens – are always worth investigating and the temptation to play this next to Charles Sheffield’s “It’s Your Voodoo Working” would be strong for many.  By the way, according to voodoo superstition, having a woman visit you first thing on a Monday morning will bring you bad luck all week.  Keep that in mind. 

2.  Mr. Wiggles – “Fat Back (Part 1)” (1965)

Take a half cup of Robert Parker’s “Barefootin’”, cook it in a Famous Flames style, have a young Jimi Hendrix throw some licks (for it was he), and you have yourself a fair club soul treat.   

3.  Pink Floyd “Lucy Leave” (1965)

Bob Klose was still in the band here and what a debut Floyd single this would’ve made.  It doesn’t have the uniqueness of “Arnold Layne” but Barrett rarely, if ever, sang as strongly again and the tough circular garage attack is as good as it gets.     

4.  Verdelle Smith – “If You Can’t Say Anything Nice (Don’t Say Nothin’ At All)” (1966)

It was the later upbeat version by Gia Mateo that had us spinning holes in our soul socks for nights and mornings on end but Verdelle’s slower, Bacharach and David style treatment is beautifully paced and delicately sung.  Gorgeous. 

5.  Lee Hazlewood & Suzi Jane Hokom – “Califia (Stone Rider)” (1969)

Light In The Attic have embarked on a major Hazlewood reissue campaign.  The first release, The LHI Years: Singles, Nudes and Backsides (1968-1971), does more than enough to show there’s more hiding behind that thick tache than “Some Velvet Morning”.  

6.  Action Pact – “Sixites Flix” (1982)

Nearly all my favourite 60s films savagely denigrated in 113 seconds. 

7.  The Very Things – “The Bushes Scream While My Daddy Prunes” (1984)

A memorable song paired with an unforgettable video (See here.)

8.  Two Wounded Birds – “Midnight Wave” (2011)

Two Wounded Birds are top of my To See list.  The souped-up rocking surf rumble of “Midnight Wave” being one reason why.

9.  Spiritualized “So Long You Pretty Thing” (2012)

In Spiritualized word bingo this was very nearly a full house: Help, Lord, Jesus, God, Soul, Tired, Blind and Mind all ticked off.  Only missing Drugs.  So close.  They probably envisaged making “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” but the lighted candle mood, the way the song creeps up and builds, the choir, the big crescendo half way through actually remind me more of a Pop Idol winner’s song.  Still like it a lot though.          

10.  Pony Taylor – “Videogame” (2012)
It's easy to be sniffy about The BritPop Years but a chap said to me the other day he felt he'd missed out, as in his lifetime there hasn't been a movement that "everybody" (his words) was into.  It didn't feel like a movement or particularly special at the time but he's probably got a point and like mods in the 60s or punks in the 70s its only when looking back they can truly see what was happening around them.  Had he been with us in 1995 h would've heard slashing chords and sustained organ every day of the week, so hearing French band Pony Taylor revisit it with aplomb in 2012 should make us both happy.  

SYD BARRETT: ART AND LETTERS at the IDEA GENERATION GALLERY

Crazy diamond Syd Barrett. Acid gobbling casualty of the coutnerculture. Who washed his hair in Mandrax. Who left an important piece of his brain somewhere in a club on Tottenham Court Road. Who on occasion could neither play nor speak. Who bite off his manager’s finger. Whose drug-deadened eyes were caught by Mick Rock. Who walked from London to Cambridge. Who became a recluse holed up in his mother’s house.

This is not the Syd Barrett of Art and Letters, which collects unseen photographs, letters and original artworks to offer a far more positive portrait of a creative and sensitive soul. Who wrote and illustrated love letters to girlfriends to arrange visits and patch up quarrels. Who experimented in ink, oil, watercolour, lino print, mosaics, collages and sculptures. Who stood in the garden proudly showing off his latest five foot painting. Who made his first stage appearances with The Tea Set. Who didn’t want to rent “horrid No Coloured Allowed” flats yet didn’t want to deprive others with the alterative. Who excitedly described and drew his first recording session with Pink Floyd. Who larked around with his dandified band mates as new shiny pop sensations. Who didn’t want to brag he’d become rich and famous.

Art and Letters is full of life, fun and vitality. It’s a delight to see and one of the best exhibitions the consistently savvy Idea Generation Gallery has put on; comprehensive and full of fresh insights. In some ways though, the implication art student Syd’s preferred path of painter was derailed by his musical side project only adds to the nagging sense of tragedy.

Syd Barrett: Art and Letters is at the Idea Generation Gallery, Redchurch Street, London, E2 7JB until 19th April 2011, admission free.
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MICK ROCK - ROCK: MUSIC at the IDEA GENERATION GALLERY

It’s the opening day of Mick Rock’s retrospective but the man is not kicking back and admiring his work. As the faces of 70s superstars and 60s supernovas stare blankly through altered eyes from the walls, he is snapping the latest collection of wannabes huddled on the floor in a state of calculated dishevelment, seemingly convinced torn and frayed jeans are still a rock and roll statement.

Rock’s more famous subjects had a bit more about them and some of his album covers are as familiar, if not more so, than the music they house. I bet more people recognize the Transformer sleeve than could hum “Vicious” and more identify Raw Power than whistle “Search and Destroy”. Every article ever written about Syd Barrett has been accompanied by one of Rock’s shots and he had something to do with David Bowie but I only think about that in an attempt to obliterate the thought of Queen.

Little Johnny Rotten looks chirpy and The Ramones look like they’re throwing a strop after being forced to wear an inch of make-up for End of the Century. There’s one amusing set of photos from a house party down the Portobello Road where Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck and Ronnie Wood turn up (like they do) and start jamming until two local bobbies turn up: “Do you mind turning the noise down a bit lads?”

There are one or two surprises and more recent portraits but it’s the old classics that keep Rock in dark glasses.

Mick Rock - Rock: Music is at the Idea Generation Gallery, 11 Chance Street, Bethnal Green, London E2 until 16th January 2011. Admission free.

MY GENERATION: THE GLORY YEARS OF BRITISH ROCK 1964-1973 by HARRY GOODWIN at the V&A

When Harry Goodwin was asked in 1964 to take photographs for a new BBC series, Top of The Pops, he had little inkling he’d continue to do so for the next nine years. First from television studios in Manchester and then down to London, Harry snatched portraits in dressing rooms, corridors and staircases of home grown artists and visiting US stars to amass a comprehensive Who’s Who of popular music from the period.

The V&A have a small exhibition which gives a peak at the scope of Harry’s work. The usual suspects are present but more exciting are the likes of an ebullient James Brown, a dapper Chuck Berry, a suitably enigmatic Bob Dylan, a sultry set of Ronettes, and a butter-wouldn’t-melt Syd Barrett all accepting of Goodwin’s bright flashbulb.

Worth a look but took me longer to find it within the bamboozling labyrinth that is the V&A than it did to view the pictures.

My Generation: The Glory Years of British Rock. Photographs by Harry Goodwin is at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Room 104), London, SW7 until 30 August 2010. Admission free.

A TECHNICOLOR DREAM

Saturday 29th April 1967 and thousands of teenage freaks, performers, artists, musicians, poets, movers and shakers from the underground, and a few bona-fide pop stars, trooped up the hill from Wood Green to the Alexandra Palace for the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream. Fourteen hours of truly legendary psychedelic shenanigans.

Who were these people? Where had they come from? And what had led to the UK’s most famous “happening” of the Sixties? Stephen Gammond’s DVD documentary delves into the underground and attempts to glean insights from, amongst others, Barry Miles, Joe Boyd, Kevin Ayers, Phil May, half of Pink Floyd and, most significantly, John “Hoppy” Hopkins.

The story of the UK underground is also Hoppy’s story. As Pete Jenner, the early Floyd manager, says: “Without Hoppy there would have been no underground”. In tracing the trip from the CND marches of the early ‘60s; to the foundation of the London Free School (a gallant attempt to educate and integrate the new communities around Notting Hill); to packing 7000 people in to the Royal Albert Hall for a drunken Beat poetry reading; to establishing the International Times newspaper; to running the weekly UFO Club; and to the inevitable sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, Hoppy was the one constant throughout.

It’s the coverage of these events in A Technicolor Dream that provide the most rewarding parts of the film; mixing old footage, new interviews and a stirring soundtrack by the Pretty Things and the Pink Floyd. Although a familiar tale to anyone who’s read the memoirs of Barry Miles or Joe Boyd, it is well told and captures the essence of a wonderfully idealised period where music and literature and politics and poetry were all equal parts of a magical mix. An ebullient Pete Jenner still has trouble containing his excitement. “The ‘60s marked that break with the Victorian heritage. Piss off, Victoria!”

As the film continues it increasingly becomes the Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd story. They were, of course, an intrinsic part of the underground, performing at benefits for the London Free School at the Roundhouse and for International Times at the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream but, for me, they get a disproportionate amount of screen time. Much of it is near identical to the BBC’s 2001 Barrett documentary and neither Nick Mason nor Roger Waters offer anything of particular insight. Mason is ambivalent about their contribution to any scene; whilst Waters claims, at best, to not recall anything (“I have no memory of the underground at all. When people talk about it, I have no idea what anybody’s talking about”) or, at worst, is dismissive (“I couldn’t give a shit who Love were. I really wasn’t interested in music”). But it’s easier to sell a Syd Barrett story than a John Hopkins story. Still, the Floyd looked great, sounded great, and I could watch footage all day long of Barrett skipping through the fields playing with a scarecrow.

But as the spaced-out flower children blinked into the Sunday morning of 30th April, the party was almost over. The summer of love would soon turn to winter; imprisonment removed Hoppy from circulation; Barrett could no longer function in his own band; and the bright mood of ’67 darkened throughout ’68. But for one brilliant, technicolor moment, there could not have been a better place to be in the world than high on the top of a North London hill.

A Technicolor Dream is an Eagle Vision release. See www.atechnicolordream.com