Three Monkeys Online - the free current affairs & arts magazine

Now that concerns Nina Persson’s A Camp project would only be a once-off novelty have been somewhat satisfied by this year’s Colonia, 2001’s self-titled debut is worth spinning again with a little more leisure. With its grim tones at hyperspeed, or droning descending bars dragging the always against the flow vocals of Persson into gloomy vignettes The Cardigans, despite their out of left-field impulses, never quite risked whole-heartedly, Frequent Flyer is Persson’s post-MTV party bloodshot eyed slog on the empty streets of Stockholm. Her vocal motifs have never been so sweetly in tune with the bitter aftertaste her lyrics demand that she leaves. Persson and co-conspirator Niclas Frisk are never far from the money shots with dreamy little pictures into kooky, personally sheltered Swedish lives. Where the album’s opener flies off to, isn’t so much a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained, rather it’s how long does it take and when the hell can I get off. Frequent Flyer feels like the kind of single only released because even the most determined of modern artists can no longer get concessions on albums standing as the definitive article; that in itself brings the song closer into that tangled nexus of supply and demand, Persson and Frisk the chic art school puritans vs. the cocktail party qualifications even the most determined of artists seemingly have to pass through these days -

“I would love to tell my story/From the ending/But the story’s getting thin/From heavy spending”

Then again -

“I’m a frequent flyer/A notorious liar, ohh/But I can’t get close enough/I never get close/I can’t get close enough/To the ending”

One thing is for sure, Swedish sensibilities have always hidden the endearing whimsy that trickles an inch or two below their perky pop radars. A Camp come and go as they please, as the sunglasses and ballet pumps wearing Hitchcock-esque figures glancing through airports, sitting on the very last seat on short-hop ferries, releasing albums, disappearing and re-appearing again when the dust has settled. Colonia probably seeks out the masochists, their initial venture isn’t quite as revealing as to which way its web spins, they’ve landed and taken off again, catching them won’t be so easy.

An astounding series of peaks across North-West Spain are reified in folklore as instantly recognisable landmarks nefarious conquistadors and regular Joes all fixed upon as they finally sailed into the serenity of home waters. Anabel Santiago’s 2007 album Desnuda is in effect a rejuvenation of a musical heritage which sails between those many Spanish traditions, the ghosts of imperialism, the lonely rural sheep-farmers, and the songs that bind them all together as objectively and non-judgmental as is possible. When Santiago lilts between the lonesome rural holler and the thundering lungs of big city bravado on De los Picos d’Europa, one is privileged to appreciate just how central the theatrical, artistic, poetic, and musical traditions of Asturias are to a nation never quite as bonded as the postcards may like us to perceive. Santiago is a performer par excellence, that part of her character many of us will know by now, how she can croon, wail, mystify, and throw you off guard with her unique approach to every note that leaves her lips, is why she is as vital to pastoral Spain as Dolores Keane is to the wild hinterlands of Galway, or Victor Jara was to the humble children of Lonquen.

Desnuda’s most engaging moment is more than just a recognition of a heritage and the duties one must perform in order to preserve it in the face of joyless modernity, Santiago’s vocal presence is alone enough to rustle up the necessary levels of awe a sunset in Asturias can bring, where she takes the song to as much as where it has been is the real victory for all concerned. Some could wallow at the dying of a culture or commodify it; Santiago isn’t a philistine and never will be. Her music and her interpretations of that created by others is as much a challenge to the future as a lament of the past, at the centre of it all is Santiago’s nods to all walks of life, not pleading for a momentary flirtation with the red carpet, instead offering a simple, honest, and beautiful snapshot of everything in its own natural order. De los Picos d’Europa is the pinnacle of Santiago’s strengths, while never being the limit of her ambitions.

Listening to Diamond Head’s most enduring of epics (although forgive the mild misnomer “epic” as it happens to be under 5 minutes long), offers the chance to discuss exactly why Stourbridge’s hairiest, most underground rockers never quite grasped the glittering prize of major league renown. As the title track of 1983’s critically mixed Canterbury swaps range from the minor chords of a solemn solo piano which unfurls the sanctity of a cold gloomy cathedral atmosphere, into the kind of fable from which rockers take on the expected duty of patching the narrative into a metal recitation of Beowulf, Diamond Head’s astonishing versatility thus becomes their beacon and albatross in one foul swoop.

Sean Harris wasn’t one to undermine his own dynamic capabilities. It’s Electric from the group’s acne-laden days found Harris’s vocals tipping the hat to the punks Diamond Head did not shirk from acknowledging. Am I Evil equally known and stymied by Metal’s uber-megalomaniacs M******** forfeits the yawn-inducing array of distortion pedals, working as much in harmony with Thin Lizzy’s darker fancies as it did with the trash metal it inspired. His multi-tasking was as vigorous on the fret-boards, even supporting Brian Tatler’s dive-bomber runs from time to time. On lyrical duties Harris could often leave a stadium full to be desired though, Sucking My Love a cringing example of why the band’s versatile nuances weren’t always for the greater good. Tatler does a great impression of Tony Iommi circa 1971/2, Sean sees Justin Hawkins in the crystal ball that comes free with all 1980s metal starter packs, and beats him to rather limp punch. Never mind.

Canterbury could’ve been Diamond Head’s meal ticket. For all the album’s well-intended failures, the title track is ironically something that could have benefited from being at least 10 minutes long, the piano dignified, yet pushy, elegant, even spooky, Tatler’s influx of ascending chords then preach from a different script, one very few from outside the old-school even really pin down with real success. That stinging Flying V and Marshall combo is sorely missed from rock these days. Get the picture now? Good. But it still needs to be asked that was their eclecticism actually their downfall? Just bare in mind that MCA Records were the completely wrong label for a band still in their relative infancy. Sounding like Def Leppard in places (admittedly in Elliot and co’s somewhat worthwhile early incarnation) and Megadeth elsewhere, Canterbury as a whole doesn’t really deviate significantly from much of the magic formula the group played around with before, perhaps the restless urge to be a collosal sum of their parts was just a step too far as early into their careers as 1983.

Many of those in opposition back then can take heart from a track like Canterbury though, leading the way for hard rock/metal instead of pleasing L.A. decadence, the lyrical content turns its nose up at sword and sorcery temptations, where Harris ventures back to the days of pre-Gothic intrigue when faced with the alternative horrors of spandex fetishes 20 years on from 1983. Ignore the mass of inferior pop-rock and trash metal numbskulls who name check Diamond Head as if somehow it was the West Midlands group who owed them for the recognition. They’re worth a lot more than that kind of condescending homage.

Wailing “God Bless America…” is not the selling point on which you can convince someone of a song’s cathartic merits, even if this song magnifies in grace over one of the most astounding cinematic closing sequences ever, James Guercio’s wirey, disillusioned, Electra Glide In Blue. Tell Me, also written by Guercio, and delivered as a stinging heartbroken lament for the common man by Chicago’s Terry Kath, swings on a pendulum that the furstrated U.S.A 1973 is bitterly laid bare. You’ve heard it all before, here’s a cop just trying to do his job, coming up against the Volkswagen mini-buses jammed with the bummed-out who can’t swim anymore through the bullshit equally the fault of Democrats as it is of Republicans. Something is going to give on the windy highway while Nixon and McGovern find time for a round or two of golf.

Tell Me swings that pendulum in its favour on two things, firstly, the recognition of the bullshit, and how the “everyday Joe” is being alienated from their own national sense of belonging on a daily basis, and secondly, it is quite frankly one of the most beautiful songs ever. The “America” that Guercio writes of, stunningly captured in all of its naked horror and beauty by Kath’s downtrodden raspiness is not the jingoisitc flag waving utopia, it is one of moustached middle-aged men watching the sun go down with a few beers, wondering if they will have a job in a few weeks time. It is the America of the cop knowing he’s always going to be a pig no matter how many helpless kids he will plough through bone-chilling water for in a blacker than black lake on a murky December night.

Officer John Wintergreen and Terry Kath are inseperable, as the cruelty of America’s million and one ironies rip them down in the quick fire way classic cinema is grounded upon. One a pre-cursor of the other’s tragedy, the other an angel of death trying to grasp his own emotional wreckage and sing for the souls of the highway, the rocky peaks, and the alienated Americans who sweep through it everyday. These are the Americans in one of the ultimate people songs, an America lost and alone, not of the shitty politicians for whom blasphemy goes hand in hand with saluting a tattered flag. Tell Me will break your heart, with or without Wintergreen’s demise or Kath’s spectre moaning through the gospel choir who keep him standing up straight, it’s a broken heart worth having though. If you want the real State of the Union address, go ask Messers Guercio, Kath, and Wintergreen. Then you’ll know just how important that blessing really is.

Serafino Murru passed away in 1994. It would be difficult though to accept the terminal shockwaves of this roughly sketched street balladeer after the scraping acoustic spears of Lo Scudetto In Sardegna rip through any dustclouds gathered in the decades since Luigi Riva and the Rossoblu last ran rings around mainland hierarchies. Murru is the archetypal everyman, a sage of Cagliari’s back alleys, mews, and streets only mopeds dare to venture. Football is in the right hands (and feet naturally), one of the purest tribal expressions of cultural pride and a definitive sense of liminal defiance. In stepped Murru the musical poet in 1970, to frame with a jaunty Meditteranean cantu everything Cagliari’s only Serie A title to date meant not just to the city itself, what it meant to the whole of Sardinia too. With Sunday morning sunlight glancing across the piazza, and plump genial priests a few minutes late for kicking off mass as they bestoy a little more grace than usual on Boninsegna and co., Lo Scudetto In Sardegna is officially declared the thinking man and woman’s perscription for years of Vindaloo sickness and salt of the earth types whose only grasp of Romantic languages is Olé Olé Olé. Murru, the Cardinal, and the kid kicking a soggy tennis ball off a sandstone wall would also agree, that it really is a beautiful game when everything falls into place with delicate ease of Angelo Domenghini leaving another libero lying flat out on his arse. Bellissimo Serafino, bellissimo.

St. Vitus Dance - what does it conjure up in your musical mind? Probably visions of doom-metal bands, either the original gloom merchants Black Sabbath, or various Scandinavian cardboard copycats. Maybe it’s the medieval buzz, and visions of Brueghel, but the title always brought to mind frigid northern metal more than anything else.

How wrong can you be, though. The St. Vitus Dance - il ballo di San Vito - is hot, hot, hot, and belongs , as this song puts it ‘in southern soil, the land where the land finishes’ (’terra di sud,  terra dov’e finisce la terra’). 

Stick on the song, and let’s wander back in time to the middle ages in Southern Italy, to a time when horizons were limited and where suspicions were always high. In a number of cities small outbursts of ‘hysterical’ dancing were observed unkindly by the clerics - hipshakes have always been frowned upon by Mother Church.

Different theories abounded as to the cause of the mania - the theory that gave the dance its local name, the tarantella, was based on the idea that it was as a type of poisoning caused by the bite of the tarantula. Others presumed that the dance in fact developed as a way to avoid being bitten by a tarantula. Either way, it got your mojo working.

Against the idea that the collective dance was caused by a spider was the fact that in a number of German cities the same thing occured - and, God knows, it would take more than a spider-bite to get your average Teuton to dance feverishly.  The Devil’s work then - so prayers to St. Vitus, patron saint of dance, were required.

The one thing that was obvious to all, though, was that this was an infectious thing. If you witnessed someone dancing this hot-coals and hair unfurled dance, you were bound to get caught up in its sway. A little like this rhythmic masterpiece from Italy’s answer to Tom Waits, Vinicio Capossela.

The Tom Waits tag is slightly unfair, given that this Jazz & Blues gypsy troubadour has his own distinctive sound and style, honed out over years of extensive touring in Italy and now throughout Europe. What the hell though, if it’s a way to get you to drop your provincial bias and give him a listen, then it’s worth the tag.

So, without further ado, turn on the song, step back and picture in front of your eyes men and women dancing as if possesed, as if bitten by something you can’t see, and then join the dance.

“Jesus”

And that’s the way the song starts, leaving a man-god hanging as an insistent but quiet guitar chisels rythmically in the background. All the more potent for the Scottish accent blunting the edges of the singer’s troubled voice.

“Is just a Spanish boy’s name”

And that’s the bit when the chisel breaks off a large bit of stone, and the artist looks to see if his/her aim was true, or whether it’s back to the starting block. It’s all good, and work on the song can continue - it’s the moment when there’s no turning back, this simple stone is changed and will end up as either art or rubble.

And that’s the point of this song - it’s momentum. Everything is relatively simple (including the opening declaration, which isn’t going to win any prizes for deductive logic, but will surely woo anyone with an drop of rock n’ roll in their veins), but each step takes you closer to the whole, to the point when the song ends and you think ‘yes’ as you reach for the rewind button (or should that be icon, these days). 

There are, of course, different ways to approach any work of art, and there’ll be the snide souls who sniff archly at the big sound, at the celtic-ness of it all, spitting out names like Big Country, Simple Minds, and U2 as if they were universally accepted bywords for kitsch. Fuck’em. Take the better elements of those big sounding bands, and mix them with more credible (and usually American) sources like Iron and Wine or Bonnie Prince Billy, and you’ll start getting the picture. 

An alternative title for this triumphalist rant could be “When Critics Bite Back…”, but the dangers of sounding like a Sky One documentary cross bred with a doughnut addled Rolling Stone sub-editor are for now, enough to keep me satisfied with my primary path of destruction. Sure it’s a pre-occupation as old as Larry Gogan, Dickie Rock, and B.P. Fallon combined. Tearing meaty (or muttony) chunks out of these puppy love, emotional angst, and ‘light-hearted’ cringefests kind of gives us a sense of self-distinction, as if by having to endure Bobby McFerrin, the orgasmic liberation of just a sweet moment with Lucinda Williams seems as if Jesus, Buddha, and the Great Spirit have all queued up to condemn the Bill Cosby clone to the bleakest depths of hell while Williams takes us on an open top Chevy ride through a Highway 61 sunset. If music is as Mick Jagger suggests, “worth overdoing”, then a similar critical indulgence is a never contrite one, it is more often than not, a duty. Wherever Orson or Natasha Bedingfield lurk, the Caped Crusader of Laura Nyro must strike, seeing that justice is done under the creepy metropolitan skies.

 Elvis Presley – Moonlight Swim

Way Down or Rubberneckin’ should really be getting the butcher’s cleaver straight through their flimsy excuses for hearts, yet there is something useful about songs like these. For all the days of wine and roses, there is the sour milk of November keeping the classics on their toes. Proving that all untouchables have dark nights of the soul, one can also read for The Kinks Trust Your Heart, while Hot Dog must intrinsically haunt Jimmy Page’s bleary-eyed memories of Sweden circa 1978. With Moonlight Swim John Lennon’s swift dismissal of Presley’s conservative duties is right on the money. There is no ironic purpose to this bubble gum popper from the pen of Sylvia Dee and Ben Weisman. The prissy narrative sees the Tupelo boy a little hot under the collar and taking to the joys of a tranquil ocean. Sadly this kitsch with a capital ‘K’ effort from one of his movie soundtracks (that revelation was hardly out of left-field…) didn’t get munched up by sharks on the graveyard shift. Perhaps taste isn’t just confined to the ears after all.

 4 Non Blondes – What’s Up

Admit it. It’s perfectly natural to grease up the chainsaws for quite possibly the nadir of the pre-packaged hypochondriac butt end of Grunge. Those high up on the sociological ladder will argue over the stability of the term ‘universal’. Linda Whateverhernameisandwhocaresanyway, during a twisted eureka moment, made our radios bleed while at the same time provided an epistemological definition of what these boffins had debated for years. With her crusty strung out rant, people universally speaking could finally agree just how pathetic, banal, bitter, and utterly drained of soul this sorry effort of a ‘song’ really was. “And I say yeah, yeah, yeah” Whatever.

Richie Kavanagh – Aon Focal Eile

Kiss tickled our fancies in the 1980s with Let’s Put the X In Sex. Back in dear old Oireland it took us a full decade and an agrarian type from Carlow to ascend to such cunning linguistics. Unfortunately, putting the ‘P’ in poxbottle, was as far down the alphabet as Richard could go before the cows had to be milked. Don’t worry, the goats and sheep can keep you busy… And I mean that in an agricultural manner Richie, so keep your double entendre to yourself in future.

Andreas Johnson – Glorious

One for the trade descriptions act me does think. It’s easy to imagine Johnson namedropping Bono, Creed, Bush et al, as his most powerful muses while anyone who gets stuck beside him on the bus trip home is forced to listen in M.O.R. coated horror. The ‘5 Hits In a Row’ section on (insert crappy radio station of your choice here) has never been so busy since. The Script meanwhile, are kind enough to make sure Johnson’s legacy is preserved. Thanks a bunch boys…

 ABBA – Thank You for the Music

Thank you for the influx of Moccasin wearing exchange students with designs on mastering their first chord sequence via a curfew breaking pint of Guinness more like. Wow! Let the crazy summer night parties roll! ABBA are Sweden’s biggest export alongside the Volvo and nearly as exciting too. “I’m nothing special/in fact/I’m a bit of a bore.” Don’t forget devoid of charisma dork as well.

Alan Jackson - Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)

Trey Parker and Matt Stone sent this beefy buffoon up well and good but they forgot to ask Al to return the compliment. Where were you when the world started turning Alan? “Somewhere between Plymouth Rock and the shooting range with Dick Cheney and Ted Nugent” came the reply.

Aslan – Crazy World

Building site philosophy at its most profound. There must have been something in the water back in the early 1990s.

Enrique Iglesias – Hero

Did he really say “Save my asshole tonight”…? No? Awww, not even worthy of a good sneer now.

Metallica – Nothing Else Matters

Nor did the Hetfield/Ulrich axis of evil after the ultimate overdose of metal mogadon came along in 1991 and had the purists up in arms. Thoughtful intro, leave the devil at the door before entering lyrics, a tempo so staid even Lars will be able to keep in touch, all components of the group’s instant coffee themed entry into the mainstream. “Metallica have sold out!” they shrieked. Selling out wasn’t the problem, giving twatish pony-tailed buskers and sensitive toe dippers ammo for their conversion to the “dark side” constitutes the far greater evil here. The song was possibly the far more genial Dave Mustaine’s subconscious revenge on the band, they’ve certainly struggled to regain their integrity ever since.

Oasis – Stand By Me

Hold Me Up I Think I’m Losing the Will to Give a Flying Fuck Anymore was a working title for this one… Honestly…

Coldplay – The Scientist

The ‘thoughtful’ minor chords of Cwiss Martin’s key tinkling combined with Will Champion’s ‘heartbeat’ drumming make Metallica’s darkest hour seem as joyous as Phil Spector and Berry Gordy’s most beautiful celestial alchemy in comparison. Oh for the love of God, Cwiss, just go and grow and a pair will you?

Shania Twain – Man, I Feel Like a Woman

I bet Emily Davison is glad she jumped in front of that horse after all. Even the Spice Girls had more feminist gumshion than this candy coated charlatan, the fact that her music reeks from the colon of Hades doesn’t really make Mutt Lange’s blow-up doll all that endearing either.

Joshua Kadison – Jessie

Kadison, forgetting that 1986 had in fact ceased to be around 7 years previously, set out to craft such a thoughtful and meaningful mid-tempo ballad that even Joe Strummer’s heir Ronan Keating went on to cite it as a year zero moment in his Rock N’ Roll revolution. Hang on, I’m getting a little confused, well, like I said, there was certainly something odd in the water back in the early 90s. If you haven’t heard alarm bells on merely encountering a song title like Jessie then you perhaps deserve to be as emotionally unstable as me, as well as having Mr. Kadison plonked alongside David Gray and Wobbly Williams in your music collection.

Three weeks ago I sent a pal an email. Not the kind of drunken rant fest that brings an after effect of head bowing/avoid all eye contact for at least 6 months afterwards. Conceived in an Evangelical state of purity, my friend’s cyber telegram arrived with a link to the lyrics of Idiot Wind and precise instructions to be followed to the letter; these words should be used as bullets against me should I ever again allow myself to become entangled in the fancies of a Praying Mantis.

Not just satisfied with nurturing the greatest album of all time, namely Blood On The Tracks, Bob Dylan wanted to leave something more than a vague idealistic sense of workman like contentment. Shrapnel from a poisoned relationship with his erstwhile in all but legal terms wife Sara, was the bricolage for the whiney voiced one to trigger a perfectly tuned explosion of cold showers across the mid 70s Rock N’ Roll horizon. Part of the deal for Dylan was getting his claws into that most delicately assembled of patterns and tearing it all apart again. Idiot Wind doesn’t wait until the album’s finale like some kind of pre-programmed, spectacle of vengeance, side one (let’s keep it old school, shall we) hasn’t even come to terms with its own shaky devices when Zimmy spits out some of the most toxic rants liable to be permitted before the watershed.

Imagine being in the shoes of Bob and Sara’s kids as mom and pop sacrifice the domestic bliss of New York 1970 for something so dark, that whispering neighbours are given license to indulge in “big ideas, images and distorted facts.” It’s the Christmas party scene where the tension is so bulbous everyone automatically takes on the shame and guilt, where silence burns like napalm and “everythings a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped.”

Watching divorce proceedings on second rate, two to a penny U.S. attorney shows can never be good preparation for Blood On The Tracks, this is where we find out the fate of the broken hearted, no longer content to drag their feet in the halls of mercy, there is a much more potent form of adrenalin rampaging through the veins now. Some will turn to matters so completely cloaked in darkness, it actually makes the more docile among us be thankful for poetic blessings, however vicious they may be. And therein lies the lesson, Idiot Wind is not just the gritty dirt rising in the storm, it’s the electric shocks that come for years afterwards, whenever the heart goes where the head knows better, these silver bullets are Dylan’s greatest weapons of all, and will gun down naive pleasures as quick as he is able to tell us that “I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I’m finally free.” Take the advice then, for even ’simple’ words are liable to lose patience with slow witted lovers…

There may be some artistic value hidden deep in the mix, but the prime concern with 99% of hip-hop collaborations is marketing ’synergy’.  Like fancy fashion houses developing perfumes, the important thing is establishing the logo, and then attaching it to as many different markets/products as possible. Naomi Klein’s ground-breaking  No Logo may have established its thesis examining big name brands like Nike and Tommy Hilfigger,  but the system it exposed is equally valid for the business empires of Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Beyonce etc.

The genesis of the Judgement Night soundtrack was presumably no different. Take a list of big name hip-hop artists and put them together with big name rock acts, and you’re bound to get a ‘crossover’ hit (the same principle behind the Jay-Z Linkin Park album Collision Course). 

The brand in this case, though, wasn’t sufficiently robust to do anyone any good. The movie sucked, and the soundtrack album while recieving decent reviews and a reasonable amount of airplay, hardly set the world on fire.

Marketing synergy is ironic when it comes to the collaboration between Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul, fallin, that features on the album and is without doubt the best of these thrown together products (neither of the bands had met before the recording). The two bands are forever dismissed - with some reason - as slackers. Groups that should have been huge, but though filled with talent lacked the fire in the belly required for any world-class brand. 

The song breaks all the rules for this type of thing, and is all the better for it:

1) Since the days of Run DMC and Aerosmith the rule is that hip-hop goes with rock (the harder the better).  Even De La Soul seem in agreement, when recently they talked of doing another similar collaboration but with someone like Linkin Park or Korn

2) When two brands meet you have to push the bravado all the way. These slackers base a song not around bling, or pheremones, but about falling flat on your face -  a washed up rapper (’and the teenage fans are heat’). Both groups need a serious lesson in self-promotion from a guru like P.Diddy ( How about a drive-by for starters? There’s seven of you involved, so we can afford to lose one - and it’ll create great publicity)

The song is glorious though, based around laid back guitars, a Tom Petty sample, and De La Soul’s characteristically sloping light-hearted rhymes. It wins the Monkey Tunes award for laidbackness, even though all involved sound like they’re firing on all cylinders, particularly at the end when the groove takes off.