SNSO: Joe Maplin
Something New, Something Old. Another new series/way of dressing up the fact I'll be delving into the archive much more from now on. Rather than giving them a sequential number, each posting in this series will be named after a someone. Why not a fictional holiday camp owner to start.
...something new...
Faust.
New Cross Amersham Arms. 18jun08.
The ‘Faust’ of German folk legend is characterised as a charlatan alchemist. Given the amount of base metals used in the percussive cage/fort which contains heavy-set drummer, and founding Faust member Werner ‘Zappi’ Diermaier, one might be tempted to make that instant connection between that original fiction and this musical fact and suggest that if gold is made here, it is but fools gold.
That would be a touch excessive, and neither can any connection be made with Goethe’s Faust either; there have been no pacts entered into with the devil or anything here. Not overtly anyway, this isn’t Scandinavian death metal after all, although neither is it exactly close to the mainstream. As if to prove that they are not entirely removed from popular music though, tonight’s grouping under the banner of Faust (Zappi and fellow founder member Jean-Hervé Péron are joined by a variety of guests including vocalists Rachael Tyrell and Geraldine Swayne) begin by moving from a wake-up cacophony into a mangled take on The Beatles’ ‘She Loves You’.
Faust tonight operate from a subtle underlying of waspish psyche-folk to which they add a blunt industrial thwack. Not industrial in the conventional sense, but more a band in tune with a soot-blackened labour force and whilst far from resistant to the electronic age, the clank on pipes and the rivet gunning, which causes sparks to fly off the large circular saw tied steadfastly to the back of Zappi’s cage, is distinctly evocative of a time when the future was a Brunelian future.
Large sheets of metal also swing from the top of the cage and at times Jean-Hervé just throws the microphone at them, almost coshing Zappi in the process, whilst intoning “The drummer is on valium, give him a kick. Kick him.” They’ve been performing together since 1971 so Zappi will no doubt be wise to the need for duck and cover over the course of an average ninety minute set.
They paint semi-improvised urban landscapes, but with plenty of green amongst the grease (understandable, given their formation in the rural town of Wűmme), adding trumpet, an additional drum set, an accordion or even a chainsaw when they see fit. When the chainsaw revs it even begins to smell like a factory, and as Jean-Hervé attacks a load of plywood with it with some zeal amongst the front row, the chippings swirl and coat the audience like dust on foreign coins forgotten for years at the bottom of a vase [see pic].
Although ‘krautrock’ as a genre term invented by British journalists hasn’t always exactly gone down well with the actual protagonists, Jean-Hervé shouting “YOU did it. YOU gave it its name…we’re gonna play some KRAUTROCK” suggests that Faust have taken it in their stride. It is this final number, a fifteen-minute pulsating rotation, that sees Faust really come into their own.
Trying to hook them into the history of Faustus allegories on the basis of their name almost certainly misses the point anyhow. They are not the result of the mystical or the creation of the precious. They are immersed in experimentation certainly, but in a distinctly utilitarian sense. Their collaborations espouse the benefits of working union, whilst their music is about strength and solidarity. ‘Faust’, after all, is also the German for ‘fist’.
...something old...
from the Art of Noise archive (the A-Z of music)
J: Jugs.
F’narr. Or, more accurately, jug and spasm. F’narr f’narr. Before the arrival of the sock-embellished world of cock-rock, this was possibly the most lascivious genre term musical history could provide. Yet, like the 50s skiffle music to which it is closely related, it was an entirely innocent style and prior to the Great Depression was THE music of the United States’ rural south.
Around the turn of the 20th century, stylistically catholic “jug” bands began to crop up in Louisville, Kentucky and were a tremendous spectacle that quickly garnered momentous success playing the full gamut through country, jazz, Ragtime and pop styles. Early jug bands were usually manned by African American vaudeville players, and as such Appalachian styles also featured and Memphis Blues, before it was known as such.
The first known recording, in the early 20s, captured Earl McDonald’s Dixieland Jug Blowers and while the style was largely killed off by big band and swing in more affluent times, jug bands continue to exist, such as the Juggernaut, Federal Cigar and Curbside Jug Bands. Indeed, an annual JugFest is held each October in Sutter Creek, California with “jammin’ and juggin’”, of course, a prominent feature of these gatherings.
The origins of the jug came from the spasm bands of the late 19th century. Spasms bands performed on the streets often using homemade instruments, one notable figure of this time being Ironing Board Sam. Other instruments regularly found in spasm bands were kazoos, whistles, harmonicas, mandolins, “bones” (spoons) and washtubs. The jug, the “poor man’s tuba”, was often called upon to make up part of a rhythm section, although players have apparently been known to break out into jug solo. Prior to banging on Placebo in an early-noughties indie-club, this was probably the most effective floor-clearance technique known to music.
To play a jug, you buzz through pursed lips over the mouth of the jug, this giving its distinctive hollow bass tone. That’s all there is to it folks, now you’re ready for a rigorous hoedown. Indeed, it is the ease of this, and the ready access to the apparatus, that makes jug and spasm so significant.
Jug and spasm bands had precisely the same effect on US citizens of the late 1800s as the skiffle boom had on post-war Britain, democratising music, making it accessible, allowing music appreciation to be more than a passive pursuit. So then, from jug and spasm we got the blues which, of course, begat rock ‘n’ roll and is therefore to blame for every single musical note you love today. How’s that for a sweeping statement? I’m glad no-one’s claiming this ad-hoc encyclopaedia to be in any way definitive.
Besides, music was invented in the early 60s wasn’t it?
...something new...
Faust.
New Cross Amersham Arms. 18jun08.
The ‘Faust’ of German folk legend is characterised as a charlatan alchemist. Given the amount of base metals used in the percussive cage/fort which contains heavy-set drummer, and founding Faust member Werner ‘Zappi’ Diermaier, one might be tempted to make that instant connection between that original fiction and this musical fact and suggest that if gold is made here, it is but fools gold.
That would be a touch excessive, and neither can any connection be made with Goethe’s Faust either; there have been no pacts entered into with the devil or anything here. Not overtly anyway, this isn’t Scandinavian death metal after all, although neither is it exactly close to the mainstream. As if to prove that they are not entirely removed from popular music though, tonight’s grouping under the banner of Faust (Zappi and fellow founder member Jean-Hervé Péron are joined by a variety of guests including vocalists Rachael Tyrell and Geraldine Swayne) begin by moving from a wake-up cacophony into a mangled take on The Beatles’ ‘She Loves You’.
Faust tonight operate from a subtle underlying of waspish psyche-folk to which they add a blunt industrial thwack. Not industrial in the conventional sense, but more a band in tune with a soot-blackened labour force and whilst far from resistant to the electronic age, the clank on pipes and the rivet gunning, which causes sparks to fly off the large circular saw tied steadfastly to the back of Zappi’s cage, is distinctly evocative of a time when the future was a Brunelian future.
Large sheets of metal also swing from the top of the cage and at times Jean-Hervé just throws the microphone at them, almost coshing Zappi in the process, whilst intoning “The drummer is on valium, give him a kick. Kick him.” They’ve been performing together since 1971 so Zappi will no doubt be wise to the need for duck and cover over the course of an average ninety minute set.
They paint semi-improvised urban landscapes, but with plenty of green amongst the grease (understandable, given their formation in the rural town of Wűmme), adding trumpet, an additional drum set, an accordion or even a chainsaw when they see fit. When the chainsaw revs it even begins to smell like a factory, and as Jean-Hervé attacks a load of plywood with it with some zeal amongst the front row, the chippings swirl and coat the audience like dust on foreign coins forgotten for years at the bottom of a vase [see pic].
Although ‘krautrock’ as a genre term invented by British journalists hasn’t always exactly gone down well with the actual protagonists, Jean-Hervé shouting “YOU did it. YOU gave it its name…we’re gonna play some KRAUTROCK” suggests that Faust have taken it in their stride. It is this final number, a fifteen-minute pulsating rotation, that sees Faust really come into their own.
Trying to hook them into the history of Faustus allegories on the basis of their name almost certainly misses the point anyhow. They are not the result of the mystical or the creation of the precious. They are immersed in experimentation certainly, but in a distinctly utilitarian sense. Their collaborations espouse the benefits of working union, whilst their music is about strength and solidarity. ‘Faust’, after all, is also the German for ‘fist’.
...something old...
from the Art of Noise archive (the A-Z of music)
J: Jugs.
F’narr. Or, more accurately, jug and spasm. F’narr f’narr. Before the arrival of the sock-embellished world of cock-rock, this was possibly the most lascivious genre term musical history could provide. Yet, like the 50s skiffle music to which it is closely related, it was an entirely innocent style and prior to the Great Depression was THE music of the United States’ rural south.
Around the turn of the 20th century, stylistically catholic “jug” bands began to crop up in Louisville, Kentucky and were a tremendous spectacle that quickly garnered momentous success playing the full gamut through country, jazz, Ragtime and pop styles. Early jug bands were usually manned by African American vaudeville players, and as such Appalachian styles also featured and Memphis Blues, before it was known as such.
The first known recording, in the early 20s, captured Earl McDonald’s Dixieland Jug Blowers and while the style was largely killed off by big band and swing in more affluent times, jug bands continue to exist, such as the Juggernaut, Federal Cigar and Curbside Jug Bands. Indeed, an annual JugFest is held each October in Sutter Creek, California with “jammin’ and juggin’”, of course, a prominent feature of these gatherings.
The origins of the jug came from the spasm bands of the late 19th century. Spasms bands performed on the streets often using homemade instruments, one notable figure of this time being Ironing Board Sam. Other instruments regularly found in spasm bands were kazoos, whistles, harmonicas, mandolins, “bones” (spoons) and washtubs. The jug, the “poor man’s tuba”, was often called upon to make up part of a rhythm section, although players have apparently been known to break out into jug solo. Prior to banging on Placebo in an early-noughties indie-club, this was probably the most effective floor-clearance technique known to music.
To play a jug, you buzz through pursed lips over the mouth of the jug, this giving its distinctive hollow bass tone. That’s all there is to it folks, now you’re ready for a rigorous hoedown. Indeed, it is the ease of this, and the ready access to the apparatus, that makes jug and spasm so significant.
Jug and spasm bands had precisely the same effect on US citizens of the late 1800s as the skiffle boom had on post-war Britain, democratising music, making it accessible, allowing music appreciation to be more than a passive pursuit. So then, from jug and spasm we got the blues which, of course, begat rock ‘n’ roll and is therefore to blame for every single musical note you love today. How’s that for a sweeping statement? I’m glad no-one’s claiming this ad-hoc encyclopaedia to be in any way definitive.
Besides, music was invented in the early 60s wasn’t it?
posted by skif at 12:01 AM
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