BROADCAST #34
AIR DATE: 08-21-07

Fanatics, tonight, I am in Scotland taking part in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I am two shows in with two more to go. Engineer X and put this show together right before one of our broadcasts the other night. I hope you like it. We haven’t done an entire album in some time. It’s 0456 hrs. on the 21st. I am back from the show, jet lagging and thought I would get these notes sent in to Carol so she could post them on the site and you could follow along with them during the show tonight if you wanted to. If you need to reach me for anything, the best way to get to me is Henryontheradio@aol.com. I am having a great time here and I hope I get to be part of this festival again some time. I think you will like tonight’s show. It’s a pre-tape, obviously but we gave it a lot of care and consideration and I hope that if nothing else, it will make you reconsider The Damned’s great 2nd album, Music For Pleasure. Thanks for all your great letters and I will be back with you live next week, it’s a great show I have all ready to go. It’s one of those all genre freak outs that we like to do so please tune in for it if you can. I feel like host of some obscure cable show on late at night trying to raise interest for a knit-a-thon for some charitable cause. Yup, I’m jet lagging. STAY FANATIC!!! --Henry

For you Fanatics who can’t live without hearing this show again or if the original broadcast time is too hard on your sleep cycle here’s the re-broadcast schedule: USA: Fridays: 0200 – 0400 hrs. PST / UK: Fridays: 1000 hrs. – 1200 hrs. / Continental Europe: Fridays 1100 hrs. – 1300 hrs./ Australia: Fridays 2100 hrs. – 2300 hrs.

Some of you Fanatics may remember that at one point, I threatened to play this album in its entirety, well, here we are.Music For Pleasure was The Damned’s 2nd album and their last one for the Stiff label as well as the last one with guitarist and principal songwriter Brian James. The departure of James marked the end of what some refer to as the “classic” era of this band.
The band’s debut album Damned Damned Damned, did very well and for good reason, it’s a real great album. Neat Neat Neat and New Rose were big singles and the press and punters approved. This is was one of the first albums from what became known as Punk Rock. The album released in February of 1977 and only a few months later, the band were preparing to follow up with their next one. I do not know if this was label pressure to get another record out to take advantage of a market that was fresh and perhaps going to be cooling off very quickly if Punk Rock just turned out to be a fad, or if the band were very ambitious and wanted to press onto the next album. If it were down to these two choices, I would bet on the former. I can’t see The Damned having such orderly plans in 1977.
I have not been able to find much information on this album, perhaps that’s in part, the band’s doing. From what I’ve read, the band, or at least Captain Sensible, really wanted to get Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd to produce the album. What the hell, aim high. Of course Syd didn’t do it so they recruited Floyd’s drummer Nick Mason to produce the album. MFP was released on 11-18-77. From the way the album was marketed, it seems there was a lack of enthusiasm shared by band and label. Two album tracks, Problem Child and You Take My Money was released on 10-28-77 without a picture sleeve in the UK. Well, there was a sleeve, you can see it on the cover of Fanatic! Vol. 1 but there were not many made. The single had a picture sleeve in Belgium and Holland, the Dutch picture sleeve can be found on the cover of Fanatic! Vol. 2. Two more album tracks, Don’t Cry Wolf and One Way Love were released as a single on 12-11-77, after MFP’s release. Singles with no b-sides sends a signal. It says that there were no more usable tracks recorded and the album isn’t doing all that well in the shops. It was the truth but perhaps Stiff would have been better served not to release the 2nd single and not seem so desperate. The advertising for the album seemed to lack enthusiasm and had no sense of humor, very unlike the promotion behind DDD. This also sends out a signal. The ads utilized distorted faces of the band and used the caption “Uneasy Listening”, which is a strange thing to say about a band whose members seemed to be so irreverent with their previous release only a few months before. I think all this confused people. One could take the MFP promo campaign in different ways, the band could be changing their image to a band that was dark and heavy or it could very well just be apathy on the part of the label’s art department and the band. Whatever the case was, the album didn’t do very well. Critics as well as the band were hard on the album.
Music For Pleasure was a different kind of album, that’s for sure. Too much of a downer for some, not “Punk Rock” enough for many and for others, a pretentious waste and total let down by a band that should have broken up before even thinking of making a 2nd album. The album was different for some good reasons. There was the use of a saxophone on the song You Know, and many of the songs on the album fall out of the 2 minute model. As well, there was a new member, a 2nd guitar player named Lu Edmonds. I don’t know why the band felt the need to flesh out the sound with Lu. I think that was the only time the band ever had a two guitar line-up.
I remember the first time I ever saw this album. It was a Belgian pressing that was sitting in the small import bin at a strip mall record store out in the suburbs of Maryland. In those days, I didn’t have much access to information about bands like The Damned. I am sure there was some to be had if one bought the British music newspapers but they were expensive and hard to come by anyway. Every time I would go into the store, I would look at the record, I was so curious about it. I didn’t even know if it was real Damned album or not. The thing that kept me from buying the record was the cost. It was at least a day’s wage if not more and I just couldn’t do it at that point, now, I would rather listen than eat. Finally curiosity won out and I got the album and brought it over to Ian’s to listen to it. We both liked the songs Problem Child and Stretcher Case immediately. The rest of the album seemed a little darker than the previous Damned album, the amazing and that made it interesting to me. I didn’t have many records in those days so I played this one over and over. The more I played it, the more curious about it I became. I found that I liked the songs like You Know and Alone the most, these were way heavier than the material on the first album. The fact that no seemed to care about this record made me like it even more.
After the Brian James line-up disintegrated, the band eventually reformed with Algy Ward on bass Captain Sensible on guitar. They released the Love Song EP and the Machine Gun Etiquette album, which were such a solid return to form and won so solidly with fans that the Music For Pleasure album became quite a forgotten part of the band’s recorded history. I think that in recent years, perhaps due to the reissue of the album on the dreaded Sanctuary, a label that does much more harm than good, people are starting to check this album out again or discover it for the first time with a different perspective and they are finding it to be far from the worst thing they ever heard.
What really made me think differently about MFP was becoming acquainted with The Stooges. The Damned as you know, covered 1970 from The Stooges masterpiece Fun House on their first album. When you listen to Fun House and then check out MFP, you start to see where The Damned were maybe getting some inspiration. That’s my take on it anyway. I could be miles off but I think Brian James wanted to make a darker, heavier album than the one before and he got part way there.
Perhaps in a later version of this write up, I will have some more information on the album and what the band was thinking. I have asked Brian James if I could interview him about this and he said it was ok with him. I hope to get that done sooner than later. Meanwhile, I will search through my Damned clippings to see if I can find more information. This is an easy album to get a hold of and the Sanctuary mastering actually sounds good.
So enough of my baseless lamentations, let’s allow the music to do the talking and see what you make of what I think is a cool album that might grow on you, The Damned’s Music For Pleasure!

The Damned - Music For Pleasure: Problem Child / Don't Cry Wolf / One Way Love / Politics / Stretcher Case / Idiot Box/ You Take My Money / Alone / Your Eyes / Creep (You Can't Fool Me) / You Know: Well, there you go. That’s the album. I think it’s great that this album is getting a second chance with Damned Fanatics. Several weeks ago, I was talking to Ian and telling him about this broadcast and that I was playing the whole MFP album and he remembered that we dug it straight off. This is cool album that deserves another listen or five.

Public Image Ltd. - Careering (BBC Session): From the out-of-print and hard-to-find 4CD Plastic Box set. This was released in March of 1999. At this point, it’s the only way to get the band’s first b-side, The Cowboy Song as well as their 1979 Peel Session. It is for these tracks that I got the collection. It is not all that easy to find and quite pricey when you do. That early PIL stuff is really something. I don’t know about the later stuff past Flowers Of Romance but the early stuff is quite amazing and as far as famous Punks making a move after their big band breaks up, Johnny Lydon made the best one by forming PIL.

The Moonglows - Blue Velvet: From the Blue Velvet: The Ultimate Collection 2CD set. Last year we played a song by this band called Starlite. Cool that at one point they were called The Crazy Sounds until Alan Freed re-named them The Moonglows and gave them a lot of support on radio. The song of theirs you may be familiar with is 10 Commandments Of Love. I think that’s the first song of theirs that I heard.

Black Eyes – Scrapes and Scratches: I have played tracks off the band’s first album but not as many tracks from their 2nd album, Cough. I saw the band right before they recorded the first album and it was the best show I saw that year. They were a brilliant and noisy band and perhaps it’s a good thing they broke up after just two albums. It was a little frustrating for Dischord, the label who released both albums as the band broke up right before Cough was released. Artists, what are you going to do? The two Black Eyes albums are very different from each other, Cough is very improvisational compared to the first one and might take the listener a couple of passes before they get to it but it’s a grower most certainly.

Hawkwind - Space is Deep: From Doremi Fasol Latido released in 1972. If I have my facts straight, I think this is the 3rd Hawkwind album and the first one featuring Lemmy. I like the first five studio albums: Hawkwind, Search Of Space, Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall Of The Mountain Grill and Warrior On The Edge Of Time. The live album Space Ritual is also great. It was Dez from Black Flag who turned me onto Black Flag. He turned me onto a lot of music back on those days. You want Space Rock? This is your Space Rock.

The Fall - Futures and Pasts: From the Live At The Witch Trials album, released in March of 1979. This would be their first album, so tonight we go way back and visit a very young and frisky Mark E Smith. I like all the early Fall albums, my favorite of all of them being the Hex Enduction Hour album released in 1982. The early Fall albums have been re-released on vinyl but I don’t know how they sound. I have the originals and they sound great. I always wonder if the re-releases are actually mastered from the analog source masters or done digitally. Anyway, this album captures The Fall at the beginning of what would turn out to be one of the longest running shows in Independent music. If MES had planned on still being in The Fall all these years later, it wouldn’t have surprised me. In a recent interview MES was asked what album a new Fall fan should check out and he recommended Hex and that would be a good choice but you wouldn’t want to leave out Witch Trials, Dragnet and Grotesque, all of which came before Hex. You know me, Fanatic, all Fall sounds pretty good. Here’s an address to a great Fall info site: http://www.visi.com/fall/

Miles Davis – Ali (tk. 3): From The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions box set. It has been great to be able to hear all this unreleased Miles Davis material, thanks to the complete sessions sets that Columbia has been putting out from time to time. The actual Jack Johnson album is called A Tribute To Jack Johnson and it’s two very long tracks. The box set is 5 CDs and even though you have perhaps come across some of the other tracks on a few Miles albums here and there, the majority of the material is unreleased and essential listening. The sessions on this set were all recorded in 1970, the same year he and his band did the Cellar Door recordings that resulted in the Live Evil album. This was a great time of change and experimentation for Miles Davis. He had completely overhauled his sound at this time and as always when he made a change, not every one of his fans could make the journey with him to the next thing. When the album was released in 1971, it didn’t sell. From the Bitches Brew album up to the On The Corner album represents some of most innovative and intense work Miles Davis ever did and not enough can be said about this period of his work. When do we get a solid release date for the Beyond The Corner box set is what I want to know!

The Horrors - Jack The Ripper: From the cool Strange House album. Engineer X turned me onto this band. I thought their version of Screaming Lord Sutch’s Jack The Ripper had some Nick Caveosity in the vocal since the two titles seem to sound good when said in a single sentence, “Jack The Ripper, meet Nick The Stripper . . . “ I couldn’t resist. I have plans for this song next month as you will soon see. A cool band and apparently very much the rave in England at the moment.

The Birthday Party - Nick The Stripper: From the Prayers On Fire album. After I heard this album the first time, they became one of my favorite bands. The album is by turns, perverse, funny and merciless. It’s almost “arty” compared to the album they released next, Junkyard. When people talk about this band, they often don’t mention Prayers nearly as much as they do Junkyard. I think the music on Junkyard is more reflective of a band growing coarser and darker. On Prayers, there’s twisted love songs like Zoo Music Girl. on Junkyard, women are getting killed and beaten in songs like 6” Gold Blade and She’s Hit. No, the band is not a bunch of foaming misogynists but the lyrics did get darker and I think that has more to do with Nick Cave exploring the darkness of his talent. The band never returned to the art school feel of Prayers On Fire. From Junkyard onwards, it was death and insanity. There may have been drugs involved.

Armando Muwane - He Wena Mani: I was in an insanely overpriced record store in Helsinki Finland recently and saw this album, Forgotten Guitars From Mozambique. It looked interesting so I made note of it and searched more reasonably priced on the highway ‘d info and found one. This is one of those record that I got not knowing what the hell I was in for but happy to roll the dice. Some of the African music CDs I have found have been some of best roll-the-dice purchases I have ever made. I have bought many out of sheer curiosity and ended up really liking them. If you liked what you heard tonight, you will like the rest of this album.

Parliament - Up For The Down Stroke (alt. mix): From the Up For The Down Stroke CD. This is an extra track. It’s a busier mix, there’s more stuff going on at the top. I don’t know the ins and outs of Parliament, like if was released before or was a track known to collectors. I was very lucky to spend a couple of days working with George Clinton on a track. I don’t know if it ever came out or not. I got a mix of the song from his engineer years ago and wasn’t all that impressed with it, perhaps it was just my ears. It was an interesting experience, hanging out with him. They broke the mold on that guy! At one point, he would make up verses about anyone who walked into the room and start rapping at them and it was all good. The guy is an engine. I wonder if anyone will ever make a comprehensive discography. Perhaps there already is one, I am not a George aficionado. I am not talking about just the released output, I am talking about all the sessions that George has been involved in, tell me someone has gotten to the bottom of that one! When I was in the studio with him, there were so many people coming in and out it was not to be believed and I don’t know if anyone was keeping track of who sang on what, etc.

XBXRX - Q-Bert: From the not so easy to find Love Songs For The Blind CD. Vice Cooler of XBXRX gave me some cool singles of the band some weeks back. I will bounce some of them onto CDR so I can bring them in for our show. I love this band. Two of their easier to find titles are Sixth In Sixes and the recently released Wars. The band’s music is relentless. I don’t know how they keep it together song to song. There’s some genius in there.